I was able to see the limits of task-based learning and my use of it when teaching a language course at a Czech university many years ago. Electrical engineering undergrads were pushed through the requirements at around B1 level with the help of a textbook, then extremely popular, Techtalk. As most of the creations of … Read moreIsn’t it what you wanted, prof?

In my collection of noteworthy students and encounters with them, Jano occupies a special spot. I was teaching him briefly while freelancing in Plzen in around 2008. I was teaching a beginners in a electronics assembly factory with workers from Vietnam, Czech Republic and Slovakia. The management were Taiwanese and the idea was that people … Read moreWhat would you do?

This is another failure story. It was when I was assigned to be a ‘foreign homeroom teacher’ at a junior high school which was set up to provide bilingual education. Unfortunately, the whole enterprise was doomed to fail from the very start due to a complete lack of expertise, common sense, funding and… well, students. … Read moreYou can cut the eraser into a thousand pieces

Whole libraries could be written, and probably have been, on ELT in China. The great country of unbelievable possibilities. All the stories.. I was teaching English conversation at one of the many provincial colleges and institutes that collect poor farmers’ money in exchange for promises of brighter futures for their kids. It’s called college, but … Read moreThe turncoat

The student I want to talk about was about 28 yo when I was teaching him. It was an on-site company course for a group of car part designers working for a German company in the Czech Republic. The course was conversational, slightly oriented towards technical vocabulary and business processes. We also discussed general topics … Read moreNeither green nor rainbow