(TEFLology Podcast)The new episode of TEFLology is up now--LINK HERE.
Actually it's been up for about a week now, but I've been so insanely busy this past week that I couldn't get around to reviewing it until now.
The episode is divided into three parts:
Alan Waters,
Oral Proficiency Exams,
and Teresa May
I'll post some brief thoughts on each of these:
Alan Waters
I had never heard of Alan Waters before, but these guys are, as always, extremely well read in the field, and seemed to be intimately knowledgeable about Alan Waters, and his work, and the criticisms of his work. So it was an interesting discussion.
This kind of indepth discussion about linguistists and their theories is the the kind of thing I would like to see a lot more of on TEFLology.
Oral Proficiency Exams
Another interesting discussion.
Although this section was titled "Oral Proficiency Exams", the discussion diverged into the pros and cons of standardized tests in general.
The standardized test that I've become most familiar with over the years is the IELTS test.
Interestingly, I never heard of the IELTS test in Japan--it just never came up. (The English test of choice in Japan seemed to be the TOEFL.)
However, when I was in Australia, I heard about the IELTS test all the time. (It is the main test that Britain, Australia, and New Zealand use to judge English proficiency). And in Cambodia, I worked for an organization that was part owner of the IELTS test, and heavily promoted it. And in Vietnam (where I'm currently working) demand for the IELTS test is also very high.
I gained a certain amount of notoriety at my previous organization for being "the guy who passed up the Free IELTS examiner training". Our company was in need of IELTS examiners, and so they brought over a trainer and set up a one-time only IELTS examiner training session. I applied to for the session, and got accepted.
(Not everyone got accepted, by the way. As the TEFLologists mention on their podcast, these organizations do often have strict requirements about who can become examiners and who can not. )
However, at the time I was in the process of applying for another job, and was expecting I might leave the company within a few months. Not wanting to burn a future employment reference, I went out of my way to be very clear to my company that I might be leaving soon, and that it could be a waste of their resources to train me. Not surprisingly, they then declined to train me.
My co-workers all thought I was an idiot. And later, both of my managers later told me off the record that I had really blown it, and that I should have just kept my mouth shut and done the training, because an IELTS training certification would have been a huge advantage to me in my career. It was a certification I could take to any country, IELTS examiners are always in demand, and it would have made me a better IELTS teacher.
(One of them, I recall, used the exact words, "Now where you really fucked up was in not doing the IELTS training,..")
So, with that missed opportunity in the back of my mind, it was really interesting to hear the TELFology discussion about the pros and cons of being an examiner.
The TEFLology podcast also got into the pros and cons of standardized tests in general, and this is also something I have opinions on.
Although I never became an IELTS examiner, I now have years of experience teaching IELTS preparation courses, and have developed some opinions on what the defects of the test are.
It is marketed as an English proficiency test, but it is actually testing several other things besides English--test taking strategies, the ability to follow the rules of the test, skimming and scanning strategies, etc.
For the writing sections especially, students need to be familiar with the marking criteria of the test and the expected essay structure.
In many ways, the IELTS is also a general knowledge test, because pre-existing knowledge of the topics on the reading or listening sections is a huge advantage.
Also a lot of the Speaking Part 3 questions or Writing task 2 questions are culturally biased.
I've had it several times now in Cambodia and Vietnam where students were unable to answer a Writing Task 2 question because it didn't relate to their culture at all.
One example, one example of many, was this question; Successful sports professionals can earn a great deal more money than people in other important professions. Some people think this is fully justified while others think it is unfair. Discuss both of these views and give your own opinion.
This completely confused my Cambodian students because they didn't come from a country where people could make a living playing professional sports. So I had to explain to them that in Western countries often athletes are paid more than doctors and lawyers--that's just one example out of many of Writing Task 2 questions that have a cultural bias.
Also, in training for the IELTS, students often pick up a lot of bad writing habits. For example, they are taught to use as many synonyms as possible to increase their vocabulary score, and also to try to use complex sentences that they often don't have full control of.
In my previous school, I used to teach an academic writing course that the students entered after having completed an IELTS training course. I had to spend a lot of time trying to get them to unlearn everything they had learned during their IELTS training.
"Write short simple sentences," I had to tell them. "Don't change your synonyms every sentence. Using the same words repeatedly in your essay is not a bad thing. It helps your reader to follow what you are talking about. Basically, forget everything you learned while studying IELTS."
...[Oh wow, I've really gone off here, haven't I? I've got a lot more complaints about the IELTS, and I haven't even gotten started on the Cambridge Tests, which I also have a lot of complaints about, but perhaps I'll just save this all for another post. I'm going to move on to the next subject.]
Teresa May
An interesting discussion about the change in Britain's immigration policy regarding student visas.
I don't know anything about the British situation, but during my time in Australia, I did observe the tension between the foreign students and the xenophobia. On the one hand, the Australian economy is heavily dependent on foreign students coming to study in Australian universities. On the other hand, Anglo-Australians are constantly worried that they are losing their culture to foreigners.
....I've got a lot of thoughts on this, based on what I observed in Australia...but I think I'll save all that for another post as well. I think I'm going to try to keep these TEFLology podcast reviews short and sweet, and not use them as a dumping ground for all my thoughts about every subject that they touch on. I've already been writing too much here on this post already.
But the short version is, I agree with the TEFLologists on their criticism of Teresa May's new policy. Foreign students, who dump large amount of money into the economy and prop up the universitys, are the most desirable type of immigrant. It serves absolutely no purpose to limit their number, other than just xenophobia.
Final Thoughts
One of my favorite episodes of TEFLology so far. All 3 sections were very interesting.
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