TOHH and KST have gone barmy over the local contracts. She doesn’t want to believe the translation, and is trying to puzzle through the Arabic version – without much success. They went to see the DoS about them, and were gone a long time.

When they got back, KST thought that he’d virtually resigned. He’s actually behaving rather honourably, in as much as he doesn’t want to sign a contract when he’s already made up his mind to resign in the near future, which he has almost done. Whilst honourable, this attitude will perhaps flummox Fraggle Rock: is he going or staying? TOHH, I don’t know if she signed hers or not. On past form, she probably signed it straightaway, having bitched about it for hours in the staff room, and wound KST up into threatening to resign. She’s the Grand Old Doxy of York.

In a staff meeting we had to talk about developing the Placement Test. TOHH commented that, “I just find it bizarre” that the decision was made to write our own test when others were available, “written by experts”.

The government have taking to bulldozing business premises at short notice, including car show rooms on our route from the College to the Bungalows. This caused a long delay on the way home, and it was filled by VI Form banter from Paul and TOHH. This is getting to be very tiresome. Paul makes snide remarks about IT Bloke behind his back, too. I wanted to be almost anywhere but in that minibus with these people.

Contagious Negativity

Back to drafting offline. The internet connexion is flakey, at best. Some sites open, others don’t. When blogspot does, I suspect that’s because most of the page is in the cache anyway. Sometimes, the page loads, but not the sign-in dialogue box...

Anyhow. Yesterday should have been a success, but turned out to be very disappointing. It started unpropitiously when it emerged during a conversation in the van on the way to college about air-conditioning, that we are liable for utility bills – gas bottles and electricity. KST went off it, with a tirade against “them” for putting us out in “the middle of nowhere and refusing to pay for our fucking electricity”. It was on the cusp between embarrassing and entertaining.

T2 and I finished the speaking tests. LM had stayed behind last night and finished the marking. I totalled up the all the placement test scores and crunched them in a spreadsheet. LM, who has taught these students in the past, looked at the scores and was pleased. And then it all started to unravel.

T2 said that she didn’t trust the speaking test criteria. I don’t know why she didn’t say this before spending two days working with them. She expressed reservations about the test validity in general, but couldn’t say what the reservations were.

To some extent, though, even if her concerns were justified, they are irrelevant because the ranking of the students is about right based on previous IELTS results and LM’s knowledge of them.

The big question now is, what level do we teach them at? I was for a small Advanced group, and two Upper Int groups, with the understanding that one of those groups will require more work, and will proceed more slowly.

T2 said that she thought these students were Intermediate, that we couldn’t teach them as Upper Int. LM said that they had been Intermediate for more than a year, that they would suffer colossal lack of face and a subsequent blow to confidence if the carried on as such...

The compromise he suggested was to use next week to do in-class assessment. That’s what we agreed to do.

I’ve come the conclusion that T2 is an idiot. Even if she does have genuine reservations about the test validity, then she needs to have reasons. Ditto the students’ levels. Sentences beginning with “I don’t feel that...” won’t wash.

Now, I can see why it could be objected that I’m feeling a personal affront because someone has slagged off my baby, “my” placement test. Actually, I’d be delighted to have anyone pick holes in it, because it’s still at the development stage, but say “I don’t think this is valid, because...” Subjectivity is out of place.

And anyway, this is criticism from someone who claims to have spent years in Spain and Mexico, and yet can’t tell a mosquito from a fruit fly.

The bottom line is, KST and T2 have got a very nasty dose of negativity and it can be contagious.

"I can cope with disappointment: it's the hope I find unbearable."

Placement tests today. Twenty three students, and we split them into three groups. My group complained straightaway, with some justification, about the quality of the sound recording on the listening test. We’ll have to put that right.

We’d arrived early – and couldn’t get into the temporary-temporary teaching block. Standing in the sunshine (the climate’s really lovely at this time of year), LM mentioned something he’d picked up from the DoS’s pep talk yesterday, which I’d missed: it’s envisaged that there’ll be 600 students in due course – but that only one in ten of applicants will meet the English language criteria. So that means, six thousand people doing “my” placement test.

So it’s in the light of this that T2 went from seeming a bit eccentric to acting downright weird later this morning. After the first testing session, (the listening, then grammar, reading and writing), we were in the temporary-temporary staff room and she said that she thought the first writing question – which simply requires the students to copy out some text in their own handwriting – was “patronising”. LM said that he had thought it was too simplistic until I’d explained it to him, and I was genuinely curious as to why she thought it was patronising, and was starting to say I was looking forward to discussing the test when she just walked out of the room.

LM looked at me in perplexity and said, “This is becoming a problem.” Indeed, she’s done this several times: for example, we’re having an on-the-hoof discussion about the best kind of folders to provide the students with, when she just walks away whilst LM is in mid-sentence.

Anyway, I didn’t respond to LM’s observation. It’s a management thing. Time will tell. Maybe she’s just ignorant, being from Manchester.

Back at the ranch, and two identically dressed skinny blokes get us connected to the Wi-Fi router, and thence to the Internet. Hooray! Except that the connexion’s so slow as to be next to useless. Bah! We’re promised that we’ve got 256mb, but that’s temporary, it’ll go up to a gig tomorrow. As someone once said (I wish I could remember who), I can cope with disappointment: it’s the hope I find unbearable.

This morning we went straight into town to buy stationery. We were joined by the DoS, and a local Mr Fix It, and went on with them to get SIM cards for telephones. I’d already got one a few days ago, but management believes that ones you can buy over the counter are dodgy – the ones we got today needed the production of a passport, a form, and of course, a photo.

Back at the college, we had a pow-wow with HD and DoS. The latter is a small unassuming bloke, but carries some indefinable air of authority and meaning business.

He gave us some background. This college is part of a big picture of modernisation here. Millions of immigrant workers have been lately expelled. Quarter of a million civil servants have been made redundant. The idea now is, to retrain the workforce to deal with the rest of the world.

The current educational system is acknowledged to be woefully inadequate, and has no FE system. Our college will address that, giving training in key skills, business, management, and engineering. Crucially, all of this will be done in English. So our department, whilst fundamental, is not the rationale. In other words, it’s and English-medium FE college, which naturally entails English teaching: it’s NOT a school of English.

Despite the cynicism which is the stock in trade of an experienced EFL teacher, I felt rather buoyed up by my role in giving this place a leg-up to the 21^st century.

Then we got down to the nitty-gritty. Our lack of internet connexion at the accommodation is being addressed as a matter of urgency.

The current site manager, I’ll call him Ahmed, is on his way out. He’s worked in England for several years, he says, and indeed has good idiomatic control of the language. But he’s full of shit. He keeps on about the internet connexion, and how he chases the people responsible – whereas we’ve learned it’s nothing to do with him.

The security situation has also been lamentable. Somebody locks the gate in the early evening, and then goes off to one of the apartments to sleep until nearly eight the next morning. No amount of shouting will wake him. Two nights running, T2 and KST have gone out for a stroll and been unable to get back in through the gate – KST climbed in through a gap in the fence.

We’re to get either a van or a car, and the services of a driver. I asked about driving it ourselves, and the legal situation is to be looked in to.

The site’s “guard dog” has its days numbered. It’s actually just a stray who Ahmed’s befriended, and that would be ok if the bastard didn’t bark nonstop all night. LM was assured that he’d go to some friends of Ahmed’s “who have a nice big farm”. Yeah, right. Ahmed should seek some work there too.

Tellies and more furniture are subject to some kind of budget review in the UK. I said nowt, but I can live without the box for now.

LM had wondered whether it was ok for me to start a wee garden at the back of our house. I was assured today that I should go ahead. This has cheered me immensely.

After the meeting there was a bit of frantic activity to make sure we were ready to actually do some English-teaching related stuff tomorrow – placement tests – at last. It’ll be good to get them done, and then get some structure into the day when we start teaching next week.

When we got back a grim, silent, fat, mirror-glasses wearing African was introduced by Ahmed as Sinousi. He’s to do with the Internet. Maybe he looked so grim because Ahmed was getting on his nerves. Anyhow, still no internet tonight. There are guards on the gate though. And no sound of a dog barking.