Wild goose chase

It has been a particularly difficult summer here in Greece for everyone, rising prices, galloping unemployment and deep salary cuts have made people worried about how they are going to make it through the winter, which contrary to popular myth actually exists in Greece. Hard to believe when you 're on the beach and it is in the high 30s that the temperatures here in the north often are colder than those in the UK.

To make my particular situation even more difficult was the fact that I was burgled in May, which damn near wiped me out financially at the worst possible time of the year for a teacher. So when I got the chance to apply for a job as an IELTS examiner you can imagine how welcome that news was. Despite lack of funds I managed to scrape together the money necessay to travel to Athens for the interview. I travelled through the night by coach in order to save the cost of a hotel room and kept my spending to an absolute minimum.

After a long and stressful interview I returned the same day so spending endless hours stuck in a coach during the course of the day. As you can imagine a 14 hour, 1100km round trip is nobody's idea of a fun day out.

The only problem was that the British Council wanted me to do a five day series of training sessions in Athens, which was just impossible for me financially. As you can imagine spending five days away from home staying in a hotel, eating out and commutting is a major layout even in the best of times, let alone during one of the worse periods of economic crisis in modern Greek history. So I said that it was impossible for me and could I do the training closer to home. Thankfully, the BC assured me that someting could be worked out come September. September came and no word, when I sent off emails I was first told that the person responsible was unavailable, then I was told that the training material were appropriate for groups only and finally, today I received an email saying that is no job anyway.

I am angry that this whole procedure has been a waste of time, energy and money in which I foolishly participated, thinking that I might get a job out of it. I feel that that I have been misled and that an organisation has chosen to treat people with indifference and/or contempt. It's something that I have seen a lot of here in Greece as the economic situation has deteriorated and more and more people chase fewer and fewer positions. Teachers are being seen as just another commodity which can be exploited and discarded at will. An endless stream of other applicants can take their place if they are unhappy with expoitative wages, lack of social insurance or outrageous demands.

Pulling my hair out!!!!!!

Photo by icathing

The more I create my own material the less satisfied I become with the teaching resources available commercially. In the vast majority of schools you're obliged to use the books which I would never dream of using in my private lessons. They are so exam obsessed that there are little more than rehashes of past papers with a few language production activities to thinly veil the fact. So, for example you have three page of grammar activities followed by the pathetically inadequate speaking exercise which can be got through in a couple of minutes.

Even the books I do use have changed very little over the last decade. As much as I appreciate the Headway series (all except the advanced book, which is dire) they are way out of date methodologically and seem to have successfully ignored the electronic revolution that has been underway for the last 20 or so years. It's almost as if their world froze in 1986 and no one told them otherwise.

The situation becomes even more tragic when you reach advanced levels where simply revising grammar, syntax and vocabulary is unlikely to produce the kind of linguistic skills needed to pass exams or help those who want to be able to communicate in English at anything other than the most basic manner. It is hardly surprising then, that the Greek pass rate for C2 level exams such as CPE is 29%. Also as I read in Hyphenpedia;

"To the above equation you add the sad 77% (hyphen 2005 annual market research) of Greek professional FL certificate holders who cannot speak English, thus shaping a disappointing international profile for the average Greek professional. Then it is easier to swallow that maybe this whole Greek ELT system, that has successfully served Greek insecurity and the need for formal (but not necessarily substantial) accreditation, is coming to an end."

It is not enough that current methodologies are incredibly bad in helping students get the certificates they so dearly desire, They are also terrible at producing able second language speakers even amongst those who do manage to acquire some kind of qualification.

Yet every time I mention these facts and figures and try to introduce new ideas and approaches I'm told that they won't work, they'll negatively affect exam results or that that's not what students want from their lessons. After a while there comes a time when you just shut up, keep your opinions to yourself and tow the line.

Strangely though, the vast majority of the parents of students I do private lessons with are extremely happy with the fact their kids have become confident users of English and actually are happy to do lessons. But hell, what do I know? I'm just a teacher.