*'Pas mi Ellin varvaros' = 'Every non-Greek is a barbarian'. This is to be understood as uncivilised, inarticulate and unreasoning. Charmed, I'm sure.

I have to listen a lot to Greeks bigging up the Greek language at the expense of other tongues. Here are some of the… Read full post »

Leila approached me yesterday at lunchtime to inform me that she was worried about her report from the last course. She is by far the most conscientious and linguistically talented of all the students I teach, and has won golden opinions from teachers for her… Read full post »

I was waiting at home for my sister and nephew who were coming to visit. The phone rang. I answered it, and a snooty female voice with jerky electronic intonation said ‘we-are-twenty-five-miles-from-Stamford-/-you-sweaty-shit-stabber’. Thus I realized belatedly that… Read full post »

Larbi has a home-grown English grammar book that he brought with him from Libya. I had a look through it today while the class was occupied with some writing. In those countries where ‘traditional’ grammar teaching is still the norm, books like this one sell. Does anyone re… Read full post »

Παιδια, το βρηκαμε επιτελους!

‘Audio Lingual Method’ proclaimed a sign outside a language school… Read full post »

Sayeed from Saudi Arabia did a fair bit of witnessing for Allah in the one-to-one lessons we had together. IELTS reading and essay construction were put aside as he tried to persuade me of the wisdom of the Quran. I could never get him to condemn the attacks on… Read full post »

Senator Steve Fielding of Australia is not in favour of gay marriage. Stevie is the leader of the Family First party, which exists to protect this fragile and endangered institution. Faggots and dykes obviously have no place in the party because they have no families - as is well… Read full post »

I had dinner with a good friend at an Indian restaurant last night. The menu ran to about five dense pages. It was the night of the ‘Special Banquet’, when you pay half what you would pay any other night of the week, and our order turned out to comprise… Read full post »

Hallelujah, it is arranged. I escape the dank, glaucous gloom of post-Christmas England, and I'm going to Athens for a week in January to do some input sessions on a Diploma course and to observe some teaching practices, or TPs, as they are imaginatively known. I observed hundreds… Read full post »

I’ve blogged a lot and rather snidely about clueless students, inept trainee teachers and wannabe teacher trainers, so I had better redress the balance and celebrate some of those who, as they say, made it all worthwhile.

After twelve years as a trainer of teachers in Athens, I w… Read full post »

It’s eight o’ clock of a July morning in Southern Greece and the air in the school is like greasy, luke-warm stew. You enter the classroom and there you find ten or so fifteen year olds whose silence and stricken, defeated bearing might lead you to suppose that their… Read full post »

Everyone who teaches English to speakers of other languages has come across the ‘Victorian medicine’ attitude towards grammar: if it tastes bad, it’s good for you. If you're not enjoying it, it's improving the mind -  somehow. Most adult students will tell you th… Read full post »

I have recently found the blog of The TEFL Tradesman, and reading him has reminded me of the kind of Teaching English as a Foreign Language looniness that my present job protects me from. For instance, between January 8th and March 2nd 2007 in Vermont, you could have… Read full post »

Christmas decorations of more than common tawdriness already disfigure the centre of the city where I work, a city centre that arguably is soulless enough, without these great dusty bows and bells festooned across the pedestrianised streets looking like knock-off from a disbanded circu… Read full post »

First off, I have to admit I cannot be objective about Christianity. For some years as a teenager I was involved with a group of Christians in a theatrical package of Baptism of the Holy Spirit, healing, speaking in tongues, denouncing Satan and driving out demons. This, of course,… Read full post »

Every so often, a group of Mormon missionaries boards the same train as me on my journey home from work. They are always clean-cut, handsome young men in suits and ties, looking like a bunch of animated mannequins from Austin Reed. Sometimes, but not often, there will be a… Read full post »

I'm marking essays again. (Again...) Students from overseas could be forgiven for thinking that globalisation is the only issue examiners care about, since it crops up in essay titles with clockwork regularity. Fortunately for my punchdrunk brain, most of my students have chosen other… Read full post »

Xanthi, Old Town

Cambridge First Certificate in English is an international exam open to learners of English as a foreign language. Not too long ago in Greece everyone wanted to pass this exam, or at least possess a forged certificate. Part of the exam is an oral test, and… Read full post »

A while ago in Greece I was watching Larry Clark’s movie Ken Park on DVD. Early in the film a boy asks his much older girlfriend ‘can I eat you out?’ This got into the Greek subtitles as 'παμε να φαμε;' shall we go for… Read full post »

About time! For all these years the old boy’s been famous only for being dull, difficult and boring, but now No Sweat Shakespeare offers us the plays and sonnets ‘translated’ into… Read full post »

Kolonaki, as wikipedia will tell you, is a ‘wealthy, chic and upmarket’ neighbourhood of central Athens. Kolonaki Square, or to give it its polysyllabic Greek name Plateia Filikis Etaireias, is a place where the sort of person who likes to see and be seen goes in his best… Read full post »

When overseas students decide to moan about England, gripe number one is always the weather, and gripe number two is the food. The British attitude to food baffles them. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Anderson from Brazil asked me. ‘Don’t you LIKE eating? And you have suc… Read full post »