TEFL Job Descriptions

I have pretty much abandoned the idea of working in another country next year, largely because my wife says she doesn't want to go and live in a country that she's never visited. This limits us to England and Italy, and neither country seems to be full of universities queuing up to offer me well-remunerated positions. However, I still receive mails about vacancies for English teachers, and some of the job descriptions are quite intriguing; for example, "Position title: Bright and Enthusiastic Summer Teaching Staff for Adult and Junior Courses." I know that "enthusiastic" is a euphemism for "prepared to work long hours for low pay" but I'm puzzled at why they feel the need to specify that applicants must be bright. Have they previously been swamped by dim English teachers?

Then there is "Come Teach In Lanzhou! Lanzhou!!" Lan-where? I have never been to China, but I have a reasonable knowledge of Chinese geography and history, and I had never heard of Lanzhou. Clicking on the link informed me that it is "A Cultural Center Located In A High Mountain Valley Along The Southern Bank Of The Yellow River". Clicking on Wikipedia told me the following:

Lanzhou is said to be one of the most polluted cities in China, if not around the world. The air quality is so poor that at times one can not see Lanshan, the mountain rising straight up along the south side of the city. The city is located in a narrow river valley with an unfortunate curve causing it to be hemmed in with no free air flow. Lanzhou is also the home of many factories including petroleum processing, and suffers from large dust storms kicked up from the Gobi Desert, especially in the winter and spring.

Now I see why they are so desperate to recruit.

Here is another one I liked: "The Fastest Growing Economy In The World, Teaching In China With Aston For Summer or Fall!" One wonders if this is a test: applicants will be asked to demonstrate their linguistic skills by parsing the job description. That is not a dangling participle; it is a participle which has fallen two hundred feet to its death.

Another one that is not so easy to parse (and sounds like a set of key-words for an extremely dodgy porn site) is "Adults Biz English, kids English, adults oral English position." The advert goes on to say:

franchiese school. Small class with 10 students. Teach adults or kids Englihs. One year contract. 25 teaching hours + 15 office hours per week. cities are around Shanghai

It then specifies that teachers must be native English speakers. Who knows, you may be their first.

A New Hope

As I mentioned earlier ("Knights of the Old Republic") two weeks ago several hundred thousand Turks marched in Ankara in defence of secularism and against the current "Islam Lite" government (actually some sources put the numbers in millions). The last drop that overflowed the glass (to use a Turkish idiom) was the likelihood of current PM Tayyip "You can't be a secularist and a Muslim" Erdoğan becoming president. Shortly after, the government announced that their presidential nominee would be Tayyip's side-kick, Abdullah Gül. The thinking behind this was probably that if Tayyip is Islam Lite, then Abdullah is Islam 1-Cal. (An alternative theory is that Tayyip doesn't trust his own party enough to leave them alone in parliament.)

Nobody bought it, and another demonstration has been planned for tomorrow (in Istanbul, this time). But it looks like we might just be saved by the bell. The vote in parliament today was inquorate, as a result of most of the opposition MPs walking out. The speaker tried to count seven Republican People's Party members who had wandered back in as present, but I don't think the Constitutional Court (who have to decide on the validity of the vote) will do more than chuckle over that. The good thing is that the constitution also specifies that if parliament can't choose a president, there have to be early elections. Of course there is an outside possibility that in such elections, the current government could be re-elected, in which case I might actually apply for that job in Lanzhou.