I have decided to spend some time talking about my 'real' job, as I have only touched on it before, and there seems to be a lot of ignorance surrounding what I actually do. Many assume that my job is easy, given the obvious perks, such as finishing at lunchtime on most days, and it is difficult to believe I get paid to correct people, a great passion of mine. TEFL does, however, make demands on one's energy levels, not to mention one's patience. The job is exhausting, and you are forever weighed down by the expectations of everyone, who genuinely wonders when you will get a real job. We language teachers face the additional problem of continually looking towards the future to ensure that the industry's prosperity continues. I have to admit that futurology is not one of the many kinds of expertise I possess. This is mostly because nobody is an expert on futurology. Too many unknown factors lie in wait to shape the future, and some of the most important ones are surely beyond our predictive capabilities. Despite these limitations, we must endeavour to foresee what lies ahead, as we may be able to mitigate or prevent the many ills that could befall us. 1
Until my philosophical and literary masterpieces are published, I'll have to grind it out as a TEFL teacher, and it is in my interest to try and forecast what problems might arise for the industry. Clearly the distinct shortage of talented teachers has failed to hold the industry back. The further you travel away from an English speaking country, the less dignified the situation becomes, and you encounter teachers whose primary skills are drunkenness and lechery. If they sound like a cool bunch of sea pirates, then you have misunderstood me.
Until my philosophical and literary masterpieces are published, I'll have to grind it out as a TEFL teacher, and it is in my interest to try and forecast what problems might arise for the industry. Clearly the distinct shortage of talented teachers has failed to hold the industry back. The further you travel away from an English speaking country, the less dignified the situation becomes, and you encounter teachers whose primary skills are drunkenness and lechery. If they sound like a cool bunch of sea pirates, then you have misunderstood me.
Some of my colleagues fear that Chinese will overtake English as the most important language in the world. I disagree. English is the language of business and the internet, and it is much more widely spoken. Also, — if you can excuse my Yellow Pearl depiction of the Chinese as insidious and power-hungry expansionists — they probably would have made it happen by now, or, to speak more accurately, will had done it by now. You see, the real threat is time travel. Not only will our timeline be contaminated, but it will leave the language unable to adequately describe reality. We will be unable to communicate plans to travel back in time to change something. In the advent of such a possibility, I have created a new tense, called the future past perfect simple (I have plans to further complicate the name, honouring the age-old TEFL tradition of giving parts of language names that seem like complete misnomers at the outset). Learners will most likely confuse future past perfect simple using 'will' and future past perfect simple with 'going to'. Allow me to clarify.
We use future past perfect simple with 'will' when we make that decision at that moment. So, for example, you're devastated that you girlfriend just left you, and you want to go back to before you met her and prevent it from ever happening, you would say "I'll had prevented me from ever meeting her." If the plan was made in the past, then you use "going to". For example, if you are getting into the time machine to erase a relationship, you would call your ex and say "I'm going to had prevent us from ever meeting, and there's nothing you can or could have done about it, you heartless bitch." If it is an arrangement, made with another person and (usually) at a specific time, then you use the present continuous past perfect simple. For example, "I'm hadding prevented ever meeting her tomorrow and two years ago."
If it's a prediction, then we use either 'will' or 'going to'. The two terms are interchangeable in most circumstances. However, if there is current evidence — perhaps detectable changes in the timeline 2 — then we use 'going to'. For example:
English speakers will had gone back to alter the timeline and make English the most widely-spoken language in the twenty-first century.
English is the most widely-spoken language in the world, as someone is going to had gone back in time and had made it so.
So, can you remember all that? If not, reassure yourself with the old adage: Those who can, do. And those poor saps who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach TEFL. And those who can't teach TEFL, write blogs.
We use future past perfect simple with 'will' when we make that decision at that moment. So, for example, you're devastated that you girlfriend just left you, and you want to go back to before you met her and prevent it from ever happening, you would say "I'll had prevented me from ever meeting her." If the plan was made in the past, then you use "going to". For example, if you are getting into the time machine to erase a relationship, you would call your ex and say "I'm going to had prevent us from ever meeting, and there's nothing you can or could have done about it, you heartless bitch." If it is an arrangement, made with another person and (usually) at a specific time, then you use the present continuous past perfect simple. For example, "I'm hadding prevented ever meeting her tomorrow and two years ago."
If it's a prediction, then we use either 'will' or 'going to'. The two terms are interchangeable in most circumstances. However, if there is current evidence — perhaps detectable changes in the timeline 2 — then we use 'going to'. For example:
English speakers will had gone back to alter the timeline and make English the most widely-spoken language in the twenty-first century.
English is the most widely-spoken language in the world, as someone is going to had gone back in time and had made it so.
So, can you remember all that? If not, reassure yourself with the old adage: Those who can, do. And those poor saps who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach TEFL. And those who can't teach TEFL, write blogs.
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| I'm going to had made sweet love to Cleopatra herself. |
1 Aside from death, of course, which is inevitable and will ruthlessly destroy you and all of those dearest to you!
2 One assumes that with the advent of time travel, some sort of temporal shield will also be invented. Tachyons usually do the trick.
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