Like in any reputable profession, the world of TEFL teaching has it's share of crazy-ass theorists who write books on the subject and lay claim to the indisputable methods of his or her particular line of work... But here in Poland there is a preference amongst the students for the theories of teaching put forward by a Mr Callan. Apart from his text books and methods of teaching being particularly old fashioned and based on repetition and repeated repetition, they revolve around a question – answer dialogue between the teacher and students......His favourite topic of discussion is death!
Here are some examples of his questions,and, please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves these topics whenever you have a spare minute or two:
If you fell asleep in the same room as a broken gas pipe what would happen?
.... and then the sample answer 'If I fell asleep... I would probably not wake up'.
Are you going to study English until you die?
And, not to bore you with his obsession with death, he obviously didn't see himself as a mere teacher of English but a philosophic genius with questions of age-old moral angst such as:
If somebody stole your umbrella would it automatically grant you the right to steal one back?
As somebody in one of the lessons pointed out to me, when I raised the issue that maybe the author of such questions was perhaps a bit cynical, Poland is apparently the most pessimistic nation of the world and so perhaps it's fitting that such a theory proves to be a success in this country. I'm just glad that these questions weren't required of me when teaching the Russians, otherwise I might have had to have therapy.
Elsewhere, I have not lost my knack for attracting strangers at bus stops, and today was engaged in a full Polish conversation with a non English speaking Polish woman! I managed to tell her that I didn't know, that I didn't understand and that I am English and also that I speak Polish not good. I managed to ask her where her daughter lives (although she provided me with the English word daughter). I was enthusiastically given a telephone number and seem to have made a binding verbal contract to give her daughter a ring on her mobile in order to speak English to her! How do I get myself in these situations just by minding my own business at the bus stop!?
Here are some examples of his questions,and, please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves these topics whenever you have a spare minute or two:
If you fell asleep in the same room as a broken gas pipe what would happen?
.... and then the sample answer 'If I fell asleep... I would probably not wake up'.
Are you going to study English until you die?
And, not to bore you with his obsession with death, he obviously didn't see himself as a mere teacher of English but a philosophic genius with questions of age-old moral angst such as:
If somebody stole your umbrella would it automatically grant you the right to steal one back?
As somebody in one of the lessons pointed out to me, when I raised the issue that maybe the author of such questions was perhaps a bit cynical, Poland is apparently the most pessimistic nation of the world and so perhaps it's fitting that such a theory proves to be a success in this country. I'm just glad that these questions weren't required of me when teaching the Russians, otherwise I might have had to have therapy.
Elsewhere, I have not lost my knack for attracting strangers at bus stops, and today was engaged in a full Polish conversation with a non English speaking Polish woman! I managed to tell her that I didn't know, that I didn't understand and that I am English and also that I speak Polish not good. I managed to ask her where her daughter lives (although she provided me with the English word daughter). I was enthusiastically given a telephone number and seem to have made a binding verbal contract to give her daughter a ring on her mobile in order to speak English to her! How do I get myself in these situations just by minding my own business at the bus stop!?
posted by Girl Least Likely To at 2:47 pm
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