A weekend of Hungarian Slovak hospitality.

Following on from my last post about meeting really nice people, I feel like sharing a few words about my weekend in southern Slovakia with my girlfriend's family.

On Saturday we spend the day with her mother in the morning, catching up, chatting in Hungarian (or trying to, in my case), and eating home-cooked food. The latter was a recurring theme from the weekend, much to my delight.

Later on we went to her aunt's house as they wanted to be introduced to me finally. We've been meaning to spend time with the family for a while but time always runs short when we visit or schedules do not work out. I met Edina's aunt, uncle, cousin, the cousin's boyfriend and another cousin's daughter. I was welcomed with open arms by all of them except for the daughter, who is an adorable but shy four year old.

While there I was treated to many home-made culinary delights including red wine punch, red wine, Chardonnay (her uncle owns a vinyard I think), wild deer goulash and pancakes served with apricot jam from the summer harvest. I said (in Hungarian) that I wasn't very hungry and was then informed that this was not an acceptable sentence in the household :-)

We talked for hours about life, me, them, why I came to Slovakia (a favourite question), Hungarians living in Slovkia and more. We've been invited back when we're next at home and also invited to Budapest, where we'll get a tour of all the sights courtesy of Edina's cousin.

This image is not mine but it's a nice one. I took it from Danielle Harms' blog, which you can find here.

One nice thing was that I was complimented on my very limited Hungarian and apparently I don't have a noticeable accent when speaking the phrases I know. I got another lesson in Slovak and Hungarian on the train ride home so here's hoping that I can continue to speak well in these two complex languages. I have a funny love and hate relationship with each of them as they will alternate with making sense and confusing me. Sometimes I want to scream at Slovak as it seems so complex where Hungarian is so logical, but then you change the language point and the roles are reversed. Good times :-D

Afterwards we went to another cousin's house to meet his family and also talk about teaching. He and his wife are teachers and he's been asked to teach some English so we spent a happy few hours swapping ideas and telling stories of what we get up to at work.

Well, I should be clear and say that's what Edina, her cousin and his wife did. I was, by popular child's vote, elected to babysit and play with the two kids: a boisterous three year old boy and the previously mentioned shy four year old girl who had, by now, dropped any pretence of being shy or quiet. It was great fun playing games with them and trying to communicate in my limited Slovak and Hungarian. The highlight was the girl rolling her eyes at me and trying to simplify her instructions even more when telling me that it was my time to count and search for them in Hide & Seek.

In return I was fed with some bread & butter with toppings, paprika paste (from Hungary of course), home-made blueberry jam, a type of roasted bacon and more drink, this time high quality cognac and home-distilled Slivovice. The latter caught me off guard as it's much stronger than the stuff you usually buy in shops. All good news though.

To round off a wonderful day we walked home through a lightly snow-dusted village with a spectacular starry sky above us. I felt very happy and in love.




This is a personalised and touching example of what I've experienced from people since coming to Slovakia, and indeed throughout my world travels. Everyone must find their own way to go through life but I highly reccomend that you take a chance on life at least once and experience a new country with an open heart and mind.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you find :-)

The people you meet...

The below was written on Thursday January 12th but I didn't have time to finish and post it until now :-)

I'm feeling quite bright at happy today. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I'm relaxing in a classroom on the eighth floor that has a view over the city and to the hills of Austria. The golden spire of St Martin's cathedral is shining, Bratislava castle is capping the hill it stands upon with its bright, white walls and the forest in the distance on Kamzik is beckoning me. How I do love the sun in January.



It's times like these that I'm compelled to reflect upon the perks and joys of my new profession. While EFL teaching isn't likely to leave you rolling in money by any stretch of the imagination, the experiences of new places and people that you get are quite wonderful. I write this having recently finished testing and speaking to a new student. She was interesting, friendly and spoke good English. As part of her exam, she quizzed me on my opinions about the Eurozone, British culture, British food and then we discussed different experiences in life.

The range of people that I teach and have regular contact with is quite extensive and surprises me at times. From the top of my head I can think of the following jobs my students have: a petroleum company manager, an architect, the head of some radio and TV stations, technical IT specialists, fibre-optic cable designers, students, a bank employee, a teacher specialising in Autism and special needs children, and many more.

Inevitably, when talking to one another we use our own lives as source material for discussion. I've been exposed to so many different stories and backgrounds. Of particular interest to me are the tales from people who lived a portion, or a lot, of their lives under the Communist regime. These stories, and those of the transition out of Communism in 1989, are a fascinating glimpse into what was such an abstract piece of history to me. Several of my students were at university during those years and they speak fondly of it in a number of ways, though they admit that the country is better off now. I get challenged daily by different viewpoints and cultural backgrounds. I bring out discussion questions for my higher-level students and they often force me to defend my own position that comes from a different background and life experience.

It makes me very glad to have taken the step forward in life and to find something that really works for me. I love seeing new countries, experiencing new cultures and meeting people whose life stories enrich my knowledge of the world.

There is the story of this teacher and just a few of the people I get to meet.

All the best,

Pete

The most common mistake English people make...but is it a mistake?

Hi everyone and Happy 2012.

I'm feeling nicely refreshed after a Christmas and New Year trip home to England. It was great to see family, enjoy the mild English winter and generally relax with plenty of food and drink. There's three great things about being home and taking a guest with you: showing off the beauty of your home area, introducing them to your friends and family, and being reminded of all of the great things about where you live by somebody who sees them with fresh eyes.

While there, though, I did notice a mistake that I hear with reasonable frequency from those who have English as their mother tongue. I've heard it from my parents, friends, colleagues and almost everyone who speaks English. I even find myself doing it from time to time, though I try not to now that I'm aware of it. I made the mistake in question deliberately in the paragraph before this one. Can you find it?
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
The answer is: There's three things...

Now people say this, or variants of it, quite frequently in conversation. I noticed it numerous times during my holiday in England but I've also heard it from people in all walks of life (up to and including the US President).

It's a funny one because I don't know of anyone who would use the non-contracted form, there is, with a plural, but once we shorten it to there's it is common and fairly natural for people to use it with singular objects or plurals.

I challenge you to listen carefully to English speakers and I suspect that you'll come across this error with reasonable frequency.


It does however bring up the question of what constitutes a mistake in a language. English is evolving as, I imagine, are most other spoken languages and therein lies the defence to this mistake I've picked up on.

If most people use it in their day to day conversations in English, then should it be considered a mistake any more? We've discarded and altered many aspects of English that were common just a century ago. I suggest you go out and read some classic literature to find examples of sentences and phrasings that would be extremely unusual to hear in normal conversation these days.

So what are your thoughts on this mistake and whether it should in fact be considered a mistake at all?


? - There's too many factors in any language to form distinct rules about what's correct.

? - There're too few people paying attention to what they're saying and so everyone should focus more on the language they use.

Reduce, re-use, recycle

Until I started teaching full time I never truly realised all of the work that goes on behind the scenes in order to make a (good) lesson happen. I knew that teachers needed to prepare the lessons that they were teaching and I got a little experience of it when I was on my CELTA course but when the full time work hits....it's a bit different to say the least.

I teach about 19 hours a week for my school and have a couple of private students who have lessons as and when our schedules allow. We'll call it an average of 20 hours of teachin a week. Each of those lessons needs to be prepared and planned. Preparation time for a lesson varies quite a lot depending on what material you are using. The actual structuring of the lesson takes perhaps half an hour as you figure out the stages of teaching the subject or grammar point that you're covering. This is fairly easy to break into chunks as you deal with introducing the material, getting the students to use it in positive and negative sentences (e.g. I like football/I don't like football), then move on to question forms and more independent use, perhaps in a conversational setting or game.

What can really take up your time and make the job a lot harder is the preparation of the associated teaching material. This can include creating exercises, board games, flashcards, picture cards, finding writing extracts, making sure you have the recordings ready for a listening exercise etc etc. This is where lessons can suck up your time and make you feel like you're buried in paperwork. I try to make a dent in everything on Friday so I can have the weekend off but I often have to pop into Class at least for a little bit to finalise things.

My 'friend' paperwork. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways ;-)


Now there are very good reasons to do all of the work associated with planning lessons. It's true that you can go into a lesson with nothing more than yourself, some pens and paper/whiteboard and teach a great lesson, but it's not easy. You have to be on top of absolutely everything that can come up, be ready with great examples to teach vocabulary or clear up points, have a perfect sense of reading your students' comfort and be able to time things so you finish at the end of the lesson having nicely cleared up all of the points you taught. I've done it once or twice (as has, I'm sure, every teacher), but it's a lot more stressful than when you have things planned and ready ahead of time.

So how do you go about reducing the time you need to spend on preparing lessons to a more manageable figure, especially with a full schedule and wanting to fit some kind of social life in there?



By stealing the oft-repeated environmentally targeted slogan for use as a teacher. You save time, and sometimes your sanity, by reducing, re-using and recycling your material.

It was suggested at that start by other teachers that I will benefit a lot by recycling and re-using lesson materials. It's amazing to find out how much variety can be created by using the exact same set of materials for different levels and subjects.

Let's look at an example that I actually used in several lessons. It was a set of flashcards with pictures of people doing activities (jobs and hobbies). I used this set to teach five tenses: Present continuous (He is dancing, they are cooking etc.), Present simple (he dances, they cook), past simple and continuous ("Yesterday?" "Aha, they were dancing) and present perfect (this week they have danced three times).

Of course I varied the activities using the cards from simple memory games for the lower levels up to more complex question forming and expanded sentences for the higher levels. One game that stands out in my mind is Pexeso, or memory pairs. You have two sets of the same cards, put them face down in two groups and then the students must match pairs. It can be very simple: Turn card 1 - "He is dancing." Card 2 - "He is not dancing. He is running." to make pairs or you can scale it up for questions. One student I teach in a 1 on 1 setting played this game with me using present perfect where he had to supply the appropriate time phrases to make it work e.g. Card 1 - "He has danced twice this week already. Has this person (card 2) danced this week too?" Card 2 - "No they haven't danced, they have eaten this morning though."

Sometimes it's a bit more complicated than that but I can't deny that following the old environmental credo is very helpful for my current career. It also fits nicely into the sharing ethic of Class and you will always find teachers swapping material, lesson plans, ideas and tips in the staff room (in between running to and from lessons of course).

All the best for the holiday season.

Pete :-)

A day in the life of an EFL teacher.

Hi everyone,

I was thinking the other day that what we do as ELF teachers is quite different to what many people do for their jobs so it might be interesting to hear about what a day in my teaching life is like. So here is the story of my day on Monday. This isn't quite a typical day as I've been helping to cover for a teacher who was on holiday but it gives you a feel for what I do.

So Monday. It's a full day of teaching that started with a 7am lesson and ran through to 7.30pm.


Here we are with an early morning start. This is the view looking east on the tram line along Ružinovska. You have to love that first haze of light at 6.30am.



Herlianska is my closest stop. Thankfully I only have to go along the line for about five minutes until it reaches the final stop. The company I teach at is just a few minutes walk from the little circular track section where the trams turn around. On the cards for today is additional practise for the students on the different uses of Past Simple (PS) and Present Perfect Simple (PPS). It can be a tough subject for students and I hope they're awake enough to take it all in.




Here's my company. They make cabling systems for datacentres and it's quite interesting to hear them discuss the new things they're working on and so on. I got a good history of the company in this lesson too. We worked through an article on the history of computers that they had to correct using PS or PPS, then I made them come up with a few statements about the history of their company. They did so admirably and I ended up leaving the lesson smiling broadly, which is the kind of incentive you need when it's 8am and you've only finished one of your nine lessons.






I had to post a couple of pictures of the underside of the main highway. The company is right next to it and you end with a bizzare concrete tunnel effect. It's particularly spooky when I first arrive, it's mostly empty of cars, there is little light, winter's chill in the air and sometimes some fog.




It's about 8.15am and I'm back on the tram. I just ride a few stops back to where I get on so I can transfer to a bus that goes to Aupark, a major shopping center. Across the highway opposite to Aupark is the Digital Park, where a number of businesses reside, including Lenovo, my teaching home for the next six hours.




Here's one of the conference rooms. I taught in this room from 1pm to 4.20pm on Monday afternoon and spent the morning (9am to 12.20pm) in a conference room in the other Digital Park building complex.

Today's lesson was a soft spot for me because it was primarily produced by me. We works as a team of teachers for Lenovo but each of us takes charge of planning one of the two lessons each week, then we discuss and get ideas to flesh out the skeleton at our meeting each Friday.



We had a request from students to review the tenses in English so they can see what they know and don't know. Most of the people we work with in the company have a decent level of English but we still have to work on finding a balance so that our lower level students get lots of practice but our higher students, many of whom have lived in the UK or US, can be challenged.

I spent six hours teaching the overview of the tenses on Monday. The lesson was primarily focused on teaching how to form the different tenses and what grammar was involved in that rather than trying to teach the uses of each. It was a big enough task even to practise and drill the forms let alone trying to teach much more. I told my students that if I could teach them all of the English tenses and uses of those tenses in one hour I'd be rich since I could charge 500 Euros a day and teach fluent English to people in a week.

Still, the lesson was a nice balance. The lower level students got to really spend some time putting together the forms and using the past participles for irregular verbs, which always throw people and higher students got to argue about the other tenses and get some time on the ones they don't know. Sometimes it got quite heated as the students would refute any use of those tenses and so I'd need to give them a situation where none of the other tenses fit. That is quite a challenge when you're doing it on the spot. Thankfully, with the number of times I taught the lesson, I got the hang of it by the end.

I also learned a lot about tenses and grammar for myself, which is one of the great things about EFL teaching.



Leaving the busy office area of Lenovo. My highlight was when one of my students said as she was we were about to end the class that she had figured out the use of the Future Perfect Continuous (a very tough tense for many learners). Go ahead, said I, hoping she had picked up on what we'd discussed as a group.

"My birthday is in April," she announced.
"Ok," said I, "how old will you be?"
"The same as the last ten plus years. In May I will have been having my twenty-fifth birthday for over ten years."

Priceless :-)

It's an example you can bet I'll be stealing for when I next teach this tense.



The shorter winter nights mean I get to see Aupark all lit up.



Looking back at Lenovo from the footbridge. One of my classrooms is right behind the O in the sign and on clear days it gives a great view over the city.



After finishing at Lenovo I hopped back on the buss to Class , picked up some material I'd left there and headed off to teach my private students. I teach a husband and a wife one after the other (they are different levels) and it's a good challenge. I'm particularly happy with the wife as she has gone from someone who claimed that she couldn't speak any English to someone who can hold a good conversation, is rounding off her knowledge of the fundamentals of English and has had her confidence with the language improve tenfold.

At 7.30 I say goodbye to the couple and head back home to spend some time with my wonderful girlfriend. It was a long day but I enjoyed it.

I hope you found the tale of an EFL day entertaining to read. If not, I hope you liked the pictures. If you didn't like any of it and still made it this far, then I salute your tenacity, if not your taste ;-)

All the best,

Pete

Moderate your language!

Hello everyone.

I have consistently been surprised by how much my mind must be switched on in this new career I've taken up. In my past work experience I'd never really had to concern myself with being so focused on exactly what I was doing while I was working. Perhaps that says more about the work I was doing than me per se, but now I'm enjoying the challenge of moderating my language.

By that I do not mean avoiding invectives, as we were all probably told a few times in our youth. Instead I'm talking about actually controlling the level and quantity of English that you use. As a native speaker of the language, it took me starting this work and having to study English daily before I realised just how complex, grammatically speaking, we make conversations without even considering it.

Let's take my first paragraph in this post as an example. As far as tenses go, I used Present Perfect, Past Perfect, Past Continuous, Present Simple and Present Continuous. That's five tenses in five lines and those lines also contain a scattering of modals and even a touch of Latin. Scary stuff!



When you start to teach people English, particularly at lower levels, it quickly hits you that you must make a real conscious effort to control the words and phrases that you use. I think my biggest reminder moment recently was speaking to a reasonably good low level student about past activities and all was going well. I asked if she went to Austria this summer on holiday and she replied in the negative. Without thinking I then asked her if she had ever been to Austria on holiday....and got a worried and confused expression from her. It seems that she has not experienced the have you ever present perfect before and so as far as she was concerned I might as well have spoken French to her for those few words.

Needless to say I quickly rephrased the question so that she understood and we could continue talking but it resonated with me and I try to keep it in mind whenever I'm teaching. This kind of language awareness is a cornerstone of the EFL profession and what we all do at Class but it's not yet a fully natural skill for me. I'm still learning but I enjoy the challenge and it makes me examine my own language closely on a daily basis.

For those of you who don't teach, I would simply offer the advice to think about what you are saying if you ever run into a non-native speaker who you need to communicate with. Be it a tourist, family friend or any other person, make sure that you really consider the kind of language you are using. Keep your phrases simple if the person is struggling and try not to add more complex language or grammar to explain your point (one of my big weaknesses, I'm an explainer by heart).


Control your language or moderator 'kitteh' will be on the case

Reading and country hopping - Amazon Kindle review

Books are wonderful things and reading is one of my greatest pleasures. My sister and I used to spend hours upon hours reading at home, in the car, on the bus, in bed, at school and even at the dinner table from time to time. Now the latter was undoubtedly bad manners but I think that our parents just loved that we were so interested in the written word. My interest in reading has not waned as I've gotten older but the time available for it has shrunk a bit with all of those wonderful adult things like jobs, commuting, housework, cooking and relationships.

Moving from the United States back to England, taking a CELTA course and then moving on to Slovakia is quite an endeavor, especially when one is limited to just two bags for all of one's possessions. With the exception of a 1936 copy of Homer's Odyssey from my grandmother, I didn't have space for any books in my luggage. In response to this, some of my family members pitched in to get my an Amazon Kindle E-Reader so I could have a lot of books contained within a single slim package.

For those who are interested in the technical aspects of the Kindle, I have the Kindle 3 Keyboard model with 3G wifi. I believe they now have a touchscreen version and I know that Amazon is steaming ahead on all fronts with a Kindle Fire tablet that looks set to rival Apple's Ipad. While the latter is not an E-reader per se, Amazon will undoubtedly offer all of its Kindle books on the Fire. This means you have several products to choose from if you're interested in reading books on an Amazon reader.

I also got the leather cover that includes a light for reading at night.


For me, there are three main things about the Kindle that stand out:
- The E-ink screen
- The wireless download of books
- The batter life.

The screen is the first part that will stand out when you get to try a Kindle. It is (on my model) black and white and is of the E-ink type. This screen produces really solid images that are crisp and clear to read, but don't change quickly enough for video or the like. In other words, it's ideal for an E-reader. I've frequently forgotten that I'm not reading a printed book when I use the screen. The words show up clearly, are easy to read (plus you can change font size) and there is no eyestrain so far. Now I'll admit that my longest reading stint was about six hours in one go when I was sucked into the gripping tales of Jules Verne so it's possible your eyes might get tired after more than that.....but then again you'd probably be tired of reading a regular book too. Pages are turned courtesy of two little buttons on the side of the Kindle. There is a forward and backward button on each side so it doesn't matter which hand(s) you hold it in when reading. The changing of a page isn't instant but is very fast. The E-Ink display basically winks and then shows the new page. It's about as fast as an average wink too, so no complaints from me.

The wireless downloading of books is something that I've really come to appreciate. Thus far I've managed to avoid spending any cash on the books by downloading classic literature that is available in the Kindle Store for free. The store is easy to navigate with the keyboard and little directional pad and once you've chosen a book to buy, it is downloaded and ready for use within thirty seconds or so. This is the part that blows me away and I imagine trying to explain to my grandmother, who loves books, that I can choose a new book, search for it, download it and then start reading it within thirty seconds even when I'm sitting in a small village in Southern Slovakia. I'm a big fan of the connection speed and you can also turn off the wireless if you want to save on battery.....

....but you probably won't need to. The battery life on the Kindle is measured not it hours or days, but weeks. I think I've charged my Kindle three times since I got it in June, so it's averaging a month between charges with quite active reading. Battery life is not something to complain about methinks.




So does the Kindle replace books? I don't think so. There is still something special about leafing through pages and seeing your books lined up on the shelves. And who can forget the wonderful smell of a new (or old) book when you flip through the pages?

On the other hand, I think what we're seeing here is the start of a move towards electronic reading in the same way that email has taken over from letter writing. It will never replace it simply because it is different but I think the advantages are there and will continue to grow as the technology improves.

In the end, I'm very happy with my Kindle. I am enjoying using it, I love being able to jump back to the exact page I was reading without losing my place, I like the convenience of downloading books wherever I am and I like the ease of use in general. If nothing else, it inspired me to read all of the following books and that can't be bad no matter what.

Since I got my Kindle I've read:
- Aesop's Fables
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Through the Looking Glass
- Heart of Darkness
- The Satyricon
- The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- Dracula
- The Art of War
- A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
- Twenty Thousand Leagues under the sea
- Around the world in 80 days
- The Importance of Being Earnest

You can't argue with classic literature available for free download ;-)

Pete