TEFL Waffle

Episode 90: Atmosphere

Are you comfortable? Are you happy? Is this activity pleasing you? Troy and Steve don't care, really. Nevertheless should you feel these things are important, you are a humanist. And if you teach lessons with these concerns in mind you are a teacher who worries about classroom atmosphere. Actually, Troy and Steve do care - we lied. Atmosphere is really really important and how you feel matters a lot. It really does. Tell us about your relationship with your mother. 

Extension task: put commas in where you think they belong,

Great job!

Episode 89: Digital literacies

Do you ever have the feeling that the person handling the other end of your technology have no idea what they are doing? Like Troy and Steve trying to do this podcast, perhaps? Well, it might be that students and teachers have the same problem even though they have to teach and learn online. They may have absolutely no clue whatsoever. Well, with Covid we are all learning, developing, growing, expanding and cocking things up completely. It's so much fun, but nobody is enjoy it at all. Are we? Just go back to that initial question, do you ever get the feeling that reading episode descriptions about episodes is very meta? Or do you ever get annoyed when some people think the word meta is a social media network? Or for that matter, do you ever get annoyed by string of annoying questions?

Episode 88: A secret complaint

Troy and Steve waffle endlessly about cases where students confide, and to complicate things, it's all about another teacher. What does ethics say? What does your heart say? What do the students say? What does your gut say? In one amazing moment, Troy actually uses the word 'albeit' with perfect pronunciation. See if you can spot it. Also listen out for our opinions about students' opinions about their teachers. 

P.S. Sorry about the audio quality

P.P.S We can't remember when this was recorded

P.P.P.S Should there be a colon after P.S?

Episode 87: The perfect curriculum

What do you teach? In what order? Is that part needed there? Perhaps you should just skip this section here till later. Oh wait, scaffolding won't work here because they don't know X and they have to do Y, but they don't know Z yet. I know, I'll look at the curriculum! Wait, where is it now?

Episode 86: Strong classes

Troy has a new job, and his students are strong. They lift weights, carry buses around, and speak English like they don't need a foreign language teacher. That means he has a lot of fun, but a few problems too. What is he to do with these super students? How will he cope with the demands made on him by their zealous curiosity? Will he survive the fun, stress, difficulties and rewards of all this amazingness? Find out, on this episode of (cool music sound here) TEFLWaffle!... Oh, and Steve has a few things to say too.

Episode 85: TITM: Snape

How do you know what a 'bad teacher' looks like? Well, his name rhymes with cape, and he is wearing one! In this episode Evets and Yort explore one scene - yes, just one scene of only 2 minutes - and find out just how bad Snape is as a teacher, and by extension, how you shouldn't bother trying to run your classrooms. Snape is awesome, if you like bad teachers, and British drawls. Evets isn't sure what a drawl is and whether it can be plural. Welcome to Potions Class.

Episode 84: Joblessness

Steve and Troy finally emerge into the sunshine after an indeterminate length of time in their respective basements and get together to waffle endlesslessly. Endless waffle is kind of like that terrible lesson you didn't prepare for, where time seems to last forever. Steve even says so. If you are looking for a 5 step solution to your joblessness woes, you won't find it here. Or maybe you will, who knows? We certainly didn't. This is the first in an 8 part series on the pleasures and pains of dealing with job change, job loss, job uncertainty, job insecurity, and all the other possible negative nouns that collocate with job. We look forward to the other 7 parts of this series, where you'll have more waffle to contend with.

Episode 83: When tests go wrong

How good is anyone's English when the tests we give are hard to understand? Even Troy can't understand these test questions, and his English is excellent. In this fun episode, Troy compiles a selection of fantastic test questions that are difficult to answer because there isn't one, or not any that we can figure out. Perhaps the problem is that we can't understand the answer key. In an unrelated caveat, this podcast was built using Zoom, which is awesome, but our editing team is a little clumsy with it. We tried all the buttons on the editing software, but that didn't help fix the audio quality. To make the podcast more engaging, as you listen try to guess what is being said. You get extra points for filling in the gaps. The answer key for this game, by the way, is wrong.

Episode 82: Managing your job interview

Troy's argument in this episode is that when you are offered a job, you need to ask a lot of very penetrating questions, and just sort of generally act the inquisitor during the interview. This makes sense because Troy often takes jobs and doesn't actually know what he's said agreed to do! Steve, on the other hand, hasn't had a job for years so doesn't know how to be interviewed, or to interrogate a job offerer (is that a word?). It also makes sense to ask lots of questions during the job interview because we want to have a job we like, and it's important to work for (and with) people that are nice.

Episode 81: Testing, assessment, quizzes, marks, scores and examinations

Welcome to pod-battle, compliments of TEFLargue. Listen, and learn how to win a fight and alienate people. Anyway, what role to tests play in a teacher's life? Should a teacher worry excessively about test quality, or just get them done to submit scores? Do exams really make any difference in language teaching, especially in schools? In Troy's defense, he did come up with a concept of a language course without any assessment, and it was a rip-roaring success. At the end of the episode, there is a 20-question multiple choice assessment worth 100 marks. Be sure to pass.