Hoje de manhã, uma amiga me perguntou: “Bom dia, Uma pessoa me perguntou e eu não soube responder. Vc saberia? Destas opções qual vc acha que seria mais recomendável eu estudar e prestar um exame de proficiência em inglês? Cambridge Exam PET CEFR B1 IELTS 4,0 TOEFL IBT 57 TOEFL ITP 542-“
Antes de mais nada: É importante verificar quais exames são aceitos pelas instituições ou empregadores que a pessoa está interessado antes de se preparar e prestar o exame. Considerando as opções apresentadas, eu recomendaria que você estudasse para o Cambridge Exam PET ou para o CEFR B1. Ambos são exames reconhecidos internacionalmente e avaliam habilidades importantes em inglês, como leitura, escrita, audição e conversação.
O Cambridge Exam PET é um exame de nível B1 do CEFR e é projetado para avaliar habilidades básicas em inglês para situações cotidianas. O exame é reconhecido por várias instituições educacionais e empregadores em todo o mundo.
O CEFR B1 é uma classificação de proficiência em inglês do Quadro Europeu Comum de Referência para as Línguas (CEFR). É um nível intermediário que indica que você pode se comunicar de forma eficaz em situações cotidianas e é reconhecido pinstituições acadêmicas e empregadores em todo o mundo.
O IELTS 4.0 e o TOEFL IBT 57 são níveis mais baixos de proficiência em inglês e podem não ser tão reconhecidos por algumas instituições acadêmicas e empregadores em comparação com o Cambridge Exam PET e o CEFR B1. O TOEFL ITP 542 é uma opção menos comum e pode não ser tão bem reconhecido quanto outros exames mais amplamente utilizados, como o TOEFL IBT ou o IELTS.
Em resumo, o Cambridge Exam PET e o CEFR B1 são opções recomendáveis para avaliar a sua proficiência em inglês. No entanto, é importante verificar quais exames são aceitos pelas instituições ou empregadores que você está interessado antes de se preparar e prestar o exame.
In the age of Google Translate and other translation devices and apps do people still need to take all the time, effort and money required to learn a language? Why?
If you answered the question above affirmatively you’re in good company. Because language skills can and will improve learners’ employability along with necessary skills and techniques.
A quick look at the History of Employability Skills in Adult Education in the US will present this brief scenario:
In 1990 the U.S. Secretary of Labor organized the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). The commission engaged in a thorough study to document and understand the attributes youth should acquire before they enter the work force, and published the findings as Learning for Living: A Blueprint for High Performance (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992).
2. In 2000 a document was published under the heading of “Equipped for the Future Framework” (EFF) presenting content standards that were developed over a 6-year period by hundreds of adult education practitioners, experts, and others nationwide to create a working consensus on what adults need to know and be able to do in the 21st century.
3. In 2002 The Partnership for 21st Century Skills as a public-private organization of leaders and educators in business and education worked to close the gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in a typical 21st century community and workplace.
4. In 2013 A report was elaborated describing how these College and Career Readiness (CCR) standards can enable adult education programs to establish a framework for developing or updating their standards.
5. And more recently – The Employability Skills Framework which is comprised of nine key skills, organized in three broad categories.
Why Employability Skills? Successful careers are built on solid personal and interpersonal skills. Defining, measuring, and building these skills— even naming them— can be challenging.
Students must develop skills to go beyond basic communication – project development; perform basic computation; make decisions and solve problems; apply technology to a task; combine ideas and information; manage money; and develop critical thinking.
Some of these skills used to be called “soft” skills but they’re key and central to the successful of an individual both academically and professionally in the 21 century.
Gone are the days of simply presenting boxed-in grammar points and drills, they must work together for the whole development of the human being in the new challenges of the 21st Century.
Wikipedia will tell you that a parsnip is a “root vegetable closely related to carrot and parsley, all belonging to the flowering plant family Apiaceae. And well seasoned they might go well in a vegetable soup.
PARSNIPS are more than just vegetables
But what are PARSNIPS in the classroom?
PARSNIPS might just be the most ridiculous acronym you’ve ever come across but it actually stands for politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, -isms, and pork.
These refer to the so-called taboo topics in the EFL classroom. For decades these topics have been avoided in the EFL classroom. Not even that. They are “unmentionables”. Publishers won’t even mention their names as some news reporters and commentators did with Trump while he was in the White House. And he WAS a big parsnip.
Trump as a character was a parsnip for some
You will never find a coursebook that even infers such a subject. This is because they may cause offense to sensitive students or they may not feel comfortable speaking about them. As a result of this belief, coursebook publishers generally won’t include any material related to these topics in their coursebooks, even though they make up a fair amount of our daily language.
In Brazil we traditionally considered taboo subjects in the classroom: politics, sports and religion.
I must confess that the first time I learned about this tasteless “vegetable” was during a seminar for language teachers back in São Paulo – some 10 plus years ago. Then a light came on: So true! None of the coursebooks I had ever used included those topics. Usually natural disasters, health and fitness, recycling, and Michael Jackson (yes, I still use some older books), even war (if it’s dating back to World War I, of course) may be more palatable (even though global warming and climate change can cause varying doses of anxiety). If you think about the juicy conversations and debates you have with your friends and family, and the stories you are likely to see on the news or in newspapers, they probably all revolve around a topic that has been deemed unacceptable for the EFL classroom. Never mind the fact that our students are probably having those same conversations outside the classroom in their own language!
Should we be talking about PARSNIPS in the EFL classroom?
The tide may be slowly changing -Pearson Longman published a book series called NorthStar using authentic texts and audio recordings from NPR programs with some subjects covering parsnips such as alcohol and drug addiction. And that was Unit 1. But by Unit 5 it was talking about something more inane as Feng Shui … but that’s a starting point. The book would even mention Sarajevo and the war in Europe still in our living memory (despite an even grander scale in Ukraine at the moment I’m writing this blog). Longman started with great current authentic materials with the series Consider the Issues, Face the Issues, and Raise the Issues
Sample of the contents page of Northstar Advanced 3rd Edition (c) 2009 by Pearson Longman
Now, I know that students don’t have a thick skin, it’s more like an eggshell so as a teacher we must tread with care and avoid bringing up topics that could be upsetting to our students or even make them uncomfortable. It is important that our learners feel safe and comfortable during the lessons or else they won’t participate in the activities or engage with the language. Asking them to speak about a topic they are not happy to do is a sure way to make them drop out of the course. But we also believe that you know your students and you can make a good decision regarding what is off-limits in the classroom based on that knowledge.
So, instead of using a blanket strategy for all coursebooks, why not raise awareness and empower teachers and students on the subjects they want to use in the language classroom? In this day and age when more and more language teaching programs are incorporated as CLIL content why still resort to this form of self-censorship?
Observing the behavior of some participants in our Zoom class session – it is worth remembering some good manners:
ATTENTION: Best Practices for Zoom sessions:
Punctuality (some students connect 1, 2, or 10 mins after the sessions started. No, no, no! Be connected to the meeting a few minutes BEFORE it starts).
Find a quiet place to attend the meeting (barking dogs, meowing cats, cracker Pollies, etc won’t help your session).
Keep the microphone off when not speaking (and remember for the 1,000th time to unmute WHEN YOU ARE SPEAKING.
Keep the camera on WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
Turn off the camera if you’re doing something that might distract others (some stay the entire session reading something else on their cell phone. No, Virginia, I don’t admire your multitasking skills. Stop it).
Show interest in the meeting so that it becomes more interesting (avoid lying on the bed or sofa during the meeting, although it can be more informal session, no one needs to see that stain in your sheet)
That’s it… so online meetings will be less boring and more productive.
Before you say that you don’t get the title or that it’s wrong, (we are usually quick to point out what we perceive as mistakes), let me tell you that the title is correct.
Yes, you must have experienced a case of a teacher who hated your guts and tried to get you (at least that’s how you felt), but in this case let me share with you my own experience.
Being thrown into 10 classrooms with 30 to 50 students with ages ranging from 5-16 years old without any experience or training and support at 22 – is that a sort of abuse?
How about when you would turn your back to the class to write on the blackboard and some smart ass student (they always think they’re unique) would throw paper balls, or pieces of chalk or the eraser at you? Is that a form of abuse? Is it the teacher’s fault? After all, everyone knows you can’t give your back to the class even for a second?
That was in the beginning of my teaching career, and convinced me I couldn’t work with children. But even when I was teaching top executives years later, at times a student here and there would start with that locker-room banter – some men find it empowering to call each other a fag, a fairy, Uranian, a pansy, or whatever. They consider it a harmless joke.
And at first, when a student came up with crude talk like that I’d just “laugh it off” and move on… when push comes to shove he was the paying party and what could a little name-calling do to me? Until I realized that no one has the right to be verbally abusive. Willingly or not, they label you, they place you in a corner and show their superiority over you. Finally, I learned that I had put an end to that. Either by threatening them with stopping the lessons – they should look for another teacher immediately or by actually walking out of the room.
Now bear in mind that both men and women can be abusive – men in a more direct way, while women can use subtle strategies to manipulate and abuse as well.
I’d say those few bad sheep learned their lesson, despite the occasional slip back into their olden ways.
Here are some proactive measures to take:
Explain acceptable and non-acceptable classroom behavior.
Choose (pick) your battles.
Be open to student feedback.
Avoid lag times between lessons when students become restless.
Model positive behavior, especially tolerance toward adversity.
Reward student success rather than pointing out underachievement.
A Teacher’s Secret Shame:
“As a teacher, you’re supposed to do more than just teach. Every education textbook, every teacher-training course you sat through stressed the link between an orderly classroom and student achievement. “Manage your students and learning will happen“.
It’s this admonition that holds you back from reporting student abusers. What teacher wants to be tagged (as) an incompetent educator unable to control the behavior of kids more than half (their) age?
This week, a friend of mine, who happens to be a psychologist, asked us if we were that sort of people who made resolutions for the new year. Naturally she said that was fine but the best would be to review the past year and be grateful for all things done or left undone. The new year will bring its own challenges and rewards.
Following her advice let me share with you a little of what my year was like: Of course the sensation is that 2020 hasn’t ended and it will continue with its miseries well into 2022 – but even in the midst of a global pandemic we were able to move house – from a noisy and polluted apartment in the very heart of a metropolis to the clean air of the country – just 130 km away from the city of São Paulo but it feels like its 1,300km away.
The adaptation has been smooth and wonderful… from the very first day we got used to the country – of course, Luther, the cat, took two days to adapt but now he loves his expanded territory. Some drawbacks with a mouse showing up in the laundry area, a snake in the patio and a few frogs in the garden … but all part of nature, right?
Apartment cat turns into barn cat in 3 months
The pandemic allowed us to move since I’m working online but it also brought the challenges of companies cutting down expenses and “streamlining” their language teaching benefits offered to their staff. I lost important corporate clients to Covid (they’re still alive, thank goodness – it was economics not viral) but they decided to cut costs and adopt online platforms for employees to self-study instead of using flesh and blood teachers like moi (the future will tell their mistake).
My income drop was significant – around 40% of my monthly income suddenly disappeared – while expenses increased because of the new home and maintenance costs of the old apartment. We thought we’d be able to sell it within 6 months but that didn’t happen. Now in 2022 we will try to rent it… great location and size – 3 bedrooms near the financial district of São Paulo – hopefully we will be able to rent it to nice people.
Slowly in June and July I started to get new students to fill the gaps left by the corporate ones … still a long ways to go… but hopefully we will get there.
I still value life quality, more than ever, so I don’t want to be teaching back-to-back classes for 6-8 hours a day. Unhealthy at so many levels.
On the academic level I tried to cut my class times from 60 to 45 minutes – thought they would be more productive – however, at the end of the day, students are paying for 45 minutes of lesson but enjoying 15 minutes more of free English time. Back to the drawing board.
Back to the drawing board: trial and error
I loved to see my students who stayed on developing and blooming in their confidence when using English – their listening, reading, speaking have improved significantly. Mind you, their writing is not what it should be – partly my fault, because I didn’t push them hard enough to write essays and other sorts of texts. But even so, one of them writes beautiful academic articles (can I call them beautiful?). Writing is also the least favorite activity among my learners. My chest was stuffed with pride when my student got band 7 on IELTS having studied less than 3 weeks for the exam.
On another professional level, as a remote interpreter – I attended a very good course this year at Associação Alumni to learn more about the new world of remote interpreting, the resources, techniques and gadgets – while also networking with the teachers and classmates – remotely, of course. I am a pretty reserved person so networking is a challenge for me – but one must try. Looking forward to developing a more relevant profile as a remote English, Spanish and Portuguese interpreter in 2022.
Yes, 2021 was a tough cookie to chew (almost as hard as the Christmas cookies my flower baked, please don’t tell her), but it had its many surprises, even with me in December becoming a choir conductor – bear in mind I had never done that before and my musical education is limited to say the least. But that’s life… full of surprises – some pleasant , others not, but always contributing to growth.
My debut as a choir conductor
Happy New Year and looking forward to seeing you on the other side.
As teachers we have to daily fight for our own motivation, not only financial but professional and intellectual as well. What is it that makes you get out of bed and teach for a few or many hours a day? In person or online? Unpaid hours spent preparing for lessons, searching for ideas, developing PowerPoint presentations… and all that for what?
Even highly motivated students at the beginning of the program see their motivation wane as the weeks pass. The excitement of the new, the hope for quicky proficiency, etc, all take their toll on every student.
A few learners keep their torch burning, do their homework, study on their own, use their language tools in different situations, etc… but most of them still wait for the teacher to revolutionize their language skills.
The Longman Learners’ Dictionary defines motivation as eagerness and willingness to do something without needing to be told or forced to do it
How can I as a teacher get my students to take charge of their own learning process?
First, let us think how fast we can motivate or demotivate someone:
While motivation requires a connection that can take minutes, hours or days to build and consolidate, you can destroy a learner’s motivation in a fraction of a second with just one word. Yes, you read it right, the most demotivating speech can be just one word.
How then can I motivate them?
Promote communication. Learning is a process. Input and output.
Allow space for creativity and connection which will enable engagement.
Build a healthy relationship with the students. As a teacher you don’t need to be their pal but empathy can go a long way in getting them started.
Don’t get me wrong. There will be good days and bad days … hopefully the good ones will far outnumber the bad ones. How? As we develop a culture of learning, provide tools for their growth and continue to encourage them in their progress.
I have been freelancing as a teacher, a translator and an interpreter for nearly 30 years, so I can tell you a thing or two about my career choice. In this post we will focus on freelance teaching.
If you want Security it will be found , relatively speaking, while working for a company where they are supposed to provide you with training, the tools for your trade and “super benefits” such as paid holidays and weekends.
No, Virginia, as a freelancer you get paid for the hours you have worked, period. Or when a translator for the number of words you have translated.
What advantages do we have as freelancing teachers?
Most people will say: “You’re soooo lucky… you have no boss. You can choose the times and days you’re gonna work; how much you charge for your work; and you can pick and choose the students you’re going to be working with.” Truth? Myth? Maybe?
The answer is … that depends. Let me explain: you’re free to choose the times and days you want to work in, yes, but you still depend on having students willing to be filling those hours. For example, during the pandemic most of my morning students, correction, ALL of my morning students decided to have classes in the evening. Since they were working from home they could stay in bed until 5 minutes before work started… lol … I don’t know… but since I’m a son of the dawn (I feel most productive in the morning), need I say more? So now I have only 3 students in the morning, the rest of them are in the afternoon and evening.
Can I set my prices /fees? Yes, to some extent – some prospective students will try to bargain, others will just say it’s way out of their budget (that’s understandable – even though some would try to bargain even if offered free classes). When setting a price I have to take into consideration:
My professional skills AND experience
Market rate averages compatible to what I will be providing to my clients
Something they don’t teach you in teachers’ school is that when setting your fees you must remember you won’t have any paid time off, any expenses such as computer, internet services, etc. will have to come out of your own pocket.
A real advantage when freelancing? Schools will pay you 30% or less of what they charge their students. When freelancing you keep 100% to yourself (before taxes, of course).
3. Now… regarding choosing students – actually THE STUDENTS will be choosing YOU. Of course, your market niche will define certain professional profiles, age groups (no kids, please) and even a certain economic and social status. As a rule of thumb, people in the lower brackets of society can’t afford private dental care, let alone, private tutoring. Yes, Virginia, we can talk about 50% or 100% scholarships, but that would be an issue for another post.
Yes, as a freelancer I can choose the materials I’ll be using, but students will have priority on what to cover in their classes, e.g., preparing for a meeting, revising a PPT presentation, reviewing and revising the professional portfolio, practicing for interviews, etc.
At the end of the day, the freelance teacher will be free as long as he or she provides the service the client wants to receive.
I’ve been a teacher for nearly 30 years so if there’s anything I can tell you with some authority is this: Every student is different.
Yes, some of the mistakes will be the same, some of the old jokes too, but regarding personality and traits of character they will be as different as the colors of the rainbow.
One thing we always are reminded of as teachers as to have empathy for our students. And we learn to respect and love them as our students. Unfortunately quite often it is a one way street with some of them.
Now, let me tell you about two students in particular – let’s call them Gilberto and Manuel (not their real names).
Gilberto is a very hard working student and has been with me for some years climbing from B1 to C1 level and in the process developing his skills and confidence in using English as a foreign language. He tries to do all his homework and despite the fact he has classes only once a week (60 minutes) his progress is quite visible. We’ve covered two advanced business books: Market Leader – (a quite good book but it got dated quickly) and Intelligent Business – (not a very intelligent book, by the way, really poorly edited including even some typos).
Gilberto sees the teacher as a simple provider of input without any relevant feelings. I must be available to reschedule his cancelled classes. He refuses to pay for the times he goes on vacation or for any missed class. Every payment he makes it sound as if he would be doing me a favor. Mind you, he likes me – otherwise he would have stopped years ago – but I’m simply a language source to him. Gilberto expects the teacher to be flexible and change class day and time on a whim, sometimes morning, other times afternoon or evening.
[An update] But he also showed professional politeness and empathy – he needed a 5 day grace period to pay for his classes and he first asked me earlier in the month if it would be ok, and if I had any objections to let him know and he’d find another way to pay on time. Of course, I agreed to the 5 day delay.
The teacher is more than just a source of information
Manuel has also been with me for some years – highly committed and focused – rarely did his homework though, with the exception of some texts for translation. We’ve never used a course book – he’s C1 – he likes to read – so he is often reading all sorts of business, science and philosophy books. Manuel also sees the teacher as a provider of input but this past week he showed he sees me as a professional who can be given appreciation through a day off or some additional pay. He has a problem of “forgetting” to pay me (every month) but to offset that he always pays an additional amount (some R$ 50 extra to cover for any inconveniences caused by the payment delay). On the other hand, Manuel apologizes when he can’t make it to his scheduled class and if I have no other available time he understands and moves on.
[An update] But regarding payment, Manuel never pays on time and always “forgets” it… sometimes he pays over 1 month late … and every time I bring it up he says “Oh I will pay you right after our class tonight” – and it never happens. To be fair, he usually throws in an additional R$ 50 for the delay… but that’s not the agreement.
When pricked teachers also bleed
Now paraphrasing what Shakespeare so skillfully wrote in the Merchant of Venice -“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”. – (Act III, scene I).” Yes, teachers and students need a real and respectful relationship even if separated by a screen.
A few years ago I listed some of the podcasts I think students should be using to practice English listening and other skills. With the ebb and flow of technology new podcasts have come up with new ideas and new presenters, so here’s an updated list of the podcasts
Please, remember:
Download the podcasts you enjoy
LISTEN TO THEM. Dammit!
So… without much ado, here’s my list of English Learning Podcasts (it’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s a good starting point):
Believes Unasp Sabbath School Podcast – I had to start with my own podcast, of course. After all, I am the compiler of this list. A combination of bible study and English tips such as pronunciation and vocabulary delivered on a daily basis – available on any podcast platform. The motto is English and the Bible = Information and Transformation https://www.spreaker.com/show/believes-unasp-sabbath-school
English and the Bible = Information and Transformation
2. 6-Minute English podcast – produced by the BBC with 2 hosts always asking some challenging questions found in the news. It always presents some new vocabulary and context for its use.
3. All Ears English podcast – 2 chicks always teaching some cultural and language point in the English spoken in the US. Beware: one of them slurs and speakstoofastasifshecouldntbotherwhethershesunderstoodornot. http://allearsenglish.com/
4. Aprende Inglés con la Mansión del Inglés – 2 dudes (one from Belfast and another from London) host the show with good humor and focus on a teaching point. Emphasis on Spanish speakers http://www.inglespodcast.com
6. ESL Podcast – The host for the podcast is Dr. Jeff McQuillan, directly from sunny Los Angeles, and he helps read the scripts and provides explanations for them.
8. Inglês Online Podcast – a podcast produced and hosted by Ana Luiza Bergamini, a Brazilian now living in London, with tips of idioms and phrasal verbs for Brazilian English learners – intermediate to advanced.
9. Inglês Todos os Dias – it’s a podcast produced by an American family based in Brazil. Tim and Tammy produce weekly short mini-podcasts with expressions and idioms that his students frequently confuse or ask about.
10. Luke’s English Podcast – produced and hosted by Luke from England – it’s a very good way to expose yourself to British English. But it requires a little patience usually no shorter than 45 minutes. http://teacherluke.co.uk/
11. Real Life English Podcast – Founded by three young passionate, world traveling, native speaking English teachers, RealLife is a community based learning portal whose mission is to inspire, empower, and connect the world through English, both online and in-person. Oh Yeah!
12. Richard Vaughan Live podcast – controversial Texas-born Richard Vaughan has painstakingly been trying to teach English to Spaniards. His ramblings are quite entertaining. I love the episodes when he loses his temper with some of his on-air students.
13. VOA’s Learning English Podcast – dating back to their shortwave transmissions even before the Internet, VOA has been my companion with good quality of listening content on American history, words and news.
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