So what I do when I get bored

Well recently I've taken to thinking about Music, and the point at which music's soul crawled up it's own arsehole and died...

I think that was probably about the time Rick Astley cut a record and shortly before people started buying  his shit...

I got into a moment with a student the other day. She said that Justin Bieber was not her favourite, but that he was good, sort of ok, that he made some catchy tunes...

I have always felt that music without the musicians taking some form of high was a little on the lightside, then Bieber comes out as a drug taker and I jump on the deport him bandwagon...

I started to think, maybe I am being too hypocritical, maybe I should give the wee guy a chance, that he might not be that bad. Maybe just maybe the fact that my student was his age and I grew up with the Prodigy and Oasis that I was missing something... I got into this deep moment of thinking that maybe I have gone passed the age where I can appreciate 15 year old men children singing about love and that maybe it was time to accept I no longer got... then I realised something...

LED ZEP, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix... these people knew how to fuckin rock... I was right and my student us firmly wrong. The new music these days is everything that's wrong with the world... we tolerate mediocrity as if it is acceptable to be shit...

So I wrote this..

enjoy the-10-most-annoying-songs-ever

The proof I'm a coffeeholic

I thought I want to back up claims that I am in fact a coffeeholic.

I wrote an article a year ago about the best ways to make coffee...

Here is the link 5-ways-make-coffee

So feel free to know, yes, I do have, or did have, or will have again very soon.. a massive problem to coffee... but then it's better than crack...

The Conclusion of the Coffee Challenge

When I accepted the challenge from my student Marc of giving up coffee for 7 days I thought to myself there will not be a problem. That it would be rather simple and that I wouldn't really miss it... how wrong I was....

The first day of the challenge was a little boring and nothing really happened apart from a throbbing headache, which to be honest I thought could have been caused by something else. It pissed me off that Starbucks decided to give out some free tasters on the same day I'd vowed to give up, but I stayed strong and decided not to neglect my challenge in the same way they felt about paying taxes to the UK.

I even scored some Camomile tea left behind by another ex-student called Mabel, so that kind of substituted my need for a hot drink. I usually drink 8 or 9 cups a day between lessons so I found myself looking for things to do and wandering aimlessly in my breaks.

It was not until the second and third day that I started to feel the bad shit rising. As I sat there at work I found myself getting irritable, irate and pissed off for no reason. On the brightside I was no longer getting my daily bloodshot eyes and palpitations in my chest... so every cloud and all.

On thursday I fell asleep while chatting on Skype and woke 30 minutes later with the imprints of keys in my forehead. I have felt moody, exhausted and angry! To make matters worse I kept running into coffee such as the charming person who left 'free coffee for everyone' on a bag at work. Nice, but why this week?

I have found myself eating more chocolate, fast food and drinking more alcohol this week than in months... I had strange almost pregnant like cravings combined with the anger of Jack Nicholson..

Tomorrow I will kick the alcohol and go back to my coffee... but maybe only one cup a day... just so I never have to feel this shit again!

The Coffee Challenge: Day 1

Technically today I finished my vegetarian challenge and to be honest, aside from not having many options for my meals, it wasn't that difficult. Paul McCartney would be proud of me. It's even at the point where today I didn't bother eating meat, I just didn't feel the draw of it, so I went about my Tofu curry and bagels for sustenance.

I had planned to give up alcohol for the week, but then my ex-student Marc suggested that I should give up something I really love... coffee...

Let's put it this way - I am addicted to coffee... it feeds me and in some ways I can't live without it... in fact it shapes my day. I go to work and having had a coffee before I left. I get to work and have a coffee, then every break and gap I have one and make another ready for the start of the next class.

I'm not sure whether a good day would be classed as a day where I have a lot of coffee, or as few cups as possible, but I would say on a good day (few) I have 5 cups and on a bad day 8 or 9. In fact the other day I had so many cups that I couldn't stop my hand tapping on the board while I was writing.

So I've given it up, and I decided to not substitute it with tea cause it's still caffeine. It's the hardest thing I've ever given up so far and it's only day one. I didn't feel this bad when I gave up smoking and I used to smoke 40-50 a day. I have a headache from hell and I can't really concentrate. I found myself looking for coffee or sniffing at other peoples. I think the point to life is everything in moderation, but right now I have 6 more days to get through before I can taste this brown nectar again!  I predict tomorrow will see the shakes and more crashing. I feel like Bear Grylls on his greatest challenge. In fact I've decided to record a video of my crashing..

Oh and to make matters worse... on my first day I walked up to work on Oxford Street and Starbucks were having a discount day on all coffee and they were offering free lattes - this is the first time I have ever seen this! Oh and if you're wondering, I resisted the offer!

Vegetarian for a week...

Somehow this week I found myself going for an entire week without eating a single piece of meat or fish, which for me is a bit weird. I wasn't sure I was even doing it till about Thursday. At the start of the week I went shopping and I thought 'I know, I'll buy some Cheese, jam and porridge rather than my usual selection of Iberian hams and German sausage (I feel like making some crude sexual reference here, but seeing as I survived a week without meat I am an adult now) 

The problem is that I usually throw so much meat down my throat (I can almost hear the jokes about sexual contact with men coming from my more juvenile friends) that I found it difficult to think of what to eat. As you can see below from my 'healthy living' selection from Ireland of pies and sausage rolls there was bugger all on offer anywhere.

The only really tough day was Friday. I usually eat so much fucking takeaway that part of me being good to myself was to cut out Wasabi, Starbucks, Costa, Pret, Nero, Subway and every other fastfood joint on Oxford street where the people seemingly know me enough to use my first name and wave when I come in.

So without these options I realised two things. 1) I don't like Tofu, it's not chicken, it's more like cardboard that is soggy and 2) Vegetarians have shit choices... or they need to share their secrets.

The only benefits to being a vegetarian I found were making comments full of innuendos like 'I used to love packing back a lot of meat' and 'crikey, what I'd do for a Spanish sausage' along with trying to ruin other peoples more fun dinners by saying 'meat is murder'.

These 'perks' did not do it for me... but one thing... my body started to feel better... so... I've made a choice... I'm going to give up something I love doing each week to try living without it. It will only be non-essential things... so not water, air, mobile phone or money (sadly) but things like coffee, meat, be a vegan, alcohol. I would welcome your suggestions as to what I should give up...

Next week I'm back to meat and off the booze... this could be fucking hard...

The Birth of Troy Spiter

The other day I went to Starbucks to buy a coffee. As I ordered my medium cappuccino I reached into my pocket discovering, to my horror, that I had left my wallet in the school. Luckily one of my students was also in the cafe and offered to pay for me... a little embarrassing, but hey I am an English Teacher so I'm always happy to receive hand-outs.

The girl behind the counter asked for my name to which I responded 'Roy' - I said this as this is my name. I suddenly caught sight of what she had written and asked her to confirm. She showed me 'Troy' to which I chuckled. I love living in London, cause the amount of people from other countries who don't understand me always make me feel like I'm on a permanent holiday. Only the other day I had to try and communicate in Italian to ask whether the Burritos come in different sizes. I do not speak Italian, but a blend of Spanish, Portuguese and a few words I did know accompanied by a few mines seemed to do the trick.

So here I was confronted with the wrong name on the coffee cup and the girl behind the counter staring at me as to how to continue.  I decided to break the tension with a light comment:

"Troy, well that's ok, I mean it's an ancient civilization so that's cool, like Sparta"

In a moment of confusion the girl began to scribble on my cup again, but instead of Sparta she wrote Spiter... so when my name was called I had to respond to Troy Spiter, a man with a superhero porn star name.

The only thing that worries me is Spiter is quite close to Spit or Spitter, which I hope was not a call to arms for her colleagues to give me 'an extra shot' in the coffee of the man creating all the fuss about his name. Anyway, it tasted good, so who gives a fuck... plus now I have a new character to write a short story about.

'Sleeping' on the tube!

Sometimes on the tube it's bloody hard to get a seat, particularly when it's peak time and overcrowded, so one must, in my humble opinion, always make the most of it when the opportunity of another's arse leaving the chair arises.

So today I was at Earl's Court when the chance came my way. A man left his seated position and disembarked the tube. I moved with all the grace of an elephant with no co-ordination as I sprung into action. I took the seat and placed myself next to a man who appeared to be fast asleep and instantly took my phone out of my pocket and read some irrelevant news about something I wasn't really interested in. I did this as to avoid making contact with the other competitors who I had beaten to the prize, in fact during the whole 'taking' process I look straight down at the floor because any contact of eyes can mean my 'British politeness' kicks in and I have to forgo my challenge.

Now the other problem is the envy of others, and being a man I am often expected to give my seat up before a female. This is a lasting effect of sexual discrimination that has carried over from previous generations. In my opinion able-bodied females and males are equal in their ability to stand and therefore should both be expected to stand - you see... I believe in equality.

Now I looked at this man to my right and saw his eye open at every station to check where he was. The cheeky bugger was fake sleeping to make as to avoid the awkward glances from others who wished to accuse him of seat stealing. So I decided to join him.

I placed my phone in my pocket and closed my eyes. It is the second time I have fake-slept on the tube. The first is when I actually ended up falling asleep after closing my eyes and then woke up two stations after mine and arrived at work 25 minutes late. This time I promised it would not happen again so I would keep mentally active.

As I was reciting the Portuguese I remembered something happened. A pregnant woman got on the tube two stations after I started to fake sleep. To my horror I realised I was sat in the disabled seat you must give up for someone who needed it. To be honest I would have, and have many times in the past, given up my seat even if I wasn't in the 'special' seat. This time however it was an obligation.

I pretended to wake up, looked around, noticed the woman and said 'ohhh'. It was so fake that even I was cringing. I offered my seat and then stood up. All the other people on the tube looking at me in disgust as I slinked to the corner to avoid the glances. It was only as I vacated my seat though that I noticed a girl, about 10 years my junior, looking at me with a wry smile of victory sat in the opposite 'obligation' seat. Why was everyone staring at me to move? why not her who was younger? Is it because I'm a man, or because I was fake sleeping? I am happy to stand for anyone who needs it, but come on...

The moral of the story... I will never ever ever fake sleep again.. till next time, cause I look like a dick when I wake up and look straight at the person who wants to sit... there will be no Oscar for my this time.

The ‘World Famous’ Zombie Lesson – EFL lesson for English language students

Being an English teacher can be difficult and sometimes when energy is low in the class I feel this lesson really helps to bring the levels right back up. It's great for General English and I have mainly done it with upper-intermediate and advanced students but the truth is this lesson has so much scope and depth for language learning that you can add to it and take as much from as you want.... so ladies and gentlemen I give you the world famous Zombie lesson invented by myself (because I love zombies and you should always use your passions and interests to re-enforce your lesson cause I believe if you love it, your students will too)... and it is my proudest achievement so far to date in the English language learning world. J

Introduction – I usually start with the topic of zombies – 'what they are' etc to illicit the vocabulary that they will need such as – death, re-animation (this one can be tough), zombie, walking dead etc. I also ask them if they have watched ‘The Walking Dead’ as this can scupper the gist task 2... so you need to establish who has seen season one of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ and who has not. Once you feel you have enough vocabulary feel free to move on.

Gist Task 1 – I show them the first of two videos. The first is the longer version of the season one trailer for ‘The Walking Dead’ and takes about four minutes. I ask them to watch so they can tell me what is happening in the trailer.

After watching the above trailer the students will then quickly talk in pairs and discuss what they saw. What you can teach here is passive and active voice such as ‘the car was being chased by the police’ against ‘the police were chasing the criminal’ or ‘the policeman was shot’ and ‘the criminals shot the policeman’

You also want them to tell you what happened in the trailer – you can watch it above to list your own objectives. I usually use it to teach present continuous with present simple or past continuous with past simple (interrupted past). I will usually have taught this structure in a lesson before. So for example ‘the police were chasing the car when it rolled over’ or ‘the Sheriff was riding a horse when he bumped into a horde (crowd could be more useful J) of zombies. They should also mention the fact that the policeman is looking for his wife and son.

Follow-up to Gist task 1 - I usually get them to write up the story of the trailer to re-enforce the grammar and vocabulary used. (You can already see how many different points you can focus on in this lesson)

Gist Task 2 - So now I show them the second, slightly shorter, 2 minute trailer and this is the point you need to have established who has watched the show or who not. This second one is similar but just more concise. What I get them to do is watch the video and then in pairs make predictions about what will happen during the season. I give them the protagonists name (Rick) to make it easier for them. If there are people who have watched the season I always put them together with people who haven’t to ask them questions. 'What do you think will happen to Rick?' etc. 

Here you may need to pre-teach how to express opinions such as ‘I think, believe, feel (teach them as synonyms in certain cases and that in these cases think and feel are not used in the continuous tense), reckon and even hope etc along with making predictions such as ‘I think Rick will find is family’ or (using evidence in the present) ‘I feel we are going to see a lot of zombies being killed’ (again passive voice).

Follow-up Task – Well here you can do a few things such as make a presentation about what they think will happen or again a writing task to re-enforce the language or just leave it as a speaking task and report back to the class.

Main Task (option 1) – Here is where things get a little more fun and I teach ‘making suggestions and expressing opinions or negotiation skills’ which could be the main aim of the lesson (it usually is with mine). I set a scenario of a zombie apocalypse and tell that, in my case, zombies are all over London and on Oxford street but they have not yet entered our building. That it is just us left and for the exercise imagine that their families and friends are safe. Tell them that we need to escape before the zombies come in and kill us all.

Before I give them this task I usually pre-teach modals and grammar structures such as:

‘Need’ for necessity

‘Must and Have to’ for obligation and very strong suggestions

‘Should and Ought to’ for strong suggestions

‘Could and can’ for possibility and ability

‘Second conditional’ (If I were you...) to make suggestions

Etc... 

there is so much language that can be taught here. You can also re-enforce that when acting as a modal ‘have and ought’ need to have ‘to’ or the ‘infinitive with to’ while the other modals use the ‘infinitive without to’ except for ‘need’ which uses the ‘infinitive with to’ or a noun. You can also show them that second conditional to make suggestions usually uses ‘were’ and not ‘was’ so ‘If I were you’ not ‘If I was you’ but you can teach them neither is wrong in reality, just that ‘were’ seems to be preferred.

After this I get them to write down a few ideas with a partner such as ‘we need to take water with us’ or ‘we should make a weapon’.  After a few minutes I split the room into groups and get them to make a plan of how to escape so ideas like ‘build a ladder’ or ‘steal a car’ (you can talk about the alarm attracting the attention of the zombies) or ‘run for your lives’ have all been ideas I have heard. When they have created a plan I get them to tell the room their plans. Then I tell them they all need to agree on one plan. Here they should use comparatives such as safer and better or superlatives.  When they agree on something I get them to report the final idea and the lesson could be/is over and ‘we escape’.

Main Task 2 – this is an alternative or an extra depending on how long your lesson is or how you feel J. It is a writing task.

I ask the students to write a story. This is creative writing so you need to ask them to decide in pairs the characters and the setting for the zombie apocalypse. I get them to write a 180 – 250 word short story. In this they will use ‘past perfect, past simple and past continuous’ among other tenses and get them to read it back to the classes. This only works if you’ve pre-taught the tenses.

Again the scope from here is limitless as sometimes I get the students to choose their favourite and then tell them Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to the movie so now they need to write a scene from it and then get them to act it out... oh and specify that all students must be human, being a zombie just allows them to avoid using English haha.

Conclusion... well I hope you love my Zombie lesson as much as I do... and I am sure there is so much more scope to be had from it so I would welcome any ideas you all may have.  It has always been a success in class and raised the energy levels and trust me when I say I have done it quite a few times J.

Thank you for reading and let me know how it goes.

Roy

PS thanks to AMC for giving me something so amazing to teach :) 

        

The party never dies... ish

So this weekend my friends and I wandered off for the weekend to Chatham-del-Sol in sunny Kent... possibly - not really sure where the hell it is to be honest... but it does have an island where they used to build nuclear submarines and now you can't plant root vegetables cause of the nuclear waste - which is exciting as there is a distinct possibility that the first wave of X-Men may now be living in a town south of London... or many people could be suffering radiation poisoning, which is not so exciting - so I prefer to live in the belief of X-Men.

That said we did go kayaking and then went for a little party... This video was inspired by my Spanish students who love that song that says 'I went to Spain', 'What the fuck' and 'La genta esta muy loca' and may I say the party never dies ... ish (its possibly time for me and my friends to be put out to graze... but I have no intention of going out gracefully - not when I've got these silky dance moves)

The birth of a new word!

As an English teacher it is my duty to educate my students how to speak English grammatically correctly and also to be able to identify the correct adjectives and vocabulary to use in an everyday life...

My job does not include the creation of a brand new word... however...

I have a student in my morning class by the name of Alvaro from Spain who enjoys extreme sports and is what most people would refer to as an outdoor type of person. Somewhere along the line during class joking and conversation Alvaro came to be regarded by the class as something close to the Spanish Chuck Norris.

It was in this mornings class that we were talking about adjectives to describe personality including words like calm, bossy and adventurous.

It was upon this word I took to the board and wrote this as a joke...

Alvarious (adjective)
/æl-vɑr-i-əs/

- used to describe someone who is exceptionally adventurous 
- a person who laughs in the face of danger 

"I'm feeling very alvarious tonight"

"He must be incredibly alvarious if he wants to jump out of that moving plane without a parachute"


I had forgotten the influence of the board and upon turning round at least one student was faithfully copying down the new adjective. Ben Parker's words "with great power, comes great responsibility" that he said to Peter Parker sprung into my mind and while the majority of students had already grasped it was a joke I explained that this wasn't a real adjective... or was it? Technically any word that gets used is a word, even if it is not official in the Oxford dictionary, and that is the clincher. If a word is used by enough people to enter the common speech of the population it will become an officially recognised as a word. Therefore from this day forward the word alvarious will be used on a daily basis for it already is a word and the birth of that word was today.

The latest of the English Idioms...

Well so I thought I would share some of the articles I have been writing to help people on here as well ...

so here goes...

Here is the latest one I wrote on the origin of the phrase The Bee's knees