2013

Girls and guys, 

ladies and gentlemen,

The year is just about to end, so a new one can begin. But before it does, let us stop for a moment. Instead of making resolutions for the coming year, I usually prefer to ask (myself and others) about the one that is to close. Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly), people tend to feel uncomfortable about reckoning. Funnily, however, if you take the lead and share, they do join and find the words. And very often we realize how much our experiences are connected -- and we are, contrary to our fear, not lost and alone.

Like with hard conversations. We all have issues that need to be shared but we fear them. We all like to postpone the discussion, so we can ignore the consequences. We all tend to imagine how the other would react, and often times it is dreadful, which justifies our passivity. But while we are waiting, the frustration is eating us up. 

For me 2013 was about these hard conversations. I got fed up with what I thought was acceptance but in reality was just silence, and I decided to take the risk of being active, thus fallible and vulnerable. 

I confronted my employers and I became independent. I confronted my family and I found support. 

I confronted myself and the world stood by me.

Hard conversations are the hardest while within the closet of our heads. Let us come out.

Best wishes, of courage and trust, for 2014,

Anna

learning a new language is difficult but also mind-opening

For the last interview of the year, I invited Aaron, an American from Maine, who now lives in Northern Ireland with his bilingual family. The reason why I chose him as the guest for our year-closing tea party is partly to address the peculiar issue of native speakers, raised after the last interview, and partly to satisfy reader requests of a longer, more analytic discussion. Aaron, before moving to the Great Britain, stayed in Hungary for 7 years, which is how I got to know him. As an instructor at Hungary's leading university, he was a great motivator for me to go deep into matters and to express my thoughts as precisely as possible. Let this discussion be a tribute to the past and an inspiration for the future.

Welcome, Aaron. Thank you for accepting our invitation. Do you ever drink tea or are you still a fan of beer?

Ha ha! Well, I do still enjoy a nice pint once in a while (it’s hard not to in the land of Guinness). But, yes, I drink tea quite a bit. Coffee used to be my morning beverage of choice, but now I generally only drink it in the afternoon, if I’m in a café or something like that.

As stereotypical as it is, I still have to ask: why did you leave your home, a country so many people dream of moving to?

How much time have you got! The short (-ish) answer is that in the late 1990s, I was feeling a bit dissatisfied with life – maybe it was American life, maybe it was life in general. With this much distance, I can’t really say for sure. The late ‘90s was a time of “irrational exuberance” to use a term that was coined at the time, and I had come to feel like rampant consumerism was an aspect of life that I wasn’t incredibly interested in taking part in.

The timing was perfect at the end of the ‘90s – I had an aversion to my current lifestyle, an overwhelming desire to try something new, and a friend to do it with so that we could spur each other on. We spent a year investigating and weighing our options, and by the summer of ’99 had decided on doing a CELTA at International House Budapest. Our idea at the time was that we’d get our CELTA’s and if we didn’t like Budapest, we could then move on somewhere else. As I noted previously, I ended up staying for nearly eight years, so I guess there was something about the place that kept me there!

How did you cope with the fact that whenever you moved, you left a part of your life behind?

That’s a good question. The truth is, I had moved around a lot as a child, first from town to town, then, within my “hometown,” from neighborhood to neighborhood. Although on a much smaller scale than moving to different countries, I think it might have prepared me a bit for the phenomenon you describe. I switched schools several times as a child and also had to get used to making new neighborhood friends. As much as there is a sense of loss that goes with that, there’s also the adventure that comes with finding your way in a new place, making new friends, getting the lay of the land, and so on. 

Having said that, I have dealt with my fair share of homesickness and mopey nostalgia. Living in the electronic age helps. When I was doing my year abroad in Dublin, there was no e-mail, and there was only one pay phone in my residence hall. If I wanted to talk to family or friends at home, I could try and see if they were home, but it was actually more effective to post a letter and inform them in advance of the day and time I’d be calling. Imagine! These days with email and skype, I can talk to anybody I want to at just about any time, so the feeling of being completely isolated from friends and family is somewhat diminished. 

 

 
But, to be honest, I do sometimes miss a sense of being part of a rooted community with a prolonged residence someplace where I’ve known people for years and years. It’s just one of the things I’ve had to sacrifice for this slightly more wandering lifestyle I’ve chosen.

Now let’s turn to the issue of communication. Many claim that for native English speakers much more doors are open in the globalized world. What is your opinion about it?

English is the global language – whether we like it or not. This may change in the future for various reasons, but unless something catastrophic happens, I can’t imagine it changing any time soon. As a result, native-speakers have an advantage in that they don’t have to spend time learning the language. Generally speaking, that is – as with all languages, things like education, geography, social and economic class, etc., contribute to one’s ability to communicate in one’s native language. Some English speakers do have a notion that just being native speakers gives them the ability to teach the language, which is far from true. But for the most part, speaking English does give one opportunities that speaking most other languages likely doesn’t. I don’t mean to imply that this is good or bad, or that it makes English as a language superior to any other language – it’s simply the point in history in which we live.

The flipside is two-fold. First, it affords native-English speakers a sense of entitlement and laziness when it comes to other languages that I think is probably not healthy. Learning a new language is difficult. However, it’s not only incredibly rewarding but also mind-opening. English speakers who choose to rely solely on their English-speaking skills miss out on a lot. They also can come across as arrogant or insular, which is an attitude that much of the world already ascribes to Americans and the British, so we do ourselves and our image no favors when we refuse to open up to other cultures, including linguistically.

Second, and as somewhat of an extension of the first, there is an element of hegemony that goes hand-in-hand with English’s dominance that I think a lot of English teachers become uncomfortable with at some point in their career. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it linguistic colonialism, but there is a sense among many (teachers and learners, but also the business community, tourists, etc.) that English’s status as the predominant global language somehow makes it a “better” language or a “more important” language, concepts that carry more than a bit of chauvinism.

I guess I think that nobody should feel bad about being a native speaker of English, because that is what it is, but at the same time, native speakers should be aware of the inordinate amount of privilege that comes with being a native speaker, and should try to remain vigilant about not developing a superior attitude based on what is, let’s face it, an accident of birth.

In your experience, how is language a barrier (in a non-English speaking country like Hungary, or in the English-speaking but dialectal Great Britain)?

Well, I guess it’s different for me as a native-speaker of English than it might be for a speaker of a different language. When I first arrived in Hungary, English use was still not very widespread among the population, but I could make my way. As I struggled to learn Hungarian, having English was definitely helpful. But the language barrier was still there. If I needed to do anything official (like getting my residency sorted) or if there was an emergency (like when I broke my arm once), I had to rely on my Hungarian friends to help me – thankfully, I quickly met many very kind people. 

On the flip side, I occasionally attend events in Northern Ireland organized by the Hungarian community here, and I meet some people who have absolutely no English, and I think the barrier to them is much greater. Nobody in NI who isn’t Hungarian speaks Hungarian. So having no English at all is an incredible difficulty for many people who’ve come here looking for economic opportunity. 

In terms of my own English being different from British English, or, really, Northern Irish English, well, it’s mainly the source of amusement more than anything else. It can very occasionally be frustrating when a vocabulary term comes up that isn’t an example of one of the well-known differences (e.g. lift v. elevator). It took me a while to discover that what I call a “spatula” is a “fish slice” over here, which makes absolutely no sense to me! Ha! But that’s really nothing more than a minor inconvenience when compared to the situation of somebody whose very livelihood is affected by language barriers.

Do you have any memorable or funny incident related to language use?

When I first arrived in Budapest with my friend, we were in a small pub near Moszkva tér. We had heard about this great Hungarian drink called pálinka, and we knew that szilva (plum) was meant to be the best. So we asked the bartender for két szilvapálinka (two plum pálinkas). He didn’t understand us at all. It seemed strange to me that he wouldn’t, as we were in a pub, and what other “plum” item might we be asking for. 

Well, it had to do with our (very bad) pronunciation. We were pronouncing PÁlinka something like paLINKa, and he just didn’t get it. After a few minutes of this, a Hungarian guy we’d met once or twice before at the same pub came in and we got him to help us out. He told the bartender what we wanted, the bartender said something back, and they both started laughing. Turns out the bartender was hearing us say “szilvapelenka” and he was very confused about why these two foreigners would be asking for two plum nappies!

Finally, what advice would you give to someone considering living abroad?

My first advice would: Do It! Even if it’s only for a few months, there’s nothing that’s quite as personally enriching or mind-opening as living in and experiencing a new culture, even if it’s only as far as the country next door.

Second, I would advise going for at least a year, if possible. In my experience, roughly the first three months are taken up by wonder – wow, they do it THAT way here? Oh my, this food is incredible! And so on. Then, after about three months, the homesickness kicks in – the things that seemed quirky and interesting become annoying or, worse, alienating. That can be a very hard thing to experience, but it’s getting on the other side of that misery – which can take a few weeks or a few months – when the experience begins to blossom into something really rewarding. After six months or so, one starts to feel a part of a place. You know the lay of the land, how the busses work, where the best pubs, restaurants, shops are, how to open a bank account, use the postal service, and so on. And with all of those comforts under your belt, you can really begin to experience a place as something like a local. It’s when you start to feel like you live in a place and aren’t just visiting that you really begin to internalize the experience, and that sense of identification is an incredibly valuable reward.

Thank you for your thoughts. Next time you will be my guest for some szilvapálinka.

Thank you, and Happy New Year!

o come

The holidays are approaching. Let me wish you a peaceful, yet inspirational period with a song which is traditional, yet modern at the same time, bridging not only cultures but also time and space. I wish you openness and joy.

PS.: O come, let us adore TEA. :-)

self-reflection

Like I wrote before, the end of the year calls for summary and closure. With children, I tend to find that creative frameworks work better, also for such a "serious" task as summarizing and visualizing the progress achieved in a period. With adults, however, more straight-forward methods seemed appropriate. First, I wanted to write, efficient, but I realized that would be an overstatement. Why? Because I experience that these self-reflective summaries have a very limited efficiency. Some people are more willing and able to observe (themselves) but a large majority just settles for what they think the teacher wants to hear.

I keep repeating that these evaluation forms are important to take seriously, because it is self-reflection that provides the most realistic feedback about their weekly efforts, serving either as an impetus or as a heads-up. And by the way, the assessment can be a source of valuable information for the teacher, the facilitator of those weekly efforts, as well. 

Funnily, the most useful feedback I received in these feedback forms was from a guy who didn't have the courage in any other way to ask me to call him not Andris (Andy) but András (Andrew).

i learned all this

At the end of the year, I like to summarize what we have done -- what material we have practiced and what skills we have developed. The goal is two-fold: I find it both effective and rewarding, for the student and for the teacher, to see the steps of progress.

What I did with my kid learner was that I collected the works of art we produced in the preceding months, took a photo of them, and designed some tasks connected to each. This way, we spent some time with appreciating the piece of art, while also refreshing and practicing the knowledge we had acquired during the creative process.

 My student was very enthusiastic about the summative-reflective manual work -- until I made an unfortunate decision and told her that I have a Christmas surprise for her. From that moment, she couldn't wait to get over and done with the before-so-exciting summary, so she can succumb to the overpowering curiosity that only a child (or a genius) can have. 

To put a fair end to the story, I also reflected on what I had learned: I learned, when with children, to speak as little as possible. :-)

fail better

As I look back on the blog, I seem to have focused on sharing success stories. Well, on the one hand, naturally. Who would wanna dig herself into the memory of failures? (Actually, many people – the little voice cries out in my head. :-) While it is OK not to recite one’s misdemeanors and disappointments over and over again, it is necessary to face them every once in a while. Because, ultimately, they are there to teach us. So, let’s see my Top 3 Failures in Education.

ever tried. ever failed.

Number 3 failure story was set in a business English class of a group with a relatively high level of language competence. During the lessons, we watched TED talks, had extensive discussions, and gave presentations on various topics, from serious to fun ones. Since they liked short videos and authentic English, I decided, before that notorious class, to bring some excerpts from the well-known pop series Friends. Not only did I include some videos, the class was closely built on those short conversations we were supposed to watch. Friends had proved to be a hit in every previous context I used it, until this one. It was not only that almost no one had known the series and the characters (which I expected they would), but they couldn’t even follow the 2-3-minute conversations. And, as I said, all the activities were based on this. I don’t need to go into details: the class was wasted.

And I cannot even say that it had to be a total surprise. They were in their 30s-40s, that is, not the ideal age group for sitcoms, and it was obvious from previous experiences that they were not too up-to-date in pop culture either. If not to expect it, I could have at least considered the option of a plan B.

no matter. try again.

Number 2 was more (socially) devastating. As part of my teacher training, I had to teach English in a model high school for a couple of months. These 16-year-olds were my very first group and they mesmerized me completely. I still remember how shocked I was to see that my students always listened and did what I asked them (too bad reality is rarely like this, at least in high school contexts). We had a nice routine worked out: some grammar, some discussion, a variety of tasks, and … every fourth class some oral comprehension, in the frames of watching an episode of the series they had chosen, How I Met Your Mother. I didn’t particularly like HIMYM but they apparently did, which is what mattered.

Our last class was approaching, which was both my exam class and our farewell, so I wanted to prepare with something special. You know, something memorable. (How naive I was!) It was time for HIMYM and the upcoming episode had a particular scene – one character in a funny apron (having the body of Michelangelo’s David) – which I decided to bring to life. I thought, how funny, how cool. So, when the episode was over, I slowly turned to them, wearing the exact same apron – that is, a naked male body. They froze. It was so shockingly surprising for them – so unexpected from me, their teacher – that they couldn’t say a word. Well, the silence made me awfully conscious that I was standing butt-naked in front of a group of teenagers. Our worst nightmare, isn’t it?

Again, I could have expected. Or rather, I could have prepared them. They were too “nice students,” and I was a “too nice teacher” for something improper to be OK, let alone, hilarious.

fail again. fail better.

All-time-winning failure story was one of the courses I had to teach at the university. It is one thing that I never got courses in the discipline I specialized and did my doctoral studies in (cognitive linguistics). In a way, I even liked it. Presentation practice, academic writing, and blog writing were fields I felt important for all students to learn (much more than my own specialization, which I considered relevant only for a few) and I had things to say about them. Although I never systematically was taught about these, I was intuitively good at them, so it was enough to read a couple of books about them to make my knowledge more conscious and organized, ready for teaching.

Once, however, I was given a course I felt completely unprepared for. It was a specialization course, in the second year of a journalism program. By the time the students got to my course, they were already heavily trained about the journalistic genres, styles, and peculiarities of the American journalistic tradition. I, on the other hand, had no experience and no material to pass on. This course (American English in Journalism) was something nobody wanted to teach, nobody had an idea what and how to teach, and it was not embedded into the program. I was left without assistance – in the hands of a group of exceptionally self-confident and self-conscious students, who were encouraged and comfortable about expressing expectations.

I did my best, and, looking back, it was not a worthless course, but I can’t erase that semester-long feeling of inadequacy from my head. It was just horrible.

What did I learn from these experiences? That I can make mistakes and it is OK.

edudemic, the december epidemic

Like before, let us begin the month with the introduction of an educational tool. In the previous months, I covered curating tools like Pinterest, Scoop.it, and LessonPaths, which help you collect and organize (not just) educational material. With the coming holidays, they can be emphatically useful: you can find and gather recipes, decorations, and games among others, so you have an enjoyable and full experience of the end of the year, inside and outside of the classroom.

This time, however, I decided to turn the directions a bit, to educational sites. The first to mention is Edudemic. You can read, without having to register, informative articles about trends, tools, social media, and communities, which are all labeled, so your search can be quick and precise. 

For our interest is the article listing the most influential educational blogs of the year. Let us make TEA a strong candidate for 2014! :-)

the world from a different point of view

In the last two months we had the pleasure to take a peek into the lives of two expats, one Slovenian and one Hungarian. Both Danijela, working in Hungary, and Bori, staying in Germany, reported to be satisfied with their choice of living in a foreign country but admitted the hardships coming from the fact that they communicate in English in a country whose native language is different. Today I brought you Eszter, who has chosen to work in a country whose official language is English. Ladies and gentleman, let's hear about life in Scotland.

Welcome to our TEA room. Are you already fed up with drinking tea, or your Scottish stay hasn't made a negative impact on you in these regards?

Thanks for the tea and the invitation. I'm not fed up neither with tea, nor malt whiskey yet. = )

Good, then let's get started. Why did you decide to leave your home country?

I had several reasons. The most important is that I need money to travel around the world, and earning it in Hungary takes ages. Secondly, I want to be an appreciated bartender in a fancy cocktail bar, but without significant experience and acquaintances it's hardly possible at home. Finally, it's fun to live a totally different life.

So you enjoy being an expat?

Eventually, yes. I like this role: being a cute little foreigner. However, sometimes it's a bit disappointing when someone thinks I'm dumb, just because I don't understand something. But I guess it's more rather me that thinks I'm dumb if I don't understand exactly what I was told or can't express myself properly. But I've still got a lot of time to improve.

Well, as I hear, you have some difficulties in communication. How does the English you learned in school relate to the actual usage of the locals?

Scottish English is notorious... it's hardcore, like any other dialect in the UK. The English language we learned at school isn't spoken by almost anybody, except for the cute, old English ladies wearing pearl and drinking tea. And there are also differences between Scottish accents. For example the Western or Glaswegian is terrible...  

Huh, terrible. And what is your experience about the Scottish themselves? 

Since I'm working in a hotel, we have had a lot of weddings, and it's cute to see that at the altar both people are wearing skirts, even though one of them is called 'kilt'.  Scottish people are friendly with some strange traditions they are so proud of.

 

Did you have any other memorable or funny incident, related to language use?

It was two years ago, when I was working on the west coast as a waitress. When my manager on my very first day turned to me and said 'Tablesex!', I was a bit shocked. Because of course, everything for the career, but I found it slightly inappropriate. (Besides, she wasn't my type at all.) It took me a second to realize that she was just referring to Table 6 and asking me to take their orders. 

Funny, indeed. Lucky you that you didn’t start undressing! Finally, to turn to a more serious tone, what advice would you give to someone considering to live abroad?

If you have the opportunity, take it. In the beginning it's going to be hard, but not as scary as you thought before... And your decision doesn't need to last till eternity: if you had enough or changed your mind, you can go somewhere else or back home. But it's worth to see the world from a different point of view. And it's pretty good to feel that your money has got an actual value.

Good luck with the delicious cocktails and fancy bars! Invite us over once.

to buy or not to buy

Tomorrow is going to be Buy Nothing Day. As the organizers put it, "Buy Nothing Day highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of consumerism," because only 20 percent of the population consumes 80 percent of the world's resources. A week ago my post addressed the very same issue: the pressing imbalance of the distribution of wealth and rights. 

What this initiative wants to point at is that consumerism, the constant drive to buy newer and newer things, is just a habit, not a need. And it has severe consequences that we need to take responsibility for. Let's participate by not participating!

In my institution there was a "used goods swap," to honor the day. You could bring clothes, household appliances, sports gear, and so on, as long as they were in acceptable condition. For each item, you got one coupon, which entitled you to exchange it to any other item. Whatever was not taken home by anyone was donated to charity. I submitted 16 items I hadn't been using for some time, and brought home 9 new ones, including a fancy jacket and a practical bowl.

To end on a bittersweet note, however nice the initiative was, very few participated. Despite the fact that it was hosted and advertised in an American private institution of mostly higher middle class students from Central Eastern Europe and the United States, it was predominantly the Hungarian -- not too affluent -- staff that contributed. To my question, how much she was satisfied, one organizer succinctly said: well, next time..

.. we will shop less and live more. Amen.

creativity?

Creativity is a crucial element in my life. It is as much my antidote to boredom and monotonicity, as it is my expression of vitality and presence. I cannot imagine teaching, or more generally, human relations, to survive without it. However, I had to realize that, even though this statement may hold true, what creativity means for the specific person or group of people is not self-evident. 

With children I tend to experience that creativity means handicraft, involving drawing, coloring, cutting, gluing, assembling, and so on, which must bring a tangible result -- a piece of art to take home.

For academic people, may they be students or professors, it is much more verbal production that is the safe manifestation of creativity. Debating challenging topics or writing dialogues and short essays functions as the canvas for them to express their intellectual power and creativity.

 

The toughest cookie, as far as creativity is concerned, seems to be the business environment. Accepting that it is a far too broad category, I still feel like grouping office jobs together, because, no matter what the specific topic and field is, they are quite standard in their expectation, and in the implications, of sticking the employees to their chairs for 8 hours. In such circumstances, the language teacher needs to be cautious with too much of creativity imposed on workers who, outside of the classes, are required much more to bear and conduct monotonous tasks. With business English students, what seemed to work is the variation of activities, each involving just a little bit of creativity, so to keep them within their comfort zones but to bring some color into the office black-and-white.

It also happened that someone just couldn't tolerate any extent of creativity. He refused to engage in pair assignments, situational tasks, or discussions involving personal opinion, let alone in the creation of his visual resume. I must say, I was struggling with him for a month until I managed to reconcile the group's needs, my expectations, and the dynamics of the class with his comfort zone. I don't intend to imply that he was wrong; he was just the exception, in that group. And it's a piercing dilemma how to "leave no man behind" but to satisfy the needs of the majority.