90% stressful, 5% useful

The effects of AQMs.

Yeah, they’re coming at the end of the month. I know they’re meant to be useful, but they aren’t. They induce more stress and anxiety than good.

They have expectations, but they’re rather opaque about them. They come with assumptions. They come with trite phrases such as “Everyone has their own style of teaching”. They don’t bother to mention that they think their way is best and can’t fathom doing this any other way.

They want classes to be interesting and exciting, but quite forget that starter – activity – plenary classes are boringly repetitive just as the Basic Model, which I got when I did that EFL course about six years ago, was good for one or two classes, but disengaging thereafter.

But we have to play the game. We have to be subservient and stressed and anxious and deprived of a decent amount of sleep. We have to put up with some annoying colleagues who play the game to be highly proficient.

I want to be adequate, competent, and left alone. I want it to be acknowledged that not every class is screamingly exciting and that most of what we do must be done whether our pupils are interested or not. I’d like it acknowledged that not everyone is linguistically competent and has an aptitude for language.

I’d like to escape from EFL as being English for the hard of thinking. I’d like to get away from the notion that stupidity can be excused because English isn’t someone’s first language. I’d like a little more IB learner out of my students and a little less indolence because TOEFL, for example, is the best way to learn English, which means that any other way is completely wanting validity.

I’ve been chatting to the counsellors this year. I may not be able to totally ruin the little darlings’ chances, but I’m going to try and diminish their prospects. Malevolent? Yeah, but I’ve had ten years of being treated like loo paper by jumped-up squits. It’s all in a good cause because if it encourages them to work in class, they might actually do better at TOEFL and IELTS, and thus their prospects improve. Damn! Foiled!