sniglet (noun): any word that should be in the dictionary, but isn’t. (Hall, 1983).
I’ve been watching some old sniglet sketches from Not Necessarily the News recently. This one is by far my favourite (sorry for lack of quality):
Call me a bit TEFL-obsessed, but I figured that somebody somewhere must’ve already made a list of TEFL-related sniglets, (tiglets, perhaps?). I’m sure there’s a list out there. I couldn’t find it, although I did stumble across a preview of an article for using sniglets in class…
Anyway, here are a few tiglets I came up with today during a whole morning of tech problems in the staffroom. This is the best use of my planning time this year…
aimbiguous = unclear lesson aims
clinical approach = the tendency to teach all new vocab/grammar using clines, whether appropriate or not. A variant, the inclinical approach, includes lines which steadily move up the board, normally due to poor control of the whiteboard marker
collection techniques = failed attempts to help learners distinguish between /l/ and /r/
critteria = a bug on an assessment rubric
gistage = an unexpectedly long amount of time for a first listening task
ICQs = lines of teachers waiting outside a conference centre for the doors to open, normally in Siberia/Canada
morment = the sudden realisation during planning/teaching that you haven’t conveyed and checked meaning before highlighting form
PPP = starting a class in the knowledge that you need the toilet
rubricon /ˈru:brɪkɒn/ = assessment criteria for tasks about Italian rivers
rubricon /ru:bˈraɪkɒn/ = an icon in the world of writing assessment criteria
SLAting = criticising certain theorists, e.g. Krashen
subsi-diaries = a daily log book of all a teacher’s sub-aims used during the year
TEFAL = An English for Specific Purposes course for chefs
wayne-rubbing = attempts made at pronouncing the name of author Ruth Wajnryb
and as always, a bonus tiglet:
jimnod = a reference to Jim Scrivener as ‘old Jim…’. This is normally preceded by the following stages:
a) a teacher references Jim Scrivener in conversation
b) another teacher references Jim Scrivener as ‘Shrivener’
c) another teacher believes this is wrong and corrects the second teacher through a recast
d) pronunciation errors continue as the recast goes unnoticed
e) somebody sneakily glances at Learning Teaching, realises the author’s name is spelt with a ‘c’ (/k/) and emphasises this strongly when the name is next mentioned
f) everybody is confused and doubting themselves so they just revert to the author’s first name as if he’s a pal.
Please share a sniglet, sorry, tiglet or two in the comments. If we start now we’ll have a whole Tiglets Annual by Christmas J
review it on my blog.’ To my surprise, a copy of Classroom Management Techniques by Jim Scrivener turned up in my pigeon hole at work. This was very generous of them, but it’s been out for a while and reviewed plenty of times so I’m not going to stick to my promise (sorry). Instead, I’m going to write a few different posts about sections in the book, choosing things that I agree with, new things I will definitely try out, and some things that I feel differently about as a practising teacher.