30 | EFL TEACHING | INTERNATIONAL


Hola Shalom


Don’t get lost in translation


EFL teachers are often undervalued, but they can play a vital role in the life of any independent school. Ted Underwood explains why


I


will be upfront with everyone, this one is personal. As someone who taught the English language in many


diff erent guises for over 10 years, to deny that this article doesn’t have a note of autobiography to it would be to deceive


you. So let me start at the beginning. In my early twenties, I found myself


back in the UK after teaching in Italy and took a post as an EFL teacher in a rather well-known boarding school for a year. The salary wasn’t brilliant,


Salutti Hallo Ciao Bonjour


but accommodation was thrown in so it didn’t seem like such a bad deal. The experience was, to say the least,


bizarre. I had been accustomed to being addressed as Signor Underwood while teaching in a dirty basement somewhere south of Naples and exchanging polite nods of the head and handshakes with my students when we met in the street. Here, I was thrust into an environment where, on my fi rst day, I was introduced as “Mr Ed” to my students. When I asked my head of department why I couldn’t be Mr Underwood, I was fi rmly told that surnames were reserved for the “The academics”. “The academics”, I soon learned was the collective noun for any member of staff who did not


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