 The Lexical Approach:
 Teaching Phrasal Verbs
Phrasal verbs can be a pretty messy business. While giving rules for tenses and comparatives and the like is fairly straightforward, hard and fast rules for phrasal verbs are hard to come by, and if you don’t watch your step you can easily end up confusing and demoralizing your students.
Read more: Teaching Phrasal Verbs
Spotlight on collocations
I’ve been thinking it’s time to change the channel and turn the spotlight on the Lexical Approach and on my favorite in-class activity, picking out collocations from texts.
Read more: Spotlight on collocations
Into The Breach
I remember I was once a fledgling EFL teacher; yeah, that wasn’t just yesterday either, in fact it was during “la movida” here in Madrid. And I think it was also about the time the internet was just taking off and I was wondering what all the fuss was about. I guess now I know as I sit here pecking out my latest entry in my blog on Madrid Teacher, which is a very cost effective way of finding students.
Read more: Into The Breach
Super Students
I always kick off my classes with revision cards. On slips of paper I write sentences in which I have underlined the target lexical item. Students cover the underlined word with their finger and try to elicit the word from their partner, a bit like taboo. I really like it: you pick several flowers with one cut (a humanistic variation of the more violent two-birds-with-one-stone idiom). Students warm up and revise, and it gives you (the teacher) a chance to settle in. Anyway, today my students had their homework out and immediate starting commenting on it. And I wondered, is this a coincidence or are they trying to tell me something?
Read more: Super Student
Methodology
Are you a dictator?
Dictation has seen better days. It probably peaked out back in the 50s and 60s when language learning was seen as behaviorist, that is, as developing correct speech habits. This was the belief behind Audiolingualism in the States, and Situational Language Teaching in Briton. Since language learning was seen as mechanical habit formation, it was imperative that students develop correct speech habits; errors meant failure and were to be avoided at all cost.
Read more: Are you a dictator? Spring Fever
A soft breeze blows across the Spanish capital. Now the days stretch out into late evening, and as winter slowly relinquishes its grip, people shed their heavy clothes. The mild sunshine awakens new inklings as lightly-clad residents mingle along the crowded streets and plazas. The temperature is rising and new blood courses through our veins. There can be no doubt about it: we’ve got spring fever!
Read more: Spring Fever What Students Want
The other day one of my students, a girl from South America, came up to me after class and asked if she could “make a suggestion”, and she got the collocation right!; though I suppose a native speaker might have said something like, “David, I was wondering if I could have a word with you”. Then I’d have known I was in trouble. Anyway, she suggested we spend less time on fluency activities and more on grammar. OK, I have to admit I wasn’t expecting that: I was nonplussed, dumbfounded and flabbergasted.
Read more: What Students Want Gadgets and Gizmos
To be truthful I’ve never felt any special inclination to have the latest gadgets and gizmos. In fact I think I was the last kid on the block to get a mobile phone. Now usually if you’ve got a class in a company they’ve got a CD player around somewhere you can use, but not this company where I taught today, so I bring along these portable speakers and, get this, a CD player. Gasp!
Read more: Gadgets and Gizmos
Thy classes shalt be lively and dynamic
To be truthful I’ve never felt any special inclination to have the latest gadgets and gizmos. In fact I think I was the last kid on the block to get a mobile phone. Now usually if you’ve got a class in a company they’ve got a CD player around somewhere you can use, but not this company where I taught today, so I bring along these portable speakers and, get this, a CD player. Gasp!
Read more: Thy classes shalt be lively and dynamic
The TEFL Business
The Closing of Opening
Lately I’ve been thinking about different sorts of innovations we’ve seen in the TEFL field over the years. I’d love to dream up a TEFL bombshell that will enhance my economic well-being. If I do, maybe you’ll see me in the Dragons’ Den! (a TV show where entrepreneurs hoping to get financing pitch their ideas to venture capitalists.) Anyway, I was thinking some recent “innovations” turned out to be basically a gimmick with an advertising budget: a case in point, the infamous language academy Opening, now closed.
Read more: The closing of Opening
Freelance Teaching
Second Edition
Another little surprise today. We’re using In Company intermediate for one of my classes and the company is buying a copy for all the students. As it was sold out at the local English bookshop, the company ordered copies and they came in today, and surprise surprise!, it’s a “new edition”. It’s been changed around enough to make it awkward for me to keep on using the old recording.
Read more: Second Edition
Mixed Abilities
Today I taught a mixed-ability class in a company, but not the same one I wrote about before: this is as common as sunshine in the desert! Anyway, their levels range from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate, and attendance is pretty irregular, in fact sometimes just one comes, which was the case today. At a solid upper-intermediate level, today’s student’s probably the strongest.
Read more: Mixed Abilities
The Teacher's Lot
Controversy erupts over pensions
There has been a spate of articles recently about the Spanish Social Security system. This was spurred by a recent report from the European Union saying that of all the member states, Spain will experience the sharpest rise in pension costs. In 2007 it allocated 8.4% of its GDP to pay retirees, but that figure is set to rise to 15.1% by 2060, while the EU average will be 12.6%. At present in Spain there are four tax payers for every senior citizen, but due to the aging population and low birth rate, in 2050 it apparently will shrink to two to one.
Read more: Controversy Erupts Over Pensions
Paying into social security
Many a beleaguered academy owner is out there fighting for survival in the TEFL jungle, and one of the main ways to stay competitive is to cut costs, their main expenses being advertising and teachers’ salaries. A lot of academies try to save money and gain flexibility by not hiring many full-time teachers. This is because it’s hard to fill a 25-hour contract because most classes are given at peak times: early morning, lunchtime, and late evening, which means full-time teachers tend to be underhours, especially during slow times of the year. So instead of having, say, twenty full-time teachers, many opt to have forty part-time teachers.
Read more: Paying into social security
A TEFL Fantasy
Interviewer on NPR: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s our great pleasure to welcome to our program the world famous TEFL superstar, Blade of Grass.
Blade of Grass: Thank you everyone. It’s a great honor to be here today on this top quality radio station.
Int: Thank you. And congratulations on being selected for the TEFL team for the Education Olympics, which will be broadcast this evening around the world. Do you think you’re going to be coming home with gold.
Read more: A TEFL Fantasy Teachers Unite
It’s great rubbing elbows (or shoulders as the Brits say) with my English-teaching colleagues. We have shared experiences, think the same way, have roughly the same linguistic brain waves: the same parts of our brains light up like Christmas trees.
So here we all are in the insalubrious (because of secondary smoke) confines of our local watering hole, slaking our thirst after long hours of exposing students to language, clarifying meaning, and uncovering grammar, when I decide to toss out a sort-of serious question.
Read more: Teachers Unite
The Teaching Game
For me the incident below where I came up with my own lead-in for a reading shows one of the best parts of being an EFL teacher: the creativity! This helps stave off teacher burnout and keeps things interesting.
Read more: The Teaching Game
Uncategorized
Dead Class
I love an audience. That’s definitely one of the best parts of teaching. I talk to my students basically the same way I talk to my friends: casually, informally, personally. Yeah, there’s some risk because there’s real communication; I don’t see eye to eye with everyone, but it’s good to hear other views, and I learn. Teaching really is a two-way street: I learn as well. If not, teaching would be dead boring.
Read more: Dead Class Speaking of Dictionaries
Speaking of dictionaries, I corrected some of my students writing today where they had to talk about where they live, and some of them said things like “I live in a residential quarter of Madrid”. Now I would never say that. I’d say “I live in a residential neighborhood in Madrid”, yet the dictionary supports the students’ meaning, so I can’t “correct” it. I’ll try to remember to ask my British colleagues if that sounds right to them.
Read more: Speaking of Dictionaries
Blindsided
I’ve been zapped, thrown a curve ball, blindsided. Today I was teaching a class in the academy where I work, which is my base, my home, where I mingle with other English teaching professions like myself; and where I get my hands on extra material and teacher’s books and the like I don’t want to shell out my own money on. It’s not a bad deal.
Read more: Blindsided
 More about David Overton: 
Website: TEFL-Diary.com
Profile: In-Company Classes Contact Information:
E-mail:
madridteacherdavid@hotmail.com.
Telephone:
912-877-646.
Cell:
652-93-92-89.
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TEFL Diary - David Overton keeps a diary - a blog - about his actual experiences during his English classes.
