So what do you do once you’ve finished your TESOL or TEFL course?

Hell man, I’m gonna get a job in China/France/Haiti/Brazil and I’m gonna be gone while you guys clean up the mess around here!!

Uhmm.. wait. Did you sign your contract yet? Did you get the figures right? Are you sure you’re going to have the weekend off? Just some of the questions that your daddy might ask when you’re trampolining and telling him all about your new job.

So what are the loopholes you should look out for in ESL contracts? What are the benefits you must insist on? Find out.. Read More…

No Comments | In: ESL Musings | tags: CELTA, ESL, ESL contract, ESL jobs, ESL schools, questions about ESL contract, tesol. | #

So I know I’m not going to Africa anymore but I did plan to, just about a few months ago. Google wasn’t very helpful, for once, because there simply isn’t enough information for job seekers wanting to relocate to Africa, or people who want to live there, for longer than two weeks in a safari resort!

So we did a hell lot of research about which countries are worth heading to for a good life without effectively striking a match to my wallet. And believe you me, you can do that in Africa, the Africa of rib-stickin’ out infants and giraffes.

Being sort of a safe person, I was also somewhat concerned about the safety of my booty (as Miss United States just said on Miss Congeniality 2) (yea, I multi-task sometimes). As a journalist, if a newspaper wanted me to stake out for a few days in the middle of a war in Sierra Leone, I’d be there – grit, gumption, and notepad. But considering I was also gonna take my bubblegum with me on this trip, I didn’t want to be somewhere I’d be lying flat on the ground half the time.

Read More…

No Comments | In: Africa | tags: Africa, cost of living, ESL africa, global peace index, life in africa. | #

There is a corresponding ESL lesson plan on articles on the blog. Check it out, if you’re an ESL teacher and looking for a nudge of inspiration

No Comments | In: Super Simple Grammar Girl | tags: articles, definite articles, grammar articles, indefinite articles. | #

It’s no secret formula to great writing. In fact, it’s been around for exactly 2009 years. Which means, back in 1 B.C., someone came up with this wonderful simple rule. And how do I know of it? Why, Wikipedia of course!

This quintessential simple rule to rocking writing has been drilled into every journalist living or dead, me included. It’s what makes for great news stories, shocking yellow journalism, and even the racy Shobhaa De columns. But, why would this rule so journalistic be applicable in the ESL world?

Because it works! Every friggin’ time.. Try it teaching letter writing, or paragraph writing, or essay writing, or note writing, or email writing (for all those fancy, big-buck business ESL teachers).

Read More…

1 Comment | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: 5 Ws and 1 H, essay writing, good writing, letter writing, note writing, paragraph writing, writing tip, writing well. | #

Most ESL students (and their parents) lay an inordinate amount of emphasis on conversational skills and gloss over the need to learn how to write. It’s true that conversational skills are the most important ones to teach. If immersed in an English speaking environment, students pick up conversational skills sooner or later (which is why I don’t think using L1 during lessons is a smart move). But once the student is past the stage of grappling for words, it becomes quite important to focus on writing skills.

Since English is a non-phonetic language, there is often no correlation between the way words are written and spelled. And if you thought that’s the hardest bit to learn about writing well, think again. With the multitude of writing style sheets floating around in this world, it can be incredibly hard for students to even realize what they’re up against when they embark out on ‘Project Write Well’.

Read More…

No Comments | In: ESL Musings | tags: elementary group, elements of style, ESL, intermediate esl, rules of good writing, strunk and white, teaching, tips good writing, writing. | #

This is a lesson plan for teaching articles that was requested by a reader. Articles are possibly the simplest, yet the most most arbitrary grammar rules to learn. Most languages apart from English do not have articles, and I know most ESL students are completely flummoxed by their need. But well, strange is the English language

Presenting a lesson on articles is not the most difficult of things, anticipating your particular students’ problems is. Considering that there are no articles in Latin, Sanskrit or Persian – the mai-baap (roots) of many modern languages – English teachers, at least the ones interested in etymological mysteries, may wonder where the articles in English language crept up from. I haven’t found a meaningful explanation yet, so if you can give me a clue, fire away in the Comments section.

Read More…

No Comments | In: ESL Lesson Plans | tags: a, a an the, an, articles, ESL, ESL Lesson Plans, lesson plan, teaching articles, the. | #

Lake Tahoe was a pool of blue at 4580 feet (abv sea level). The Sierra Nevadas appeared brown in the distance but with binoculars, I could see the fir and pine trees shooting up the sides of mountains. We spent a leisurely Labor Day weekend lazing around in a nice hotel on Manzanita Avenue.

Tucked away in a back alley full of seedy inns and lodges, this one was refreshing. It’s just two blocks from the bustling main street of South Lake Tahoe, where all the restaurants, shopping, music, and casinos are. The bright green, brand new signage – which first drew us to this hotel – stands out on a street full of yellowed ones. The place looked quite new. Our room was nice, had a TV, coffee pot, wine stems and a chilling bucket (no ice though, no wine either) and the bed was comfy.. so comfy that we spent a lot of time in it

For once, we made sure we had an early start from home (or hotel, as we’re now staying at the Homestead in Sunnyvale). I was super-worried about traffic all along, it being the beginning of a long weekend, and don’t we all know what happens on the route from Bay Area to Tahoe on all weekends! We were on the freeway by 7.30ish.. super early for us, since we’re weekday 10 o’clock wake-uppers. That helped, and we cut the usual 4 hour drive time by an hour and arrived in Tahoe, cruising at 75 mph all the way, around 10.30ish.

Read More…

No Comments | In: America, Mimetic Musings | tags: hitchhiker, labor day weekend, lake tahoe, south lake tahoe, tahoe, tahoe holiday, tahoe hotel. | #

I read this on the TIME magazine’s website today.. Utah has a wonderful report card to show for its awesome four day workweek system that it adopted about a year ago. Delightful, isn’t it, to think that there may be a time when we could all have four day workweeks, and take the time off Friday through Sunday to travel around the country, or at least explore the countryside where we live!

Wonderfully, the amazing concept (which has been around in Europe for far too long) is not only wonderful for the employees, who can spend more time with their families and friends and indulge in themselves, but also for the environment, which takes a severe beating every morning when the first employee walks into the office.

From 8.30 in the morning, when the earliest employee non-chalantly switches on all the lights in the office, in anticipation of another (mostly dull) day, till about 8 in the evening, when the janitors finally leave after cleaning every dust-worthy surface, the power meter keeps ticking furiously. Read More…

No Comments | In: Mimetic Musings | | #

My kid brother is a rockstar. He’s all over the newspapers in UK!! The little dude has trumped the GCSE with 16 A*. And yet the shining Star of the family is wary of all the fuss everyone is making of him. ‘The media’s really taking it too far,’ he says. Well, that’s the media’s job. Here’s the story on him published in the Telegraph:

GCSE results: Unnat Krishna ‘utterly amazed’ at 16 A*s

Unnat, 16, from Stourbridge, beamed as he opened his results at King Edward VI Five Ways School in Bartley Green, Birmingham.

He will now take his A-levels and hopes to study medicine at university.

“I cannot quite describe how I feel,” he said. “I am really shocked and surprised. I thought I would get about 10 or 11 A*s but I never expected 16. Read More…

1 Comment | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: GCSE, unnat krishna. | #

It’s still difficult to talk about the loss but this song helped me cheer up. There’s a YouTube video at the bottom of this post. Hope you enjoy it. I could not find an HD version of this video which had good sound quality too, so I guess we’ll just have to make do with this version.. the quality’s not too bad though. The song is fantastic. Shot in Xavier’s College, Mumbai, there is a wondrous twist at the end. One would think it’s a typical song where a friend/lover is trying to make his sweetheart smile after they’ve had a tiff. The ending has just the right comical punch. The mystery  is revealed when Aditi’s friends organize a mourning. I won’t give away the details but it’s a really cute and comic ending. For all those who don’t understand Hindi, there’s an English translation of the song at the bottom of this post.

Kabhi kabhi Aditi zindagi mein yuhi koi apna lagta hai.
Kabhi kabhi Aditi wo bichhar jaaye to ek sapna lagta hai.
Aise mei koi kaise apne aansu o ko behne se roke?
Aur kaise koi sochle everything’s gonna be ok? Read More…

No Comments | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: hindi song, kabhi kabhi aditi zindagi, lyrics, mourning. | #