Episode 82: Thomas Farrell

(TEFLology Podcast)

TEFL Interviews 45: Ema Ushioda on Motivation

(TEFLology Podcast)

Episode 81: Sandra Savignon, Fun, and Filipino Teachers in China

(TEFLology Podcast)

Episode 80: Language Policy, Frederic G. Cassidy, and Duoethnographic Projects

(TEFLology Podcast)

TEFL Interviews 44: Simon Borg on Teacher Cognition & Research

(TEFLology Podcast)

Episode 79: Polyglots, Andy Kirkpatrick, and English Dominance

(TEFLology Podcast)

Episode 78: World Cup, Jim Cummins, and Critical Thinking

(TEFLology Podcast)



* Fascinating.  I had no idea that Ned Ludd wasn't a real person.  But I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it turns out this is correct.

* Regarding the question of whether Google Translate is going to put us all out of business---I've been teaching in the developing world (Cambodia, Vietnam) and the big reason people learn English here is because they want to be able to study abroad.  I think this is something that Google Translate is going to be able to replace anytime soon.

* Critical Thinking--I agree with the TEFLologists completely on this.  For years now, I've also been annoyed by the use of "Critical Thinking" as a buzzword in ELT.  For precisely the reasons the TEFLologists mention.  Not only in Japan, but also in Cambodia and Vietnam, the buzzword is often used in ELT to imply that Asians have no critical thinking skills, and need to be taught critical thinking by their Western English teacher.

TEFL Interviews 43: Victoria Clark on Language Assessment

(TEFLology Podcast)

TEFLology: Episode 77: SEN, Regional English, and Thomas M. Paikeday

(TEFLology Podcast)



Tangentially related to the question of Chomsky and the ideal native speaker: The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker and The Language Myth by Vyvyan Evans.

Also mentioned in this episode is David Crystal.

TEFLology: Episodes 66-76 (And an End to Regular Reviews)

(TEFLology Podcast)

TEFLology Episodes 66-76



So, over the last few months, I've gotten super behind on my regular TEFLology reviews.  (I'm currently about 10 months behind).  Which indicates to me that perhaps its time to end this little project.
In fact, in retrospect, perhaps it was never that great of an idea to begin with.
I mean, sure, LISTENING to TEFLology is a great idea.  (I've picked up loads of interesting little tidbits from their podcasts.)  But REVIEWING every episode?  What's the point of that?
I had been telling myself that it was for my own professional development.  But upon reflection, perhaps I was lying to myself. I think the real reason I wanted to keep doing regular reviews was because of my obsessive completist urges.  Once I had posted a review of the Podcast, it bothered me that my review was incomplete, because the podcast was still ongoing.

But writing up a review of every episode is time consuming.  (The actual reviews are usually pretty short, but I sometimes waste a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to write.  And I often listen to each episode several times over to make sure I catch everything.)
I've decided it would be better for my professional development if I would listen wider rather than deeper--that is, instead of going over every episode of TEFLology in detail, I want to start listening to some of the other TEFL or linguistic related podcasts.  (My immediate next step is to catch up on The Ling Space).

However, I still want to help promote the TEFLology podcast, so here's the new plan going forward: I'm going to link to each new episode from this blog.  I'm not going to write reviews, but if I have anything to say, I may add one or two short sentences.  But that'll be it.

*********************************************

While I'm talking about this, I might as well get something else off of my chest.  The truth is, since I posted my original review two years ago, I've been feeling guilty that I may have been too critical of TEFLology.  And I may have said some things that were too harsh.

The line between honest criticism and bad manners has always been in debate.  But it seems to be generally accepted that you are allowed to harshly criticize the professionals.
For example, in my book reviews, I will often have harsh criticism about an author's writing style.  Despite the fact that I myself could never write a novel.  But they are published professionals, so I'm allowed to be super critical.

I've never been sure how to categorize TEFLology.  Are they professionals, or are they colleagues?

To the extent I was openly critical, it was because I viewed myself as criticizing professionals.  (If the rule of criticism is: "You can punch up, but you can never punch down."--then I viewed myself as punching up.)

But I've since had occasion to feel guilty that my criticisms were were uncollegial.

(I'm probably making too much of this.  I've poured out thousands of words critiquing TEFLology over the past couple years, and I've had mostly positive things to say about this podcast, and very few negative things to say.  But to the extent I was occasionally critical, if I crossed the line even once, then I apologize.)

*******************

Below are my quick fire comments on all the episodes I missed the past 10 months.  (These kind of short quick-fire comments are the kind of commentary I'm going to be doing in the future.)

Episode 66:
* Research Relevance for Teachers-- I've got so many thoughts on this, I don't know where to begin.  So I think I'll just skip it.
One quick observation; this debate is nothing new.  In Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition way back in 1982, Krashen was already complaining about the relationship between researchers and teachers.
* Textbooks--another subject that I've got a lot to say about.  The short version is that I hate textbooks, but at the same time I have to admit I'd be frightened of doing a course without a textbook.

Episode 67
Cambridge Main Suite Exams, Mental Health, and The Committee of 12--all interesting subjects.  I have nothing to add.

TEFL Interviews 34: Mario Saraceni 
Another great interview.  There was a LOT of interesting stuff in here to chew on.
* Much of this, particularly the discussion of Braj Kachu and the circles of English, overlapped with the book I read recently: Teaching English as an International Language by Sandra Lee McKay.
* I thought it was interesting when Saraceni said that the moment you classify different varieties of English, you open the door for someone else to rank them.  I hadn't thought of that before.

Episode 68
* I don't really know that much about John Dewey, but his name comes up a lot.  (Chomsky often references him.)
* I actually had some interaction with the author they mention--Neomy Storch.  At the University of Melbourne she helped guide me through some of the paperwork necessary for filing my thesis.  She also guest lectured once in our class on collaboration.

Episode 69
* Learning Styles--I've been skeptical of learning styles ever since I saw Russ Mayne's presentation on it.  Link to Russ Mayne's blog HERE.  (And to give credit where credit is due, I found out about Russ Mayne via TEFLology.)
* Steven Pinker got mentioned in this episode--my review of his book HERE.
* The British Council--this was interesting.

TEFL Interviews 35: Steve Mann 
* Interesting. I don't have any particular comments, but it was interesting.

TEFL Interviews 36: Reiko Yoshihara and 37: Hugh Starkey
I was intrigued by both of these interviews in which the participants talked about bringing political ideologies (feminist pedagogy and human rights education respectively) into the ESL classroom.
As someone who was once an idealist, I find this attractive.
In my 20s, I tried to integrate peace education into my ESL classrooms.
At a JET conference, I led a workshop on Educating Global Issues in the Classroom.
In my adult English class, I used “Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism" as a the set textbook.  I talked about that in this post here. 
And my interest in applying for the Peace Boat (even though my application was ultimately unsuccessful) was motivated by the same concern.

BUT... over the years I've also developed concerns about this mixing ideology and ESL.
Firstly because ESL often involves a native-speaker going abroad to teach in a foreign country.  (It's dangerous enough to politicize the classroom when you're in your own country, but it becomes much more problematic when you do so in a foreign classroom.)  There's a real danger that foreigners too quickly develop a missionary zeal.  Their primary concern (especially in their first year in the country) should be to listen and try to understand, not try to preach.
Secondly, ESL often involves adult education.  And teaching adults about human rights, or feminism, or peace education, can easily become patronizing.  There's a danger that the 23 year-old ESL teacher may think that they are morally entitled to teach 50 year old Japanese people people about human rights simply by virtue of being their language teacher.  (At least I was guilty of this in my youth.  And I know plenty of colleagues who have also been guilty of this.)

TEFL Interviews 38: Forum Discussion
A really interesting discussion.  My only complaint is that it was way too short.  (I wanted it to go on longer).  But I imagine there must have been some sort of external time constraints with the conference schedule.
Some of the concerns I brought up above were addressed a little bit.

Episode 70
* Banning English--an interesting little piece (I hadn't heard the news about Iran).  The relationship between teaching English and Western values is an interesting discussion, but it's too complex for me to get into here.
* Dynamic Language--I don't really know anything about this, so no comment.  Interesting to hear that Diane Larsen-Freeman is involved in this, though.
* I didn't know about Randolph Quirk, so this was really interesting.  Interesting to hear about his connection with David Crystal.
Like the TEFLologist, I had heard somewhere about the Quirk-Kachru debates (although I didn't know who Quirk was at the time.)  I don't remember where I heard about these debates.  Possibly a previous TEFLology episode?  (Did they cover this before?) Or possibly it was in Teaching English as an International Language by Sandra Lee McKay.

Episode 71
* Stephen Bax--I knew nothing about Stephen Bax, so I found this section very informative.
* Latin--As someone who studied Latin in high school and college (video HERE), and as someone who is still interested in ancient Roman history, I have a fair amount of sentimentality towards the subject.  But I'd be hard pressed to come up with a good practical reason why anyone else should study it.
Also--I studied Latin for 4 years (including two semesters at college) and I never got to the point where I could read authentic Latin literature.  By the last semester, there were some authentic Latin texts in the coursebook, but me and my classmates couldn't make heads or tails of it without the professor explaining everything to us.  So unless you study the language for years and years, you can forget about reading authentic historical texts.
* Negotiation of Meaing--I'm familiar with Mike Long's work on this (via Long being summarized in other authors), but it was interesting to hear the TEFLologists' much more expansive discussion.

TEFL Interviews 39: Gabriel Diaz-Maggioli
Another fascinating interview.  I don't have anything to add.

Episode 72
* Richard Schmidt--I've never read Schmidt directly, but his noticing hypothesis comes up in many of the books I've read.  Most recently in Uncovering Grammar by Scott Thornbury
On language teachers and language learning... I did a good job learning Japanese, but I've done a horrible job with both Cambodian and Vietnamese.
* CAMTESOL--ah, good old CAMTESOL.  I used to go to this every year when I worked in Cambodia.
I won't get into all my thoughts on CAMTESOL here.  Other than to say that I actually like the 30 minute time limit.  (Just when you're starting to get bored, the session ends.  And you can fit much more sessions in per day).
* PHD--this depresses me, to be honest.  I know I probably need a PHD to get job security in this field, but I don't think I have it in me to do one.  The Master's degree just about killed me.  I don't think there's any way I could do a PHD.

Episode 73
* N.S. Prabhu--N.S. Prabhu and the Bangalore Project is something that is often mentioned in the books I've read, but I really knew nothing about it.  So this section was interesting.  (Like one of the TEFLologists, I had also had this confused with the Madras Snowball).
When I was reading Task-Based Learning by Jane Willis, Jane Willis briefly mentioned Prabhu.  So in the bookclub Facebook page, I recommended this TEFLology episode to my Bookclub--as I mentioned in the notes.

TEFL Interviews 40: John Fanselow on Teacher Observation
I've never heard of John Faneslow before, but he is on this episode, and then he pops up two episodes later in another interview.  He's a very interesting guy.  I agree with him on some stuff, and I disagree with him on other stuff, and I'll leave it there.

Episode 74: Research Trends, Otto Jespersen, and Action Research
All interesting topics.  I don't have anything to add.

Episode 75: ExcitELT (Live)
There's a lot of interesting stuff in here.  I don't have much to add.
The comment that resonated with me the most is John Faneslow's comment about how we as a profession read too many books. I've noticed this myself.  I tend to view my own professional development in terms of how many books I can read.  But I've noticed there are a lot of teachers in my staffroom who are much less well-read than I am, but who are much better teachers.  Because they have been working on picking up practical classroom activities instead of reading books.

TEFL Interviews 41: Gary Barkhuizen on Language Teacher Identity
An interesting interview.  I have nothing to add.

BONUS! TEFL Interview 42: Eric Hawkinson on Augmented and Virtual Realities
Again, I don't really have anything to add.  But this was interesting.

Episode 76
* Linguistic Complexity: This was interesting.  I've been hearing people mention this theory in connection with Diane Larsen-Freeman.  But I had no idea what it was.
* Linguaphobia: I wonder if I have a case of Linguaphobia.  I did alright learning Japanese, but I've been doing terrible learning Vietnamese.  In part because mastering all those tones scare me, so I often give up.
The TEFLologists also discuss the second definition of Linguaphobia, which is connected to Xenophobia.  This has been in the news a lot lately, but it's actually old news.  See this paper I did back in 2010.
*  M.A.K Halliday--This was interesting.  I had heard the name of M.A.K Halliday before, but had no idea about his work.
The TEFLologists admit to being a bit out of their depth on this one, and I'd have to include myself in that category as well.  But what they discuss seems to broadly relate to The Language Instinct and The Language Myth.

TEFLology: TEFL Interviews 33: Masaki Oda on ELF Education

(TEFLology Podcast)

This episode came out on September 13.

Oh, wow, I've really gotten behind on these TEFLology reviews.

And... I hate to say it, but for the next couple months I'm probably going to get even more behind.
The next couple months I'm going to be quite busy both personally and professionally.
And in terms of this blog, I've got a number of other blogging projects that I'm behind on.
So, on all fronts, I'm going to busy.

I'm going to keep chipping away at my TEFLology backlog, however, and perhaps eventually I'll get caught up.

...or maybe I won't.  But who cares?  Listening to these podcasts, and reflecting on them, is good for my professional development.  So even if I remain several months behind, it will still be good for me.

Anyway, the review.

I'd never heard of Masaki Oda before, but he definitely sounds like an interesting guy.  And it sounds like he's had an interesting journey in his evolving relationship to English as a lingua franca.
(Much of what he talks about in this interview relates directly to a book I recently finished reading: Teaching English as an International Language).

That being said, the problem with talking about these issues in terms of a personal journey is that that the issues get a bit muddled.

In Teaching English as an International Language by Sandra Lee McKay (and the work of Jennifer Jenkins), much is made of how intelligibility should be the goal (as opposed to native-speaker standards of grammar and vocabulary)
However, it sounds like for Masaki Oda, one of his biggest complaints was that he wasn't intelligible. One of the big turning points for him was when his professor didn't understand a question he asked when he was studying in the U.S.
So it's a bit unclear from this story what Masaki Oda wants as the standard for English as a lingua franca.
Also, since the incident occured while Masaki Oda was studying inside of the U.S., it's also a bit unclear to me if this was a lingua franca situation, or a situation where we might expect native speaker standards to apply.

I suspect that if Masaki Oda would lay out his thoughts in more delineated way, they would probably be perfectly logical and reasonable.  But I felt like his rambling story about his personal journey didn't clearly convey his ideas to me.
That being said... it was interesting for what it was.  It was an interesting little insight into what it's like to be an international student at a U.S. University.

Other Notes
* I had to take a phonetics and phonology course for my MA TESOL degree.  For the take-home exam, we had to listen to samples of audio speech, and transcribe it using the phonetic symbols.
We actually thought it was a bit unfair, because catching all the ellipses and elisions seemed to rely more on our audio capabilities, and less on how well we had mastered the information content of the course.
Interesting that Masaki Oda takes the opposite view.  He thinks it was unfair that his phonetics test relied on his knowledge of theory, and not on his audio capabilities.

TEFLology: Episode 65: Peter Strevens, English Learning Ventures, and Post-human Applied Linguistics

(TEFLology Podcast)

Agh! Each week I keep promising to catch up on my TEFLology reviews, and instead each week I just get further and further behind.  Apologies.  (I say "apologies" as if anyone cared.  I know that literally the only person in the world who cares if this blog stays up to date is me.  So apologies to myself, I guess.)

Anyway, I've been crazy busy with work, and life, and everything.  But I still have ambitions of catching up on all the episodes, and returning to timely reviews.

This episode is from all the way back on August 30th.  You can listen to it here.
I don't have a lot to say about this episode, so I'll just make some brief comments.

Peter Strevens--I didn't know anything about Peter Strevens, but it was interesting to find out.2
English Learning Ventures: I'm not sure this is the first time I've heard about the idea of practicing English by going out on expeditions.  But I really like the idea.  (Especially as I've been trapped in classrooms in the middle of the city for far too long, the idea of English class on a mountain hike sounds really, really nice).

About the drama: The TEFLologists mention that these kind of dramas for English learning purposes have been done before.
Indeed, I use to see them on Japanese TV way back in 2002.
I couldn't tell you the name of the drama.  And I never really watched it all that carefully.  (I would usually just catch bits and pieces of it while I was flipping channels).  But one I remember was some sort of Easy English drama about a soccer team.  It seemed to be produced in Britain (all the actors were British) but that's about all I know about it.
And I think there were a couple other similar dramas on the same station.

I think the idea of a graded television drama is a great idea.  But unfortunately it doesn't always work well in practice.  At least not as compelling input.

The TESOL industry produces a lot of graded books, audio recordings, and videos, but unfortunately the talent behind the writing and production never seems to equal the talent that Hollywood attracts.  So it doesn't really catch the learners interest the way Hollywood movies do.
In my classes, I find it preferable to just use authentic Hollywood movies that the students are already interested in, and then just grade the task instead of grading the text.  And I feel like I've had good results in getting my students to learn from it.

Post-human Applied Linguistics--I don't really have anything to say about this, largely because it's so far outside of my expertise.
At least some of the ideas sound like they might be similar to what I'm currently reading in The Language Myth, but I'll have to wait until I finish that book to say for certain.

TEFLology Episode 64: ELF Revisited, L.A. Hill, and Interview Voices

(TEFLology Podcasts)

You can listen to episode 64 here. 

I'm really behind in my reviewing now.  This episode came out close to 2 months ago now.  (I'm behind by 4 episodes now.)

But, better late then never, here's my review.

Even though I'm just getting around to writing the review now, I actually listened to this episode several weeks ago.  (And I linked to it in my review of Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers). 

Part of the reason I procrastinated on writing this review is that they touch on a lot of juicy topics, and there's a lot to say about them. 
There's a temptation, therefore, to gush forth with all my thoughts on each of these topics, and spend 3 hours writing this review.

I'm going to try to resist that temptation, and just limit myself to some very brief sentences.

ELF
* Boy, there's a lot to say on this topic if you really wanted to get into it.  And as the TEFLologists themselves admit, this isn't even the first time that they've broached this topic.  (This was one of their first ever episodes.  And also it relates to the interview they did with Jennifer Jenkins recently). 

L.A. Hill
As coincidence would have it, these two topics are related, since the discussion on L.A. Hill doubled back to more discussion on ELF.

And then the discussion also related to Krashen.

Again, I have lots of thoughts on this, but I'll try to keep my comments brief.

* I've noticed myself through my own personal experience that most people in Asia are using English as a lingua franca to communicate with other people in Asia, rather than with Americans.  For example, when I was in Japan, I was asked to teach extra English classes to prepare some junior high school students to communicate with Koreans.

* In Vietnam, I've also noticed how the current boom in English schools is driven exclusively by the belief that English ability will lead to better jobs.  The focus is almost exclusively on passing IELTS exams, and very little on learning English for cultural enrichment reasons. 
Which I find frustrating.  But this is the way things are. 

* I've used similar information about the differences between older students and younger students in my presentation about comprehensible input for young learners.  Although in my case, I took the information from Lourdes Ortega's book, and not from Krashen. 

* I've double checked the reference section in the Krashen books I have, and I couldn't find any reference to L.A. Hill.  (But who knows, Hill could be referenced in a book I don't have.)

Interview Voices
* The high pitched "telephone voice" that woman in Japan are supposed to use is something I've also observed.  (Everyone who has lived in Japan has observed this.)  It's endlessly fascinating to outsiders.  I've even read articles which analyze all the times women in Japan are supposed to talk in high pitched voices, and all the times they're not.  (Example: Japanese female broadcasters are supposed to talk in high pitches for talk shows, but not for serious news reporting.)

TEFLology: TEFL Interviews 32: Chia Suan Chong & Mike Hogan on International Communication

(TEFLology Podcast)

This episode is available on the TEFLology website HERE.

It can also be listened to on the tweet embedded below:

Listen to our latest interview with Chia Suan Chong @chiasuan and Mike Hogan @irishmikeh right here https://t.co/QyA3tZvsNq via @acast

— TEFLology Podcast (@TEFLology) August 2, 2017

I have, once again, managed to fall behind in my reviewing.
This episode was over a month ago, and since then TEFLology has uploaded 2 new episodes onto their website.  So I'm 3 episodes behind at the moment.  But hopefully I'll catch up soon.

This is  another excellent interview episode.  (TEFLology has yet to do a bad interview episode).  Chia Suan Chong and Mike Hogan are both charismatic speakers, so the conversation is interesting, and easy to listen to.

There were some interesting insights into the nature of Business English as well.

Like the TEFLology interviewer, in the past I've been assigned to teach Business English courses, and I felt like I've taught the whole course without having a clear idea of what I was doing.

I'm not even entirely sure what the difference is between Business English classes and General English classes, except that my best guess was that in Business English classes I focus more on business vocabulary.

Interesting, then, to hear Chia Suan Chong assert that Business English is NOT about teaching jargon.
She says that the clients know the business jargon better than you do, so there's no point in teaching it to them.  And I have to admit that in my own experience, this has often been true.

She and Mike Hogan talk in general terms about what Business English is in a positive sense, although I felt like it was all a bit general, and I didn't get much out of it in concrete terms.   (i.e. if I had to teach a Business  English class tomorrow, I still wouldn't know how to plan it.)

I'm wondering though... having just finished reading Implementing the Lexical Approach, perhaps Business English would be best taught  by teaching useful phrases related to business situations--not business jargon (like the names of stocks, or something), but useful phrases for communicating in a meeting, or writing an email.

I suspect that was what Chia Suan Chong was alluding to, when she talked about how Business English should be about improving the students' communicative power.

Other Notes:
* As much as I love to complain about the assigned textbooks in my classes, I'm also reluctant to skip any materials.  I've got a completist personality, and if I skip over a lesson, I always feel like my students are missing out on something.  So, as a consequence, I have the bad habit of trying to do all the lessons in my assigned textbook, even if I know they are not useful for my learners.
Interesting, then, to hear Mike Hogan talk about his experience textbook writing, and say that textbook writers are fully aware that not all the lessons in the book will be appropriate for all learners, and so they try to include enough material that teachers can pick and choose what is appropriate for their learners.
It's somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow for someone like me, who likes the feeling of completeness I get when my students complete all the lessons in a unit.  But it does appear to be the way the textbooks are designed to be used.

....although, I've been chatting about this with other teachers in my staff room, and a lot of teachers are under the impression that they are supposed to cover everything in the textbook.  (i.e., it's not just me who was confused about.)  It seems that the textbook industry has done a very poor job of communicating to teachers about how the textbooks are actually supposed to be used.

TEFLology Episode 63: Dictionary Update, Sustained Learning, and Pāṇini

(TEFLology Podcast)

New episode of TEFLology podcast is online here.

I don't really have a lot to say about this episode, so I'll keep my comments brief.

Dictionary Update section:
* I don't have anything to add, but it was interesting, and I appreciate that this podcast keeps me informed about news items like this that I would otherwise miss.

Sustained Learning Section:
* As with the presenter, I also experience some frustration about the apparent lack of progress my students are making, and I often suspect they could be making more progress if they were studying more outside of class.
...But, there's also a question of how motivated the students are, and how much time they have to study.
I tend to think that learning English is the most important thing in their lives, because I'm an English teacher.  But I have to accept that for them it's just one of many commitments.
Plus, my own track record of studying languages is terrible, so I'd be a hypocrite to criticize them too much.  (I did learn a lot of Japanese, but I've learned no Cambodian and almost no Vietnamese).

Over the years, I've gone back and forth on this a lot in my head.  But since most of the points on either side of the conversation were already mentioned in the discussion on the podcast, I won't duplicate it all here.  The TEFLologists already did a good job of discussing everything.

At the moment, what I do is I spend the first day of the term going over activities the students can do to study English at home.  And then I just wash my hands of it for the rest of the term, and assume that the majority of them won't study English at home, and I have to plan my class objectives accordingly.
I call it the: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" philosophy of English teaching.  A tiny minority of my students will be motivated enough to reach proficiency in English, the rest won't, and I just have to accept that.

Panini Section
* I knew nothing about this, but it was interesting.  The assertion that the language followed logical and predictable rules reminded me slightly of The English Verb by Michael Lewis, which I just recently finished re-reading.

TEFLology Episode 62: English-only Policies, Leo Van Lier, and ELTons 2017

(TEFLology Podcast)

New episode of TEFLology Podcast HERE.

The episode was on English-only Policies, Leo Van Lier, and ELTons 2017

My thoughts briefly below.

English-Only Policies
If nothing else, this is an interesting topic.  There's lots to be said on this, and it's something every English teacher has an opinion on.

However, in this podcast it was a little bit unclear to me what the exact parameters of the discussion are.  Are we talking about whether or not the teacher should teach only in English?  Or are we talking about whether the students should be forced to speak only in English?  It seemed to me that at times the discussion was jumping back and forth between the two issues.

I'll make a couple comments on both issues:
Point 1
* During my time in Japan, I occasionally taught some of my lessons in Japanese.  I couldn't do that now, mind you (after several years out of the country, I'm not nearly as proficient in Japanese as I used to be) but I was confident enough in my Japanese at the time that I could pull it off.
Now, however, I'm living in Vietnam, and I couldn't ever imagine teaching in Vietnamese.  The pronunciation and tones of this language are so difficult that I can barely make myself understood when I'm ordering a cup of coffee.
I suppose in theory all languages are learnable.  (The U.S. State Department successfully trains people in every language).  But not all languages have an equal difficulty level for a native English speaker.
I thought about this when the TEFLologists cited opinions from people who think that the preference for teaching in English-Only is just because English-speakers are too lazy to learn other languages.  Possibly this is true in countries France, Spain, Germany, and Japan, but I wonder how many of these researchers spent time in Vietnam.
Or am I just making excuses for myself?

Point 2
* Enforcing an English-Only classroom is something I've gone back and forth on over the years.  I have the bad habit of being influenced by whoever I've read last.
At my previous job in Cambodia, I was under the influence of a number of authors who said that students should be able to speak their L1 in the class--for ideological reasons (it's their right to speak their native language) as well as pedagogical reasons (discussing new grammar and vocabulary in their L1 can help them better understand the new language.)

However, when I started a new job in Vietnam, I got marked down on a formal observation by my supervisor because their was too much Vietnamese being spoken in my classroom.
"Now I know what you're thinking," he told me afterwards.  "They're adults, they're paying their own money to come here, if they want to speak Vietnamese, that's their choice."
"Exactly," I said.
"But," he said, "the students can benefit more if you encourage an English-Only environment, and in the end their appreciate the fact that you pushed them."
I countered by citing some of the authors who said that the use of L1 was beneficial in the classroom, and in the end we agreed on a compromise.  I would experiment with an English-Only policy in my classroom just to see how it went.
So, based on my supervisor's suggestion, I started a system where my adult students were fined a small amount of money for speaking Vietnamese.  In my children's classes, they lost good behavior stars for speaking Vietnamese.
And I've got to say, I've noticed a huge improvement in the English ability of my classes.

In fact, I think I've become a convert.

Every book I've read on ELT says that there's benefits from increased input, interaction, and fluency practice.  All of those happen more in an English-Only environment.
For example, in my children's classes, I've noticed that if I force all the interactions to take place in English-Only, at first only the higher level students will be able to perform certain functions.  But gradually the lower-level students will pick up on the words that the higher level students are using, and start using them as well.
If these interactions were happening in Vietnamese, all this peer-to-peer input would be lost.

...I've got a lot more opinions on this, but I'm going to cut myself off here.  The goal with these TEFLology reviews is just to write short mini-reviews.  I'm going to avoid the temptation to empty out everything in my brain and write epic essays about all the topics that this podcast touched on.
With that in mind, I'll try to be brief on these next two topics.

Leo Van Lier
I never heard of him before, but it was interesting.

ELTons 2017
I don't have any strong opinions on this either, but I like these ELT news segments.   I like the way the TEFLology podcast helps to keep me in the loop on what's happening in the broader ELT world.

TEFLology Podcast: TEFL Interviews 31: Jennifer Jenkins on Global Englishes

(TEFLology Podcast)

New episode of TEFLology HERE.

I mentioned in my original review that TEFLology has somehow managed to get access to some of the biggest names in the field for their interview series.

This is yet another huge name.

Jennifer Jenkins is one of the most controversial names in English language teaching.

To quote from her entry in Wikipedia:

When Jenkins' book Phonology Of English As An International Language was published in 2000 it was seen as potentially controversial[3] and stimulated debate about the prevailing emphasis on "correct" accents in teaching English as a foreign language, and Jenkins' idea of a "Lingua Franca Core". This is a core list of pronunciation features which ELF speakers need to master in order to be mutually intelligible.[5] Jenkins' idea that English is "an international language and as such no longer the preserve of its native speakers" has been seen as a challenge to teachers of English.[6]

I first heard about Jennifer Jenkins while doing my Masters in Applied Linguistics.  The professor assigned us one of Jenkins's articles.  I don't remember anything from the article now, but I remember a little bit of the discussion.
At first the professor stayed neutral and allowed the class to debate the issue, but when the class started to turn against Jenkins's ideas, the professor joined in with the condemnation.  The professor said that not enough research had been done to justify the selection of phonemes that Jennifer Jenkins had chosen for the Lingua Franca Core.

Jennifer Jenkins's name has also popped up in some of the books I've read on TESOL  and I've mentioned her name before in one of my book reviews.

Unfortunately, my memory has grown foggy, and I've forgotten exactly what Jennifer Jenkins was proposing in concrete terms--if indeed I ever knew in the first place.

Which phonemes was Jenkins proposing as part of the Lingua Franca Core?  Was she proposing it as a receptive model, or a productive model?  I don't remember.

Much of the interview consisted of Jennifer Jenkins just responding to her critics, which left me slightly confused as to what she exactly was proposing.

It might have been nice to first bring the listener up to speed on what exactly Jennifer Jenkins's theories are, and then listen to Jennifer Jenkins respond to her critics.

I understand that the interview subject herself probably doesn't have the time or patience to sit through a recap of her work, but maybe theTEFLologists could have recorded a separate episode of themselves talking about her theories, and then aired that as kind of a bonus episode that could also have served as an introduction to this interview.

If the TEFLologists will forgive the unsolicited advice, this is my suggestion for the next time they get access to another really big name.  Maybe after they record the interview, but before they release it, it would be cool to do an extra episode of themselves talking about the interview subject to get all the listeners up to speed.  They could release it as a separate episode, but it could also function as an introduction to the interview.

All that being said, I still enjoyed the interview with Jennifer Jenkins for what it was.  She was very articulate.   And I thought she was very perceptive on exactly why her theories have had such an emotional reaction.

TEFLology Podcast: Episode 61: Job Interviews, Eilhard Lubinus, and Conference Review

(TEFLology Podcast)

The new episode of TEFLology is available HERE.

(Well, newish.   I'm a week late writing this up.)

I'll post my thoughts on the various topics below:

Conference Review
* I enjoy it when TEFLology does their various conference reviews.  I feel like it's a way I can keep in the loop of what is topical, despite not making it to any conferences myself.

* The part on colorblindness is interesting.  Especially because at my school, we're encouraged to use color in our PowerPoint presentations to highlight different  language.  (e.g. put all the auxiliaries in one color, and all the main verbs in another color).  I never thought about students with colorblindness.
But what to do about it?  Does this mean we shouldn't use color in our presentations?  It seems like a shame to give that up.
Perhaps the best answer is to use color, but also to be aware that some students might be colorblind, and highlight the information verbally as well as visually.

* Interesting discussion on self-access centers.  (One of my old co-workers from the Cambodian days was really big on self access centers.  I wonder what he would think of this.)

*The TEFLologists reference one of their previous episodes with Hayo Reinders

* Another interesting person to read on this subject is Freddie deBoer, who routinely writes about how virtually learning does not work.
See some of his recent posts on the subject: you learn by being taught and Study of the Week: Of Course Virtual K-12 Schools Don’t Work

Eilhard Lubinus
* This section mentioned The Game by Neil Strauss, a book that I've reviewed before on this blog. (Although to be perfectly honest, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I've read this book.  And it sounds like the TEFLologists are as well.)

Job Interviews
* Some interesting stuff here.
I've certainly had mixed results in my own job interviews.  (I suppose everyone has.)  Although in my own defense, I like to think I completely nailed this video job interview.

* At one point, a TEFLologists mentions interviewing for a major language school in Japan that subsequently went out of business.  I wonder if he's talking about one of my former employers (a certain major language school in Japan that went out of business).

TEFLology Podcast: Episode 60: Young Learner Materials with the ‘Let’s Go’ Authors

(TEFLology Podcast)

I'm still playing catch-up with the TEFLology podcast.  This episode was from a couple weeks ago now.

You can listen to it here.

This episode was an interview with three author's of a children's textbook series.

Much of the interview focused on the life of the authors, or the changes in the publishing industry over time, and so it's not all immediately useful for the daily English teacher.

However, it's interesting for what it is.
I enjoyed the mini-biographies.  (It has a human interest element, and perhaps being a TEFL teacher, I take an interest in the lives of other TEFL teachers.)

Other Notes:
* At one point they mention how important it is to create materials that are easy to understand, so that it can be used by a wide-variety of teachers.
In my own case, I've discovered this is actually easier said than done.  When I try to share my own materials with other teachers, I often discover that many of them have no idea what to do with my worksheets.
It all makes sense to me in my own head, but it's not always clear to another person.

* I started creating an archive of my material a couple years back with the hope that this would cut down on my preparation time in the future.
Unfortunately, I've discovered that very little of it transfers smoothly from one class to another.  Worksheets that I designed with a particular set of learners in mind do not always transfer to another set of learners, and often I find I keep having to adapt my material, or re-write it entirely.
This is another point they mention in the interview.

TEFLology Podcast: TEFL Interviews 31: John Kullman on Critical Issues in ELT Textbooks

(TEFLology Podcast)

I'm still playing catch-up on the TEFLology podcast.
This interview is all the way back from May 10.  (Listen to it here).

But, better late than never, here are my thoughts:

* Another excellent interview episode.
In the past, I've been critical of some of the regular episodes of TEFLology.  (Which I view as hit-and-miss.)  But they've never done a bad interview episode yet, and at this point they're beginning to build up an impressive archive.
31 interview episodes is a lot to listen to.  At this point, it is possible to recommend the TEFLology podcast to people just based on the strength of the Interview episodes alone.  Even if you skip the regular episodes completely, 31 interview episodes will still keep you occupied for several days.
Assuming the current model of the Internet perpetuates into the future, and all of this stuff stays archived online indefinitely, I think it's safe to say a valuable resource for future teachers is being built up here.

* John Kullman had some really interesting thoughts, he articulated himself well, and I enjoyed listening to him.
It was, however, a bit hard to find a take-away message.
He had problems with textbooks which were too abstract, but he also had problems with textbooks which were too personal.
He had problems with textbooks which were too bland, but he also had problems with textbooks that had heavy topics.

This wasn't necessarily a bad thing though.  The positive way to look at this was that John Kullman has a critical mind which is able to examine the issue from every angle, and avoid simple solutions.

* The issue of PARSNIPS, which was discussed in this interview, was something I had just recently talked about in my recent re-review of Beyond the Sentence.  (Or, more precisely, Scott Thornbury talked about it in his book, and I discussed Thornbury's thoughts.)

* Actually in that same post, I made use of an old tweet of Scott Thornbury's:
EFL coursebooks - in-flight magazines with grammar notes?

EFL coursebooks - in-flight magazines with grammar notes?

— Scott Thornbury (@thornburyscott) May 15, 2016

I had assumed it was a Scott Thornbury original, but John Kullman also mentions this quote a few times (at times attributing it to an anonymous textbook writer).

* I think every single problem with textbooks that John Kullman mentioned I've encountered at one time or another in my teaching career.  I could, in fact, list specific examples from specific publishers of most of the problems he mentions.  But I don't want to go into too much detail (I'd be typing here all night).
I can also add to his list of complaints.
One of my biggest pet-peeves is the audio CD which accompanies the textbook, and which often contains a lot of very bad fake accents.  (The textbook writers are apparently trying to increase diversity by including characters from all around the world in the textbook.  But the recording studio apparently only has the budget for 3 British actors, who then attempt to do all the accents.  Often the same generic "oriental accent" is used for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters.)

* Interesting that John Kullman ties in the need for critical thinking with the current American president.
I think he's right--we are living in times when critical thinking is more important than ever.
I do, however, have some reservations about incorporating critical thinking into ESL curriculums.
One problem is that it is very easy to talk about critical thinking, but very difficult to do it--see for example here and here  (To be fair, John Kullman acknowledges this in the interview, and talks about the different ways different people perceive critical thinking.)
Another problem is that putting too much emphasis on critical thinking in ESL materials encourages a dangerous kind of missionary zeal on the part of the foreign ESL teacher.  In my time teaching in Japan, Cambodia, and Vietnam, I've often heard fellow ESL teachers say something along the lines of:  "Japanese/Cambodians/Vietnamese can't think critically, so it's very important that we teach them these skills."
In fact, Asians often do a much better job of critically thinking than Western ESL teachers give them credit for.