Glancing about through my blogroll, at this time of the year I see the usual quietness settle in, broken occasionally by a post celebrating the arrival of summer holidays in the Northern Hemisphere.
"I'm outta here!" "See you all in autumn..."
The slightly transparent globe that is ELT goes eerily quiet for a bit...
Or does it?
Depends on where you are, really.
For close to 10 years I worked in South Korean private language institutes, and there the word "summer" just meant sweatier walks to work and then later that sense of dread when you realised you were emerging from the eight days a week style of regular terms to do the cruel summer intensive session. Instead of 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. you're now in for 9 a.m to 6 p.m.
You see, in Korea the private institutes stay open for 54 weeks in a year, and the winter and summer "holidays" are a time for the schools to cash in on millions of students' sudden extra availability.
Even in the public school and university sectors there, summer and winter now usually mean "language camps time" - an abysmal procedure and grab for cash that is characterised by some of the most shoddy program design and implementation imaginable.
Working in Korea as an English teacher is a relentless cycle and a very appropriate example of how while Koreans proudly point out that they work the longest hours in the world, many observers (and particularly participants) will tell you that they're far from being the most efficient or effective.
Of course, this has to apply in some measure to language learning as well.
Remember, it's not just the teachers doing these sweatier walks to work to do more hours when the rest of the world is taking a summer holiday. It's the learners, too. Their grand reward for finishing a spring term is to get to go and do several hours of extra study each day for pretty much the whole of the summer "break".
Year after year in Korea, I tried to convince school owners and parents that a break in the summer would do much more good than harm. Let the learners switch off for a bit. Give teachers some down-time and even the chance to do a bit of training and development in a relaxed atmosphere. If you fry a brain with too much learning or teaching, eventually it just goes dry and loses its sense of taste.
The looks I got showed either panic (as the eyes behind them saw dollar signs fading into the distance) or complete incredulity (as a parent suspected I was accusing her child of being weak or else was trying to deprive them of their chance to remain competitive).
Sad state of affairs.
I miss many things about living and working in Korea. The eight days a week and cruel summer mentalities are not among them.
:-)
