Occasional Tales

And less of the usual. I’ve now been told I’m definitely teaching PAL and AS. The former will be more of the same. The latter will be different although I don’t know how different. I don’t know whether I’ll be teaching Standard Level IB only or whether I’ll also be teaching Higher Level. Only a small number of AS students will be doing HL English, which means that they may be integrated into the IB English classes, thus leaving me with the rest; or I might be teaching them anyway. It would possibly be nice to teach a smaller class. Although I have no problems with standing in front of large groups, the bigger they are, the less personal it all becomes. Group work is a nod to reasonable class sizes where reasonable class sizes would be better in the first place. On the other hand, I had groups of six students in Tongzhou and Fuzhou doing IELTS who mostly just sat in class wasting my time. There was the giggling idiot with his ¥8,000 mobile phone; there were the ferrets, a pa

Still on the inside looking in. I was beginning to suspect that the new English teacher was probably going to be hired specifically to teach on the IB programme, thus putting an end to any hopes I might have of teaching IB classes myself. In truth, there isn’t going to be a second new English teacher because her Ladyship isn’t leaving after all. Either way, I’ve long had my doubts about ever switching from one to the other. Besides, I’d already signed a contract for next year to teach on the A-level programme. But I will still be teaching IB English because that’s what all the students here will be doing. The reasoning is that because they can earn a certificate from it, they may be more motivated to put some effort in than previous classes have been. The other news is that from the start of June I won’t be having to deal with AS3 (or, rather, A2(3)) with whom Wing Commander F. will have to deal. However, because things aren’t going to change in one respect, it seems that I

The Who’s That of Listening Exams. Sailing photography: Best photos from Lauty Grace Answers from other students keep mentioning New York for some peculiar reason. I’m imagining that Lauty Grace is a photographer of some sort who gets into various scrapes each week by photographing something she shouldn’t or her camera photographs the future and she has to rescue someone from the fate she has recorded or < insert idea here >. I see that “CD action” is back as a fairly frequent answer and yet in spite of it being obviously nonsensical, it doesn’t appear to concern the little darlings unduly. I’ve now hit a batch of papers where it appears they were all busy sharing answers. As I said in the previous entry, these practice tests might be informal, but it’s a waste of their time if they’re just going to copy each other. I would post this if Freegate could get through to the server. The new version is having no more luck connecting than the old one had.

Windserfing [sic!] A not unexpected answer in today’s practice listening test. It was probably practised in the Middle Ages, but fell out of fashion with the arrival of the Renaissance. And I see that once again, Kit Evans is on top of Mars taking photographs. At the age of 16 she “discovered the school to develop film”. And did you know that forests “prevent dessert spread too far”? Or that one of the problems with wind turbines is their high pay? (The former is slightly embarrassing because the question includes the word “desert” and asks for two other things which a forest does.) There’s also some magical plum tree which yields 37km 2 of fruit. 10. (d) Why are companies interested in using wind turbines? Student’s answer: avoid fax. Possibly good advice, and obviously copied since the following paper had the same answer. Although these practice tests are informal, I’ve asked them not to do this sort of thing, but there’s that innate imperial inability not to chea

“I will, my darling, I will.” The Reading and Writing exam turned out to be fairly benign. Even the summary was kind and gentle. Ex. 6 offered massive scope for imagination although Ex. 7 was daring candidates to write in clichés, which is what my little darlings will’ve undoubtedly written. I’m guessing that the grade thresholds will probably be higher rather than lower this year if the Reading and Writing exam was so comparatively easy. Next up is Listening in a week’s time. As usual, the question is whether we have the kit to play the CDs because the number of students requires seven rooms. This means that the school is going to have to get us the equipment, which they will try to avoid doing, offering instead some dubious alternative because the money for buying sound equipment has long since been embezzled by the corrupt officials who run the school.

Hello, IB programme. We had some inkling of what was going to happen last week when one of the PAL students came to me and asked what level of English he should be doing next year. I was baffled because AS doesn’t have levels, and my learned colleague, Mr V, didn’t know, either. The student went away and came back with a form which had a list of options for next year, including IB standard or higher level English. First we’d heard of it and our initial assumption was that this was testing the waters. Since then, it’s been confirmed that the AS classes will be doing some sort of IB English. This has not been greeted enthusiastically by High Command even although I think it’s a good idea myself. Of course, I speak from the experience of ten years of fairly obnoxious Senior 2 classes. If students know they’re going to get something out of a class, they may be less indifferent to it. On the other hand, I’m not so addle-brained as to believe this is going to be a panacea. There

Activities are fun. The news is good. The assessment went well and I’m off the hook for the time being. There were groups, there were activities, there was fun. From a practical perspective, there needs to be a more pedagogical approach because exams are the cold hard reality when it’s every addle-brained student for themselves, and colours, cutting out, and glue aren’t part of the process. That’s when my sort of practical instruction should be valuable because there’s none of the frippery. “If you do X in the exam, you will get a better mark.” I’m not saying, “If you colour the paper in nicely, you’ll get a better mark.” One thing I’ve learnt from experience is that on those occasions when I know what I’m talking about, people ought to be listening and their prospects will improve. On the contrary, I hope at least that I have the wit to know when I should keep quiet and not presume to instruct others.