An American ESL instructor in Spain can expect to use not American but British materials in the classroom. The textbooks, the handouts, the CDs and DVDs…all of these will be British. Because the UK is a member of the EU, British materials are both geographically and bureaucratically more accessible to Spain than American materials. So are British ESL teachers. The difference between the amount of paperwork required for a Brit to legally work in Spain (very little) and the amount of paperwork required for an American to legally work in Spain (boatloads) is astounding.  Point being, most ESL students in Spain study British spelling, British pronunciation, and British usage, and an American stepping in on the scene is advised to remember this, so as not to throw everything off and/or appear totally unqualified to be teaching English.

Americans can adjust readily enough to spelling disparities, to “colour,” “analyse,” “licence” and the like. As English speakers, we know not to get too attached to consistency and logic in spelling, and as American consumers, we have seen British spelling before, in marketing. “Towne” and “centre” come easily enough to me thanks to a strip mall back home named “Towne Centre,” which name for a strip mall is so absurd in so many ways that it cannot be easily forgotten.

Continue Reading Noted Abroad.

The meadow is rich
with the thunderhead in front, the dark
and violet swelling in the sky
on the verge of blooming or bursting,
you can’t decide, and renounce
to think of a flower, in this bounty,
summer’s outcrop, the unrestrained
brushstrokes of thick and tall
disheveled grass, on air swallowing
slash after slash.
And gnats now in a hanging dance,
this thin drumming on your forehead,
the air’s stare.
It’s a hurricane, maybe, getting ready.
But for now everything is still,
the knuckles of the olive trees,
the oaks in their quiet puzzle of leaves
and the haze of gnats, eternity
lingering in its hum.
And your mind that so easily runs,
anticipates the storm, with that usual
mixture of fear and joy,
the fresh air, the change, the new breath,
whatever, being simply unable
to stay here and here only
in the feat of the present,
accepting the gnats
that do not leave you.
______________________________

Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English, born and living in Venice, Italy. He has been writing poems exclusively in English since 1993, they have been published in around four hundred literary magazines since 1999,  in theU.K, U.S. and elsewhere. His poetry collection, “Re-Emerging”, was published as an on-line book by Gatto Publishing in 2006.

Can You Feel It?

Positive reactions bleed good feelings, right? But some days it’s a struggle just to stay positive. One way we keep the serotonin flowing is to think about our dog (seriously), and how happy he gets when we give him positive reinforcement. That said, today we have positive reviews and negative reviews, which will make some writers happy and other writers unhappy. Just like opinions, everybody has a memoir, including Patti Smith. Paul Constant has a couple of words for The Kingdom of Ohio, there’s a look at Rachel Sherman’s debut and a look at William Styron’s finale. Somewhere after the first but before the last comes a review of Mavis Gallant’s early stories. In other optimistic/pessimistic news, Paige Williams and Dolly Freed fall off, and then climb back on the grid. And finally, if mid-January does have you feeling glum, remember Judi Charmberlin. She spent her life fighting the blues and then turned her experiences into a book. Read it and be happy. – Andrew Geer

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