A change of roles this week

I have been teaching a Thai student intensively for the last month. He needs to get a good score in the IELTS test to enable him to enter a university in the UK. He had a test on Saturday and so today he is having a break from learning English. 

Our purpose built classroom has not been idle though. My wife, who is Thai, has begun teaching Thai and taught her first student today. She will be fine as she trained in Bangkok at the British Council to teach English and was better than some of the native speakers. 

I enjoyed the change, but tomorrow I'm back at the chalk face and my wife doesn't teach again until next Monday. 

Time to Stop

I tell you, it's been a trying time
We've been trying to tell the time

It began at quarter past nine just fine
By quarter to ten they began to whine

The journey from digital to analogue
The tale I'll tell you via this blog

They seem to have a mental block
Regards the mighty shiboleth 'clock'
   

IATEFL conference in Harrogate April 2010

Some weeks ago I made a list of things I'd like to achieve in what is left of my life. At number 3 on that list was the wish to present at an international English language teaching conference. Such a conference will take place at Harrogate, about 20 miles from York, in April next year. The International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) annual conference. I was bold enough to send in a proposal during September, and it has just been accepted as a poster presentation. The subject is the case for teaching only a basic version of English - English Lite if you will. The intention being that students could learn to communicate quicker and have no need for such complications as idioms or question tags. I'll post the abstract here later this week.
I presented an earlier version of my work at ThaiTESOL in Khon Kaen, Thailand in 2005 and again at Thammasat University in Bangkok later that year. People either agreed with or dismissed the ideas - no fence sitters.
I'm nervous already, IATEFL is the big one - what have I done?