Wednesday, July 06, 2016

TEFLology Episode 46: Brexit, and Feedback Training with Jo Gakonga

(TEFLology Podcast)

The new episode of TEFLology is up here.  

The first half of this episode was speculation about how Brexit will affect the state of English language teaching, the second half was an interview with Jo Gakonga.

Brexit
So, if you've been following the news on Brexit, you probably know that nobody--not even the experts and the government officials--really knows what Brexit will actually mean in practical terms.  All of those little details will still have to be negotiated.

And so, after talking about some possible results of Brexit, the TEFLologists also come back to the same conclusion--nobody, literally nobody, knows what this all means yet.

"Some people have complained that there's too much speculation in our podcast.  They must really be loving this episode," one of the TEFLologists said sarcastically.

I can probably be counted among that number--I didn't use the word "speculation" exactly, but I did say in my original review that I was initially disappointed the TEFLology podcast was light on hard facts, and heavy on "chit-chat", "opinions", and "banter" .
But those remarks were in the context of explaining the gap between my initial expectations and the actual format of the podcast.  At this point we're 46 episodes in, and I long ago made my peace with the fact that TEFLology is going to be more discussion than information.

And so I enjoyed the discussion.  It's topical, it's interesting, and as the TEFLologists point out, it has the potential to affect our industry in any number of ways (although nobody knows for sure.)

Thoughts
* These guys do a great job of keeping current with the literature in the field.  This news is only a couple weeks old, and already they've read several articles in ELT journals and blogs about Brexit.  It always makes me feel guilty when I realize how little I manage to read or keep current in ELT.

* The TEFLologists talk about how this may be beneficial for American English teachers trying to get jobs teaching in Europe, and indeed that was my immediate first thought when the news of Brexit first came through.
Currently, it's almost impossible for Americans to get jobs teaching in Western Europe, because the British come in already on an EU visa.  In order for a school to hire an American Teacher, they'd have to go through the trouble of sponsoring the visa (something they don't have to do with a EU passport) and also justify why the same job couldn't be done by an EU citizen.  Which meant that the Brits got all the English teaching jobs in Western Europe, and we Americans were out of luck.
One of the reasons I've stayed in Asia for so long is that teaching in Europe wasn't an option.  But now that the British have thrown all that away, I'm thinking that I might look into English teaching jobs in Europe in the future.

* There's also been a lot of talk in the news about how Brexit will affect the future of English as a lingua franca in Europe--something the TEFLologists comment on.  They are of the opinion that English will continue to be the lingua franca in Europe for sometime to come (as am I), but they discuss the possibility that a type of European English may become the new dominant form instead of British English.
Possibly.  But it's also another possibility that this will mean American English will take over British English as the preferred dialect.
I'm given to understand that most of the ESL materials in Europe are based on British English.   And since working in South East Asia, I've also discovered that many of the textbooks produced for the global market also use British English.  I suspect this a spill-over from the fact that British English is favored in Europe--publishers find it cheaper to mass produce the same textbook for as many markets as possible, so all of the mass produced ELT textbook materials tend to be based around British English.
With Britain cutting itself off from Europe, perhaps we could see the American dialect of English become more dominant in ESL textbooks.

* An interesting speculation from one of the TEFLologists at one point, something that never crossed my mind before, is that this could result in more British people going to Asia to teach English.  (Hopefully not flooding the market over here.)  There's also a speculation that this could improve the professionalism of the industry--the logic is that English teachers in Europe have to be qualified, whereas English teachers in Asia are often just backpackers--so a flood of qualified teachers coming into Asia would raise the standards of the profession.
...An interesting speculation...possibly...But surely the results would only be temporary.   
Assuming a future in which qualified native speaker teachers can't get jobs in Europe, once people discover qualifications are unnecessary to work at most schools in Asia, the long-term result would be to lower the demand for those qualifications, right?

Feedback Training with Jo Gakonga
The second half of the podcast was an interview with Jo Gakonga.

At least some of this discussion was about promoting Jo Gakonga's website--which sounded interesting enough to me that I clicked the link and checked it out.  
Although there is some free content, it turns out the website is actually a business, and you have to pay to join the courses. 
So was her appearance on TEFLology just an advertisement?

It appears to have been partly that.  
And yet, she had some really interesting things to say on feedback training.

Not being a manager, I've never been in the position of giving feedback to other teachers.  But I've certainly been on the receiving end of it a lot, and I can attest that it's incredibly difficult not to take it personally.

I've also seen a lot of emotions in the staff-room from my co-workers.  People are just devastated when they get negative feedback on their teaching, and over-the-moon when the feedback is positive.

It's caused me to think a lot about how emotionally charged the manager's job must be, and what the best way to navigate that minefield is.  So I share Jo Gakonga's interest in the subject, and found her thoughts interesting.

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