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 »

 Greek education is test mad. Few teachers are able to see testing and teaching as separate, and so very few students can either. What are the effects of such a learning culture? How can it fuck things up? Here is a worst-case scenario.

First, in such an environment,… Read full post »

I decided to learn some Arabic. There was but a paltry choice of books for the purpose at Waterstones, so I bought ‘Arabic for Dummies: the fun and easy way to start speaking Arabic’. Normally I can do without the ‘For Dummies’ series and its relentless chumminess: ‘Wind… Read full post »

‘Jeni Food’ was the quaint name of a tiny Chinese restaurant in Kolonaki, the posh bit of central Athens. The place was a one-woman show, run by Jeni Chen, who for a while was a friend of mine. The food was excellent if Jeni was in the mood, but could be… Read full post »