HOW TO BE A BORING TEACHER

by Luke Prodromou

Tribute to a guru

When I started out to teach English as a foreign language I fell under the influence of a
remarkable teacher. Before sitting at his feet I had read all his books and they made a deep
impression on me. They shaped the way I saw not onLy ELT but life itself. Imagine my
excitement when I discovered that my guru was coming to town to give the opening plenary
at our annual conference of English teachers. I secured a place in the front row of the hug
auditorium and watched spellbound as my hero stepped to the podium. He took one sapient
look at the audience, took up a sheaf of papers, put them on the lectern in front of him, put his
head down and began to read., his hands clutching the sides of the lectern as if he were
hanging on to a sinking ship. And my heart sank as for the next ninety minutes he read out his
text in an monolithic monotone, scholarly references and all: Guru (1980), Guru (1998), Guru
(forthcoming). At the same time, we got a perfect view of the top of his head, which had
already shed most of its natural covering. For ninety minutes we saw ourselves in the shining
dome of my guru's head. And I thought of Hamlet when he says the aim of all lectures by
experts on ELT was and is as it were to hold a mirror up to the teaching profession. So taking
my cue from my guru, let me begin.

A course in BTM

Do people drift away from you as you are talking ? Do people look abstractedly into the
distance as you begin to wax lyrical about one of your pet subjects / Do your interlocutor's
eyes glaze over blankly as you at them earnestly explaining some fine point of Chomskyan
linguistics ? Does the punchline of what you think is one of your funniest jokes fall flat as a
pancake? Are you invited to parties less and less frequently that you would like to be? Do you
wish you too were an exciting, scintillating, magnetic teacher, whom students worship and
give Christmas presents? If you answered yes to all of these questions then you will not need
to attend the crash course in How to be a boring teacher that follows. Alternatively, you may
be looking for even more ways to be a boring Language teacher; if so, read on.

1 Let students do nothing

Yes, that's right. Do all the work yourself. Take the register yourself. Explain what you did the
previous lesson yourself. Read out the text from the coursebook yourself; read out the
comprehension questions from the book yourself; answer the questions yourself; write the
answers on the board yourself and then rub the board clean yourself. Just get the students to
listen to your lovely voice, droning on, showing them how clever you are. After all, it is not
for nothing that you went University. Do not keep your light under a bushel. Let them see
how much you know.
2 Teach the book

Yes. Start from page one and go straight through to the last page of the textbook. Lesson after
lesson. Unit after unit. Do NOT by any means introduce any extraneous material into the
lesson. Remember: the textbook is your Bible; it is like holy Scripture, not to be tampered
with, questioned or rewritten. It is complete and self-contained, in no need of
supplementation. After all, what kind of religious freak would write his or her own Bible? You
must look up to Norman Whitney and Tom Hutchinson as saints of the holy church of TEFL.
They are omniscient: they know everything; you are benighted - you know nothing (Socrates)
and your students don't know nothing neither (Bob Dylan).

3 Be right all the time

Armed with the infallible textbook, you are now ready to be right all the time. you have all the
answers and you correct all the mistakes; you must let no-one infringe on your right to be
right. Remember the aim of all good teaching was and is to demonstrate to the learner what he
or she does NOT know. To confront them as it were with deserts of ignorance. This will
produce in them a thirst for knowledge, which only you can quench (with the help of a good
teacher's book) which gives all the correct answers so you don't have to think too hard. Your
power lies in your possession of the right answer, and its revelation to erring students. Be a
TEFL fundamentalist and you will never go wrong. At word: when a student commits an
error, makes a mistake or a slip jump on them (the mistakes not the students).

4 Assume they know nothing

Explain everything in full laborious detail. Do not by any means assume the students have
done any English before or have heard of English grammar. Do not by any means draw on
their experience of life, their knowledge of the world or other school subjects. Your students
are a blank sheet of paper or as Locke said tabula rasa; your a full vessel, they are empty
vessels (which is why you may find them a bit noisy at times); the emptier your students are
the more noise they will be heard to make. This is known as having a discipline problem. It is
nothing to be alarmed about, all boring teachers have one; so ensure you have stern
disciplinary measures in reserve. Do not let yourself be deceived into indulging in permissive
modern methods such as eliciting (indeed in some EFL contexts eliciting in class is frowned
upon as time-wasting and even immoral). When beginning a new listening or reading text, go
straight into it. Do not shilly-shally around asking students what they might or might not
know about the subject they are going to listen to or read. Do not procrastinate. Remember the
English proverb: he or she who hesitates is lost. So get on with it

5 Sit still

Before you can achieve any of the above basic principles of BTM you need to appreciate the
importance of body language; so make yourself comfortable at your desk at the front of the
class and stay put. This is called 'ensconcing yourself' and it is quite easy to learn. Do stand up
if you possibly avoid it. And do not fidget. Your place is in your chair, firmly fixed in one
place, not wandering aimlessly round the room, standing in this corner or that. Students
should know where to find you when they want to speak (to each other - or cheat in a test);
You shouldn't be popping up unpredictably in odd places in the classroom. Some very
unconventional teachers have been known to stand at the back of the room where all they can
see is the back of students' heads. In some extreme cases, they have even been known to stand
on the desk itself. Such behaviour reminds one of the worst excesses of the French
Revolution. (Wilde).

6 Be predictable

It emerges naturally from what has been said above that you should wherever possible and in
all things try and be predictable. You should have a fixed routine for doing everything so
students know exactly what is coming. Your lesson should have a beginning, middle and an
end, in that order, not as in some new fangled methods beginning with the end and going
backwards. Always begin with Presentation; always follow this with Practice and always
finish with Production. In this way, you will always be safe: stick to PPP and you will never
come unstuck, as Eckersley said.

7 Speak in a monotone

You should not vary the pitch in your voice if you can possibly help it. You should try and
drone on in the most tedious monotone your vocal cords are capable of producing. Say
everything in the same dull way: do not distinguish between explanations and questions;
instructions and asides; the beginning or the end of your discourse; the serious bits and the
funny bits, the important and the trivial. All of your utterances, whatever their function must
sound the same. God gave you one voice - you should not make yourself another (Hamlet).

8 Make sure students are idle

Whatever else you do watch your timing. Do not expect that students might finish an exercise
at different times and do not have any activities in reserve for early finishers. Early finishers,
like the mixed ability ideology which has given rise to this pernicious concept, is a figment of
teacher trainers' vivid imagination. They too have to make a living. All classes are of the same
level and all students work at the same pace, in the same way. If by any chance some learners
do finish a task early do not burden them with extra exercises or tasks. Give them a chance to
relax and see what's going on outside the window or in the room next door. Do not be a tyrant:
students should be left atone now and then so they can chat idly to their neighbour, preferably
in their own language. This is the time for the mother-tongue not during the lesson per se.
After all, why should students have to speak a foreign language all the time. Remember, they
have a language and culture of their own, which can help fill any unexpected gaps in the
lesson. So: hands of those early finishers; hands off the mother-tongue.

9 Lose your students

This strategy does not refer to the annual trip to Britain to see the sights, Big Ben, Madame
Tussauds and whatnot. The truly boring teacher never agrees to trips of any variety, Long or
short: the boring teacher's private life is his or her own - he or she should not be expected to
squander it in the company of students, who no doubt have their own private life, which is
strictly a personal matter. No. Losing your students means making sure students do not know
what it is you're talking about.
 In no circumstances should you pause to check that they are stilt with you. If they have not
understood that is their problem, not yours. Do not speak slowly to ensure all students are
following: if they can't stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. (George Bush).

10 Keep talking

Related to the previous point is the very important principle of keeping the flow of teacher
talk going non-stop. If you are not fluent, who is?

And how on earth are students going to develop fluency if they do not have a good model to
imitate? Remember, as Pavlov said,: imitation is the mother of learning, and as Skinner added,
parrots Learn best. So keep talking and never be at a loss for words.
A lot of nonsense has been written in recent years by armchair TEFL experts about the need to
motivate students and involve them in the process of learning. Students they tell us are the
centre of the language learning process and that our ultimate objective is the autonomy of the
learner.

This is the waffle of people haven't been inside a classroom for years, who have lost touch
with reality and. They are the fantasies of frustrated revolutionaries who wouldn't recognise a
large mixed ability class if they saw one. And they have the cheek to tell us what to do. It is
time we stood up for tradition and what we know works in the classroom.
If I could end on a lyricaL note: the teacher is the centre of a Copernican classroom and the
students like so many planets orbit around the teacher in their eternal chaste beauty. When the
students know their place and move in harmony around the teacher's authority and wisdom
you will hear a divine music emanating from this dance of the classroom galaxy. Students are
so many strings on the teacher's bow: untune those strings and hark what discord follows!
(Troilus and Cressida).

If you follow the few words of advice given in this short course on BTM you can guarantee
the optimum level of boredom or OLB in your classroom. You are guaranteed to turn your
students against you and against the school and against learning of every kind. you will soon
be in a position to advise other teachers on how to be boring and you could even set up
Boredom Support groups or BSGs where you can, together with other boring teachers, share
boring experiences. I would welcome letters from boring teachers everywhere on their most
memorable successful attempts to bore the pants off their students. Write to me, care of etc
etc.

REFERENCES:

Guru, A (1999 BC) A Complete Guide to BTM (Boring University Press)