Englishour's Blog

Many students come to Dublin for two reasons, to learn English and to find a job. In Englishour we can help you to achieve both.
How you prepare for looking for a job is the key to your success. Writing an excellent Curriculum Vitae accompanied by a cover letter which really speaks to your future employer is a skill which we can help you develop. Your CV has to say that not only can you actually do the job which you are looking for but also that you really want this job and if given it, you will develop within the company. Presenting yourself well on paper before the interview will separate you from the hundreds of other applicants looking for the same position and thereby increase your chances of gaining that all-important interview.
After helping you to create a personalised CV and cover letter, in Englishour we can help you to ace the interview as well! The language we use to present ourselves and explain our skills, mirror who we are and how we see ourselves as a functioning person within a working environment. Through role-play we will help you to use your CV as a tool to help you to get that job. We can give you the language you need to fluently express yourself and sell your skills to your future employer.
In Englishour we recognise that you are not only a learner of English. You have goals and ambitions and our role is to help you realise them in so far as we can.

O’B was in great form altogether. And sure why wouldn’t he be on such a lovely late spring day, retirement just around the corner and about to execute the sheer brilliant plan which he had put so much time and thought into? In fact, he was in such great form that he even quickened his step a little, no mean feat for a man of almost seventy years and a very short stride indeed. 

O’B stood for O’Byrne, but all the pupils called him O’B. He was a short fellow, only about the same height as the boys in the sixth class, but what he lacked in height he made up for in sheer terror. The man was a ball of pure energy. In his classes he would move around the blackboard in a whirlwind of knowledge, chastisement, laughter and sincerity, all machine-gunned from his mouth in a high-pitched scream. The boys loved him because something in their young minds told them that he was a brilliant teacher, and in spite of the physical pain he inflicted on them they knew that in their long futures they would never meet another man like O’B again. They also of course, thought he was funny to look at. He was old. Very old. And he was bald. Very bald. And he was tiny. Some of them thought he looked like Mr Magoo from the cartoons, but without the glasses. But no one called him Mr Magoo. He was always simply called O’B. 

Arriving at the school O’B was quietly humming the tune in his head. He had gone over all of the variables for the last time over breakfast, although it was hardly necessary, as this had been cooking for months now, since Christmas in fact, when the idea had first come to him one night while overindulging in a bit of port. When it came to him he had scribbled it on a piece of paper and then forgotten about it. But pieces of paper with words scribbled on them have a habit of resurfacing and when this one did just that, O’B reread it and thought a little and read it again and then marvelled at what a good idea it actually was. 

Returning to the school after the Christmas holidays, the idea foremost on his mind, he hit O’Malley twice on the backside during maths class with a ruler in quick succession and heard the two identical squeaks of pain. He was right! The idea could work. He then set about bringing it all into fruition. 

The boys loved O’B, but they also feared him and his wooden ruler. If a boy answered a question wrongly, O’B would have the boy stand up at the side of the room, and as the class went on, and more boys failed to answer correctly, the line at the side would grow and grow until by the end of the class there could be between ten to fifteen boys there, the swats being the only ones still sitting. Then came the punishment. O’B would order all the standing boys to bend over forwards touching their toes so their bottoms were facing out and in quick succession he would make his way as quickly as possible down the line striking each boy hard on the backside with the ruler facing downwards in order to inflict maximum pain. The result for the victim was a very sharp sting, which raced from the nerve-endings in the buttock straight up the spine and into the mouth. It was strange. After the beating the boys would all sit down gingerly into their seats and collectively they would start rubbing their jaws. Every part of the body is all connected, O’B guessed.

His moment of genius with the port bottle, came that night when he realised that the note the boys produced with each strike of the ruler was consistent each time, providing he used the same amount of force with each strike. As a primary mathematics teacher he was even able to come up with a formula testifying to the fact:

                                                       ∑=∍Ψ(Δ-ρ)

This was scientifically confirmed on the first day of the new term after Christmas with O’Malley. When he struck him twice in quick succession, he noticed that O’Malley produced a distinct D note each time. Jones was next. He was an A. Stevens an F minor and so on. Over the weeks, through trial and error he carefully annotated the class list with the notes each boy produced, and he was surprised at some of his findings. One boy, Duffy, actually produced a chord rather than a single note, which O’B put down to his voice breaking, and one of the swats, Smyth O’Brien was a consistent high C. O’B took note of all of this golden information and determined to put as many of the boys as possible into good use. 

Once he had categorised each boy, the next thing he had to do was to find the music he would perform for himself on the day of his retirement. He was a classical music buff, so it couldn’t be anything contemporary, but as to which piece to use, he wasn’t sure. He went through all his vinyls and when he heard it he immediately knew that that had to be the one. The first movement of Beethoven’s great fifth symphony, the allegro part of the first movement. Bum Bum Bum Bum! In this moment of clarity, O’B had smiled to himself and thought how very appropriate!

The piece chosen, the rest was now down to careful planning with the utmost attention paid to the detail. On one day, which the boys later called ‘Black Monday’, O’B made sure all the boys were punished several times during one double-geography period so he could ascertain the range and pitch of each boy. One boy, McDonald, a dimwit in O’B’s mind had the fascinating ability to produce a very distinct F sharp or C minor depending on which buttock he was hit. It was really because of McDonald that O’B settled on C minor as the key in which he would do his performance. He counted each note in his darkened apartment and then worked out which boy would be struck in which order. 

Bum Bum Bum Bum! O’B decided that he would play the first four bars in the class. He had read somewhere that Beethoven had written these bars to represent the impeding deafness that was descending upon him. Like the rumbling of an approaching storm. O’B thought that this would be a fitting tribute to himself as a symbol of his impending retirement. And he would go out on a high note. O’Halloran.

The boys were sitting and waiting for him when he arrived. His last day as a teacher. He had decided that a spelling bee would be the most effective way get the boys standing, and in the order which they were required. He knew each boy and his spelling limitations, so walking to the top of the class he ordered the boys to close all their books and declared the spelling bee open. He looked at McDermott first. McDermott was thick.

‘McDermott, spell submarine’.

‘S-O-‘

Mission accomplished. McDermott was up. He had huskiness in his voice when hit, which O’B felt would be a perfect start to the movement. He needed O’Farley next. O’Farley was a swat. And an excellent speller.

‘O’Farley! Spell loquacious’.

Excellent. So far so good. Another in the line.

‘Jones. Spell singularisation’.

And another one bites the dust. This went on until all the boys in the class were standing in the order O’B wanted them. Only Hennessy and O’Looney were still sitting. Hennessy croaked when hit and O’Looney made no sound whatsoever. They were superfluous to his plans. O’B looked down the line.

‘All of you! Turn around and bend over!’

The line turned in unison and backs disappeared revealing grey pants covering bottoms looking like stretched flannel drum skins ready to be played. 

O’B lifted his ruler. 

He looked at McDermott’s bottom and then O’Farley’s all the way down the back of the line where O’Halloran’s high note would signal the end of his masterwork. Gripping the ruler tightly, like his magic baton, he quickly struck McDermott, O’Farley, Jones and then O’Byrne. 

OW! OW! OW! OW! His symphony had begun. As O’B ran with full focus down the line striking and reproducing the perfect notes as written by Beethoven himself, something at the back of his mind told him that this would be the happiest fifteen seconds of his life. Four bars of bliss. And it was.

©John Ryan 2011