In Defense of Taiwanese Food

I know, I haven't updated in awhile - at least, awhile for me.

First, the jetlag.

Then, getting thrown right back into work.

Then, I came down with a migraine followed immediately by very quick and dirty virus - some kind of 24-hour flu.

I can say that since I've been back in Taiwan, I've been diving in - not quite literally, but if I could don a bathing suit and do so literally, I probably would - to eating all of my favorite foods. I realize there are Taiwan bloggers out there who don't like the food here ("bland" and "greasy" are two adjectives I've heard to describe it) but I simply think they're wrong. I started dreaming about wontons in chili oil (紅油抄手) within weeks of landing in Turkey - even though Turkish food is spectacular - and I relish the smell of stinky tofu as one would a smelly gourmet French cheese.

So far I've crammed my gullet and fattened my gut with:

Korean flavor pot stickers (韓式鍋貼)


Wontons in chili oil (紅油抄手)


Oyster vermicelli (蚵仔麵線)


Thai-style fried chicken (泰式幾塊)


Octopus Balls (章魚球)   


"Stuff on Sticks" (肉串- but not necessarily always meat)


Zhanghua-style "rice gluten" meatballs (彰化肉圓）


Cheap sushi on a conveyer belt


North Chinese style pork roll (大餅豬捲)


Burmese style noodles (緬甸何粉 - not an exact translation)


Stinky tofu (臭豆腐)


...and plenty of Chinese-based Taiwanese food that I got for free from the buffet at the long-term seminar thing I just finished for work.


Not bad considering that I've been sick and had next to no appetite!


I'm still excited to enjoy, in the near future, oyster omelets, Tainan-style shrimp roll rice, dry noodles, tea eggs, stewed meat rice (魯肉飯), BBQ squid on a stick, clams stir fried with basil, 1oo-yuan seafood, lumpia (the thin crepe wraps with red-cooked pork and vegetables) and many other favorites.



This is why I get annoyed when I read posts like "Taiwanese food is bland" or "Everybody says Taiwanese food is good, but it isn't, because all those foreigners who claim to like Taiwanese food regularly eat foreign food". I call bullshit.

Well, on the first one, that's really a matter of taste: yes, Mr. Blogger, Taiwanese food may well be bland to you, but it isn't to me. I can taste many delicate layers of flavor in simple dishes and appreciate the flavors and textures in dishes that might seem gloopy and pointless to some (it helps that I like that gooey texture that is so popular in Taiwanese food).


On the second, well, yes, it's often greasy, usually unhealthy and frighteningly easy to fatten up on - but the idea that in order to properly "like" Taiwanese food, you can't eat non-Taiwanese food (and if you do, even occasionally, it's somehow evidence that you "don't like" Taiwanese food) is thoroughly ridiculous. It's OK to like many different kinds of food, among them the culinary delights of Taiwan.


What I'll say is this: criticize it all you want, if that's you're opinion, but don't pretend that your opinion is fact. I happen to think Taiwanese food is fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that while in the culinary mecca of Turkey I was thinking about how much I'd like some of my various favorites from Taiwan. The first thing we did when we got back wasn't to go to some famous spot or even see friends (waited for the weekend for that) - we went out to eat, and very consciously so. To deliberately eat some of the food we'd missed so much: chili oil wontons, green papaya in passionfruit sauce and cold coriander chicken.

Updated: The Best Coffee in Taipei

I just updated my post on the best coffee in Taipei to include Rufous, on Fuxing S. Road just north of Xinhai. I was tipped off by another expat that this place makes some great stuff.

I'm pretty serious about my coffee and have a few more places I've found that I'd like to try and possibly add to this list - I need to see if Black Bean still exists as well as a place I went to in Dapinglin once, years ago. I'll keep everyone posted!

The Public Transit Conundrum

This editorial on public transit in Taiwan is something I really agree with. It's quite timely for me, having just returned from the USA, to talk briefly about public transit in Taipei. Taishun Street has a number of articulate posts on the topic, so take a look over there if you want another pro-public-transit perspective.

When we lived in the Washington, DC area, and when we returned in our early Taiwan years to DC to visit friends and some of my extended family, we relied heavily on public transit there. This trip was different: now almost all of our friends own cars and since we are mainly in town to see them, they're usually kind enough to give us rides - and when we go "sightseeing" (more like revisiting old favorite places, seeing new monuments) we no longer take Metro or Metrobus: one person drives - usually our friend M who is a bold city driver and has great luck with street parking - and we all pile in.

I used to think that public transit in DC was great - after all it's widely believed to be the best public transit system in the USA. I would contest that: it beats out the L, the T, BART and whatever Philadelphia has. Sure, unlike New York it's air-conditioned, trains are generally clean and it doesn't smell like urine and homeless people. That said, it's not nearly as extensive as it needs to be (only New York can claim that mantle, of all American transit systems), the waiting time for trains is really unacceptable, especially on the outer ends of the lines that double up in the city, the stations are dark and creepy (one book calls them "attractive and well-lit". I want to know what that guy is smoking!) and the buses are unreliable and inconvenient to use on the outskirts of the Metro area.

In Taipei we regularly use public transit to get to trailheads for hiking or go on day trips. You can go far on the MRT, bus network and buses leaving Taipei, although once you leave the area around Taipei City, you may have to fill in the gaps with taxis - fortunately, taxis are cheap. The DC equivalent would be using public transit to take day trips to Baltimore, Ocean City, Annapolis or Richmond, hike the Billy Goat Trail, go down to Shenandoah or up to Harper's Ferry. Well, you can't do any of those things. Technically you can take a bus to Baltimore or Richmond but once there you can't really go anywhere, and you can take a train to Harper's Ferry but due to departure/arrival times, you can't do it in a day trip. You're looking at at least a full day and two nights.

So yeah, now that I live in Taipei, I've long since stopped thinking that public transit in DC is great, or even good. In fact, now I think it kind of sucks. It has its defenders, but I say: its defenders haven't been to Taipei where the stations are clean and bright, the escalators always work, there are restrooms (and they're generally quite good!), trains come an average of every five minutes and signs will tell you down to five seconds when the next one is coming. Come to Taipei, take a few day trips or flit around the city on public transit, and then go back to DC and tell me if it's any good. You can throw me an e-mail from your bus stop after your bus arrives 20 minutes late if at all, or while you're waiting 14 minutes for a train, or the Red Line is on fire (again), or you're huffing and puffing up a long, out-of-service escalator.

Anyway, back to Taiwan. Taipei has excellent public transit - and it'll be even better once the MRT reaches its planned network size, but let's be honest: the rest of the country doesn't. From what I hear, it used to: buses would travel far more extensive networks and depart more often and you could get to a lot of places that you now need a car to reach. Only Kaohsiung and the High Speed Rail have been improvements (my only complaints about the HSR is that it doesn't go down to Kending and that the stations are too far from city centers. Otherwise, I love it and use it often for work: of course, since it's mostly for work I don't have to pay for it).

I agree with 鄧志忠's editorial in this case: Taipei has done an excellent job of building a fantastic MRT from scratch in an astoundingly short time, but the rest of Taiwan is really lacking good public transit - if anything, it's gotten worse.
This is a huge problem: Taiwan shouldn't be going in the direction of postwar America, where suburbs created a greater need for cars (encouraged, of course, by auto manufacturers and oil companies), public transit in many urban centers was dismantled or never built at all, and when it was built it wasn't nearly extensive enough. Only New York, which was ahead of the curve, managed to build something useful - because it did so mostly pre-war. If it had waited to start building subways, it too would be woefully inadequate. So what did Americans do? They all bought cars, they spewed and continue to spew pollution into the atmosphere, and they've all convinced themselves that they need, need, need their Earth-killing, congestion-inducing cars - so when public transit is introduced, nobody takes it ("but I need my car! Waaaaah!"). Do we really want that in Taiwan? I don't think so, but that's the direction we're headed in. Convince people that they need cars and they'll, well, they'll need cars. Show people how great life can be if a public transit network is extensive enough to suit their needs, and they'll take public transit.


Instead of building more highways - although that needs to be done to some degree, as well - there should be more investment in buses on rural routes, especially mountain routes where people unused to mountain driving would probably be better off not nervously swinging around high-altitude switchbacks for hours on end. Taichung really, truly needs a public transit system that doesn't suck: a lot of people say that Taichung is a fine place to live. Some go so far as to say that it's the best city to settle in for expats. I disagree: it will never be good enough without public transit. If you need to buy a scooter to get around, it's not ideal. This is one way in which I believe Taipei is really the better place to live, even if the weather sucks and I disagree with its political bent. Build an MRT and I'll consider Taichung as a place worth living in.


Because, really, public transit is good for everyone: it relieves road congestion and chaos for those who must or should drive (couriers, salespeople who make several daily client calls, people giving elderly relatives a ride etc.), it's more environmentally friendly, it reduces smog and pollution and it encourages more walking and reduces isolation. It's also good for people who: hate driving; who can drive but hate city, open highway and mountain driving (me); are legally blind or otherwise can't drive (a friend of mine as well as a friend of my mother's fall into this category); the elderly who are too infirm or blind to drive; and those who are simply bad drivers. Having to drive to get anywhere is extremely limiting for those people. 


So, in the end, we want to be going in the opposite direction of the USA. Taiwan should be encouraging public transit, not opposing it and definitely not shrinking it - which is a real concern, as bus routes are, in fact, shrinking island-wide. Taichung, Hualien, Taidong, Taoyuan, Yilan, Luodong and Hsinchu all need improved networks (even if it's just buses - though Taichung is big enough to warrant an actual MRT). We need to encourage the public to use public transit, reminding them that no, you don't need a car. Of course, first, we need to build networks extensive enough to serve people's needs so they're not actually right when they say they need a car. 

Taipei, Percolating

We arrived back in Taipei late last night.

I've taken long vacations before - up to six weeks - but this is the first time I've spent more than two months (nine weeks) away since I moved to Taipei five years ago. On all of these trips, but this one more than most, the taxi ride back to our apartment from Taipei Main (we could take the MRT but we usually don't when we have lots of bags) has been a mostly familiar but also slightly disorienting experience.

I always seem to forget while I'm away that the architecture of Taipei takes some getting used to. I love this city and in many ways think it's beautiful (as one friend put it, "it has a patina"), but that is not an immediate reaction: that's a view cultivated over time, as the aesthetics of Taipei percolate and settle in my brain like so much dark coffee. Let's face it: while plenty of buildings in Taipei have distinct and compelling facades - from the turn-of-the-century shophouses to the whalebone-ribbed and color-tiled mid-century mid-rises - many are not so visually arresting. I'm talking concrete or white tile buildings, buildings that, rather than having a lovely "patina", really just could use a good scrubbing, featureless buildings with backlit neon signs and chock-a-block street-level shops along mangled sidewalks.

It's when these monstrosities settle in your brain and you stop looking at them that you adjust to Taipei and see other things - a charming black-and-white church on Chang-an Road or the '60s funktacular post office jutting into view along the highway to Linkou, views down busy roads on the brown line MRT, street food vendors cooking up all manner of greasy treats, a Japanese era corner house-turned-coffeeshop on Zhongshan Road, inviting restaurants, little parks, derelict Japanese wooden houses and the old shophouse outlines of renovated buildings still in use.

That's not what I see when I come back to Taipei after a long trip, though. After banishing the concrete monstrosities to the back of my consciousness, they hurtle back into full view after time away. They whiz by, advertising chain boutiques I don't shop in, scooter repair, 7-11, plumbing and electrician services, restaurants. Above float darkened, barred windows stamped with hideous conformity into dark gray hulks. I'll say it: the taxi ride back was ugly, like U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you UGLY ugly. After renting a garden apartment in a charming rowhouse in Istanbul for a month, the six flights (six flights!) of cement stairs and peeling paint back to our apartment in Jingmei were ugly. I'd forgotten how ugly the kitchen is, and the view from it has never spectacular (although I've grown quite fond of the neon cross from the nearby church that glows red at night. You don't have to be Christian to appreciate Christian camp).

I feel it's been made worse this time due to the length of time we've been gone, the extended period of time we spent in Istanbul, which is generally more attractive, and the fact that living in Istanbul even for a short period and taking a class there has changed me and my perception of the world more deeply than one of our usual trips would.

Oh well. This only reinforces my desire to move into a newer, nicer apartment, and I'll stop actively noticing the horrible architecture soon. All of the things that are attractive about Taipei will come back into focus in time. Tonight I'll probably seek out one of my favorite haunts in Gongguan, if I'm not too jet-lagged, pour myself a classy beer and look out on the pretty-ish lanes around Wenzhou Street, and it'll come back.

Recipes: Beef and Squash Stew with Beer and Mustard

I haven’t posted a lot of recipes or book reviews recently – OK, until about a week ago I hadn’t posted anything much at all. Sooner or later I’ll get around to a double review of Jan Wong’s Red China Blues and Jan Wong’s China.  For now, recipes!

I recently made a dish, based off of thisrecipe, for my in-laws on a chilly Maine day, and it came out extremely well (if quite different from the original). I thought I’d post it here because it can definitely be made in Taiwan, and is perfect for those cold, damp, “oh yeah no central heating in a cement building” Taipei winter days.

Beef and Squash Stew with Beer and Mustard

Ingredients:

4-5 cups cubed butternut squash – you can also use pumpkin, other kinds of squash, or if you are willing to alter the recipe even more, lentils

1 normal size package of cubed stew beef (I avoid chuck personally)

a packet of frozen peas (or fresh peas, whatever)

2 large carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

2-3 large potatoes, peeled (or not!) and cut into chunks

1 red bell pepper, center removed – slice and cut slices in half

1 tart apple, peeled and cut into chunks

Optional add ins: parsnips, celery, green beans, cauliflower, chopped spinach etc..

Handful of finely chopped fresh parsley leaves

Handful of chopped dill weed

Lemon juice (a few squirts to taste)

Salt, pepper to taste

Bay leaves (1-2, optional)

A few coins of ginger or shakes of powdered ginger

2-3 large garlic cloves, crushed or finely chopped

2 bottles of dark beer

1 jar of whatever mustard you like – but avoid the bright yellow French’s stuff – in this recipe you can really taste the difference with expensive mustard

2 soft breadsticks (not the hard kind but the kind you can slice and cut) – you could also use several cups of croutons

Olive oil, water, optional paprika

A few chunks of butter

Large casserole, crock pot or pot, pastry brush

Method:

If baking, preheat oven to 350.  Recipe can be baked, crock-potted or cooked on the stove

Rub down chunks of stew beef with salt, pepper and paprika if desired, sauté in olive oil on medium until they start to brown. About halfway through the browning process add the garlic to nicely roast it. Remove from heat and set aside.

Combine all chopped/chunked vegetables and apple in crock pot, large deep pot or large casserole.  Leave out the red peppers and peas or anything that cooks relatively quickly.

Add 1 tablespoon mustard, other spices/herbs including lemon juice. Add beef when cool, including oil/drippings.

Melt butter and add to mixture. Mix everything together well.

Pour beer into mixture – it shouldn’t come quite to the top but should come near the top.

Bake on 350 for about 1.5 hours – or you could bake it longer at 320. Every 15-20 minutes, use a wooden spoon to stir up the mixture to make sure the stuff on top doesn’t dry out and burn.

Add bell pepper and peas. By now, the butternut squash and apple should have dissolved into the beer and formed a soupy mixture.  Add sifted flour and mix in until suitably thickened. Add additional salt and pepper to taste.

Slice breadsticks down the center to reduce thickness. Use pastry brush to coat completely in mustard, or cover croutons in mustard if you are using those.

Press breadsticks into top of stew about halfway, so they form a top “crust”, or cover in croutons. Return to stove and bake for 15 more minutes, reducing heat to 320 if baking at 350. If cooking on stove or crockpot, take it out, pour into casserole, stick in breadsticks and warm in stove on 350 for 15 minutes. You can also toast the mustard-covered breadsticks and add them to the serving dish if you don’t wish to bake.

Serve in soup bowls, or over rice on plates. Each guest gets a whole or half breadstick – serves about 8, or 4 with leftovers.

The Many Faces of Face

I have a very complicated relationship with face.

As an expat in Asia, I have to deal with it almost daily - from those little social niceties that allow people to preserve their status, pride or dignity all the way to outright lying, doing anything to avoid admitting fault and back again to roundabout, indirect turns of phrase that ultimately mean nothing but preserve a semblance of social harmony.

Two events have caused me to think about face in more depth and pointedly explore how I feel about it and my relationship to it. After all, I have a sense of face, too - made all the stronger from having lived in countries where it is a strong component of national culture.

The first was this incident in Sanliurfa (a historic city in southeast Turkey). Yes, face exists in Turkey as it does in Taiwan, although within its own cultural paradigm. You can read the actual story through that link.

The second is something I'll speak about more vaguely, as it's currently unfolding: events at work. Basically, a series of screw-ups, poorly timed decisions, manufactured problems and outright incompetence have caused both of us to be dissatisfied. He's quitting now - I have a few things to finish up before I throw in the towel but rest assured I won't be there much longer, either (and before anyone leaves a comment to warn me that I shouldn't say so openly online, don't worry. I've stopped caring. I could figure things out if my workplace got ahold of this post. This is a bridge I don't mind torching - to quote some song lyrics, we don't need no water, let the mother****er burn). Their actions have generally not caused me to lose face - and when I do mess up (and I do, everyone does) I own up to it and apologize. I expect my basic dignity to remain intact and demand respect, but I won't use face for that other twisted purpose of covering up my shortcomings or refusing to acknowledge fault. They have, however, caused my husband to lose, if not face, then dignity, and he is absolutely right to reclaim that and leave. They've also got a bad - but very East Asian - habit of doing anything and everything to maintain their own face, even if it's to the detriment of someone else's.

What I've realized from this is that there are two types of face: the "it doesn't affect anyone else to preserve my dignity" face, which includes "social harmony" face, and the other, more insidious "this is a zero-sum game" face in which saving your own skin requires skinning someone else alive.

The first one doesn't bother me as much as it used to, depending on the situation. Culturally speaking, I'm predisposed to being direct, saying something is wrong when it is, and holding people accountable. Where I come from - New York, which I find to be a region of plainspoken people - the frankness of what someone says isn't meant to be taken personally, and isn't expected to do so. You messed up, say you're sorry, do your best to fix it, and OK. We can all move on. Nobody's going to harp on it forever, because you owned it. When I first moved to Asia, I was of the mindset of: well, you screwed up. Don't try to pussyfoot around it, and don't try to glaze over it with elliptical speech. Just apologize and do your best to make amends, and we can move on. I respected people who rose to this standard much more, and I generally don't hold grudges (with a few exceptions, but even those are passive grudges rather than active ones. I don't have the energy to actively hate someone for long periods of time). The mistake is no biggie - we all make them - but the vague, glassy speech of someone trying to save face (mistakes were made...happenstances were happened...you know...it's very difficult to...things...stuff...oh, ah...) is something I find deeply irritating. I didn't really respect it, and still don't.

What has changed is that now I understand it. I'm used to it, and I've been known to play the game to allow someone else to save a bit of face. I've even been known to do this at work by smiling and nodding through sheer idiocy, because it behooves me to allow the person to save face for now.

Other times, I really can't condone it: what happened in Sanliurfa was this kind of face-saving: oh no, they weren't trying to cheat you, it was a language misunderstanding. Oh no, they thought it was a tip. No, of course they didn't try to cheat you, it's just a culture gap - with the expectation that the other person will just play along. As Brendan noted in his post, the money wasn't important. Five lira really is nothing to us in the vast reaches of time. It was that we weren't interested in saving the face of someone who just tried to cheat us.

But the social harmony aspect of saving face is something I'm fine with, most of the time. You know, a newbie on the job screws up royally, and everyone glosses over it because she's new, trying hard, and she'll get better (and usually, she does). I have no problem with that. If it means not responding to every idiotic thing a person says, no matter how crazy right wing (or left wing) or conspiracy theorist it is, because you have to deal with that person in the future and it's best for you if you just let those things go...well, OK.

Of course, if there's a massive underlying problem, like, I don't know, an office that consistently makes huge mistakes, manufactures problems and acts to solve them with all the efficacy of a car whose wheels are spinning in the mud - and everyone's trying to pretend that it's all fine and everyone is doing an outstanding job and we should all clap politely - then no.

Then there's face as a zero-sum game. The kind where there are two people or groups involved, and one of them is either fully or nominally at fault, but desperate to do anything possible to save face even at the expense of the other. This is what started to happen in Sanliurfa before we walked away: what started as a stupid game to save the faces of two guys trying to cheat us turned into a zero-sum catfight. When we refused to smile and nod politely at the idea that this was just a language misunderstanding it turned into "don't be rude!". By not playing along, the only choice left to the cafe owners and the English speaking customer who came over to help us was to save their face by trying to take away ours by accusing Brendan of being "rude". Those of you who know Brendan know that basically the last thing he could ever be called is "rude"!

It's happened at work, as well - but I won't go into too much detail.

I don't feel that it's the norm in foreigner-Taiwanese interactions that it'll always be a "my face over yours, foreigner!" situation, although it does happen. I do feel that this is exactly what happened in Sanliurfa - the English-speaking customer, being Turkish, was more interested in saving the face of the also-Turkish cafe owners than in admitting the truth, right up to the point of causing (or attempting to cause) us foreigners to lose face as a preferable outcome to shaming the cafe owners.

I have felt at work that, while it was very rare (I can only think of one instance) in which they tried to make me lose face personally, that at times I felt that my face, as a foreigner, was not as important as the face of a local. I remember a time before we left for Turkey that my company made the same mistake three times in one month, a mistake that caused me to look like a bit of a dunderhead in front of clients. I told them so, even using the phrase "these mistakes have caused me to lose face in front of clients", and felt that the reaction was more than a bit apathetic, as in yeah, we'll try not to screw up again, but we don't really care if you personally look bad in front of clients because of mistakes we made. We care more if the company looks bad.


That's work, though, and I do not feel that these examples can stretch to encompass all Taiwanese people. It does happen, but I'm not going to point my finger at the entire society (something I feel happens far too often on expat blogs around the world).

So, in the end, it's a complex topic. Sometimes I play the game - and I admit to having my own sense of face - sometimes I won't even pick up the dice. Sometimes I understand it, rarely do I respect it. Sometimes I just can't condone it. Sometimes it has a relevant place in social interaction and sometimes it's a big ol' shield of lies and elliptical speech meant to preserve some idiot's fragile sense of status, even when he doesn't deserve it.

My Experience Getting a CELTA Pass A

As many of you know, I recently took (and survived) the Cambridge CELTA course - I took it despite having taught for over five years because I no longer wished to be a very good “corporate trainer” (translation: teacher in a suit) who happened to not be certified. I wanted to be a fantastic teacher with a real qualification.  I chose CELTA because it was the only certification program that I felt I would really learn from after five years of teaching.

And I did – I felt that besides learning some new ideas and techniques for good teaching, that teaching 8 lessons and being critically assessed on all of them was extremely good for me. I went into the course thinking that timing and half-assed lesson planning were my problems, but learned that it’s in fact timing and Teacher Talking Time that I need to work on. Simply having a qualified person assess my teaching and give me action points was an immensely helpful learning experience. No other certification program would have given me that.

So, yes, all you other CELTA folks out there, I did get a Pass A (provisionally, but I have every reason to believe that that will be my final grade as well). After five years of experience and knowing from feedback, the clients I was given and their subsequent renewals that I was good – if not great – at my job, I’m happy to see that my grade reflects that (although I would have been fine with a B – that was the grade I was prepared to receive). For those who don’t know, about 70% of everyone who takes the CELTA gets a regular “Pass”. 25-27% get a Pass B and 3-5% get a Pass A.

There are a lot of personal experiences scattered about the Interwebs on taking the CELTA, especially the gruelling four-week course. At least one good post on the topic covers the writer’sexperience getting a Pass B, with tips on how readers can attempt the same. There are none chronicling the experience of someone who got a Pass A, which is why I’m writing this at all.

I can’t tell you “how” to get a Pass A, because even having got one, I don’t really know how it’s done. The criteria for the various grades are never clearly outlined – there is no (known) formula that says “if you get this many Above Standards on your lessons” or something, that automatically translates into a Pass A or B”. *

What I can say is that it was extraordinarily difficult, despite having come in with a lot of experience. I’ll be honest: I found the input sessions mostly easy (although I did learn a few things and pick up lots of ideas and techniques, broadening my repertoire), the written assignments not difficult in their content but certainly difficult in terms of the time and attention to detail it took to turn in something truly great. I did find the actual teaching to be a challenge – partly because my own style was a bit higher on the Teacher Talking Time that CELTA so rails against, and partly because being assessed and critiqued in great detail on a relatively short lesson that comes between two other lessons that other trainees planned is quite different indeed from how I teach at my actual job.

Basically, even with experience I had to work extraordinarily hard to hand in work and perform at a level that eventually earned me the A, and I don’t see how I could have done it without prior experience. I’d attend class all day, come home and work for up to four hours straight. In every other aspect of life I reverted to someone who has the mentality of a five-year-old because I was just so mentally shot to hell from how hard I was working. I ate kids’ food and drank a lot of whiskey. I worked all weekend almost every weekend (on the final weekend I managed to take Sunday off). I obsessed over lesson plans and nearly get headaches just thinking aout the level of detail I included in my Procedure pages. I stopped blogging, I stopped reading, I stopped watching TV and didn’t even check e-mail all that often – I did keep Facebook open in the background at all times though.

I highly doubt that someone on the CELTA course with zero teaching experience could get a Pass A unless they were preternaturally talented or had some indirect experience (ie one of their parents was a teacher or some such – that kind of exposure does have value). A Pass B would be possible, but a person with no experience who managed that would still have to be exceptionally talented.

I did note a few things that might have helped bump me from a B to an A. While there’s no set number of Above Standards that one needs in order to get an A or B, clearly the more you get, the better your chances are. The poster in the link above got 6 out of 9 Above Standards and got a B. I got 5 out of 8. Another trainee in my group – who was extremely good and actually had a teaching certificate already, just not for TEFL – got 6 out of 8, but I’m not sure what his final grade was. Another girl in another group also got 6 out of 8, but I’m not sure of her final grade, either. If more than half of your TPs are Above Standard, you’ll probably make it into the upper grades…or you’re far more likely, at least.

They tell you that as long as you pass all of your written assignments, it doesn’t matter how well you do on them, because it’s an overall Pass/Fail (and it is clearly announced that if you fail one assignment, you can pass the course but you can’t get a Pass A). That said, my final report noted that all of my written assignments were “of a very high standard” and that I passed all of them with no resubmissions. The fact that this was noted makes me believe that it had some impact on getting the A.

The tutors look in great detail at lesson plans, and this is one area in which I excelled – I mentioned above how I would give myself headaches over the level of detail I included. Every stage had ICQs and CCQs mapped out. If I was going to model instructions, I noted that, and how I would model them (with a student, with the board etc.).  I was very detailed in writing out what the students would do in each stage and I was very careful to check my Interaction Patterns to make sure there was as little T-Ss as possible. If your Procedure page for a 40-minute lesson reaches 3 or even 4 pages, you know you’re on the right track.

I was careful to use any new thing from a recent input session as soon as it was appropriate, and note that in my lesson plans, as well. In the real world you don’t need to do this, but if you If you’re really trying to excel, listen carefully to little things the tutors say: if you hear a tutor mention that using “teach” and “learn” in your aims or stage aims is a bad idea (and it is – “teach” is too teacher-centered and “learn” is too general), then don’t use those verbs in your aims. If they say “for any language focus, create a context and cover meaning, form and pronunciation”, well, do that. Every time. Even if you have to write that down on a piece of scrap paper and tape it over your computer.

Which, yes, boils down to “do what the tutors tell you”, but hey. Oh well. They’re tutors for a reason.

Other things that I felt worked in my favor: strong language awareness**, good rapport with students, confidence, good instructions, ability to adapt and create materials, good anticipation of problems, participation in input sessions and “professionalism” (be on time, don’t look skeevy, get on well with other trainees and coordinate lesson flow with those in your group, show leadership skills), and strong self-reflection and reaction to feedback.

Of course, a lot of this is easier said than done. I can say “oh you should cultivate a strong rapport with students” – yeah, great, but how do you do that? I can’t tell you. I know what works for me, but everyone’s style is different. This is why teaching is a lot harder than people give it credit for (and the profession has a surprisingly high number of detractors). There are no easy answers to things like “how to improve rapport” – it’s very touchy-feely. There are fewer clear answers in education than in other professions.

No guarantees or promises that doing all of this will get you an A, or even a B (like I said, I can’t tell you how to do that), but these are things tutors noted as my strengths, and a few of them were things that tutors openly said were important – for example, one tutor said quite clearly that a Pass A trainee “shows a high degree of professionalism, which includes being on time” (there were some late students).

It’s also quite clearly possible to get a Pass A while still having areas requiring improvement – even serious ones. I personally need to reduce my Teacher Talking Time. It’s hard for me to do, because I’m a naturally chatty person and I do have a strong personality. I like to really get to know my students, and I like for them to really get to know me, which often translates into my being more talkative and more at the front of the class than I really should be. If you know you have a similarly serious action point, but have shown clearly that you are taking steps to improve, are aware of the problem and are open to feedback on it, then it is still possible to finish the course while still needing to work on the issue, and get an A nonetheless.

I could also stand to work on my timing, and my lead-ins tend to take too long. I tend to latch on to a few great ideas and over-use them, for example doing similar lead-ins for each class (not on any report, I just know that I do that). When I get nervous, my eye contact shoots to hell and at least in the beginning my board work was a mess (much improved, still not perfect).

Basically, I’m far from a perfect teacher. I’m good, and I’m not shy about the fact that I’m good – I am so totally not into the paradigm where women and people in professions dominated by women are shot down if they are anything less than humble, if not self-deprecating, and goodness forbid you be confident or (gasp) self-promoting. I’m not perfect, though, and I could be a hell of a lot better. If someone like me who still has a lot to work on can get an A, clearly it is a goal that need not be dismissed as impossible (although if you have no experience at all, you are probably better off shooting for a B).

So, what real advice can I give? Not much, except this: if you set up your goal as “I’m gonna gits me an A!” then, well, it’s a worthy goal and all, but you’ll probably give yourself an ulcer, and stress so much about whether you’re doing enough or doing well enough that your freaky-outy stress will cause you to lose focus and actually do worse. Don’t look for a magic bullet or secret formula – there is none, and trying to guess at the magical combination of factors that leads to an A will just cause you to get even more freaky-outy. Always remember that it’s not a competition, so if you see someone who seems to be doing better than you, hey, you’re in it for four weeks with that person and you are quite possibly friendly with them – you are not in a race. There is not just one gold medal. Their good work does not mean you’ll get edged out for the one top spot, because there is no “one” top spot.

It sounds like a cliché but it’s really true: just work your ass off, do the best work you can do and don’t freak out (because that will affect your work).  Remember that the course is designed for people with no experience. Things you can do immediately, that take no innate or learned skill are to participate as much as you can in input, do your damnedest to provide as much detail as you can in your lesson plans, be on time and be receptive to feedback (defend yourself if you feel something said was really unfair, or explain your rationale, but don’t get defensive or argumentative).  If you are given a language focus to teach, learn everything you can about it (especially if it’s grammar), beyond what the textbook says. Even if you don’t plan to teach every aspect, know everything you can to better cope with questions or issues that may arise.

*One tutor said something along the lines of "We know we're not turning out perfect teachers, that's impossible in four weeks. After the CELTA you'll still need training. A Pass A tells employers that you can start teaching immediately with basically no training and little support. A Pass B tells them that you will need a lot less training than most new hires, but still require some. A Pass tells them that you are an average passing trainee, will need further training and support, but you did absorb the fundamentals taught on the CELTA."

**About that language awareness thing – yeah. It’s tough, even with experience and especially with no experience. Don’t be afraid – when I started teaching, I was all “modal? WTF is a modal?” – which of course meant that I was not the best teacher. I learned, though, and I got better. I picked up my language awareness because I had to teach it. Actually teaching it did far more for my own in-depth language awareness than reading a grammar book ever could have done. If you find yourself, the night before a lesson, flipping through web pages or reference books going “WTF is a modal?”, don’t worry, you’re not the only one, and the next time you have to teach it, you’ll know it. You’ll get better. You’ll learn it in far more depth and detail than you ever thought possible because having to teach it does that – it forces you to learn it in a somewhat high-pressure situation. So go out and buy yourself a good grammar reference, pour yourself a drink and relax.