rantingteacher.co.uk

eBay

I recently felt the need to have a scout around on eBay, which for those of you who don’t know is like a giant online bring and buy sale, where you can post up details of what you want to auction and people from around the world can bid for your old rubbish. I was actually looking for an item of clothing, and consequently had to scroll through pages of details and photos to see if anyone happened to be selling exactly what I wanted at that time.

Now a very strange thing happened. Even though I was merely gazing at my computer screen, spooning cereal into my mouth and clicking the same old mouse I use every day, I started to feel a bit grubby. I even sensed a slight musty smell, like the one that sometimes lingers at jumble sales and charity shops. This was made worse when I read people’s descriptions of their items: “slight wear on collar” or “small mark hardly noticeable” and the worst of all: “from a smoke free home” – did this mean that everyone who didn’t put this was flogging stinky yellowing items?

You also get to snoop in other people’s homes and lives: hangers displaying clothing are hung from the edge of their living room door or the banisters to be photographed, comments about damage made by young daughters or sons are mentioned, and you can look at the other stuff these people are selling to form your own opinions of what type of people they are.

But what struck me most was the appalling spelling on display. Considering this is a global marketplace, and there were sellers from the States, Hong Kong, Italy and all the British Isles in the sections I perused, descriptions of items from sellers in Nottingham or Essex or Bristol were barely literate. One seller invited you to send him your questions because “ill be happy to ansa them”. Now if I were sat there as an English learner, flicking through my dictionary and watching the auction clock tick down, desperate to decipher the nonsense on screen in case I was bidding for a non-refundable dodgy geezer’s junk that had something to do with being ill, I’d throw my hands up in despair. Don’t even get me started on greengrocers’ apostrophes. Now everyone can be that grocer, and language itself can get grosser still: abused by its native speakers for the world to see.

I couldn’t help myself straying into the realms of teachers who sell stuff on eBay. There are quite a few cottage industries going; people selling all kinds of stuff of interest to teachers, from books and stationery (very fierce bidding over laminators) to individually created stickers and certificates. I was almost tempted on one auction until I looked closely and realised that the seller wouldn’t actually be posting anything to the auction’s highest bidder. Instead, for your money you would get an email with a file containing the certificates or flashcards or whatever it was, which you would then have to print out yourself at your own expense on your own paper using your own electricity! Now call me old-fashioned, but that seemed like a bit of a cheek! It takes longer to search for this stuff on eBay than it would to open up a Publisher file on your own computer and use the wizard to help you create your own certificates! So as you may have guessed, I did neither of these things, but instead wasted hours hunting down memorabilia from bands I used to like, then eyeing my own possessions and seeing cartoon-style pound signs in their place. But after my browsing session I didn’t even have a tentative bid, which I suppose is the sign of a good shopping trip – I didn’t actually spend any money, although I still felt a bit grubby afterwards.

But if you are after making a bit of extra money, eBay has opportunities to those with an interest in teaching. It seems that all you need to do is buy yourself a couple of photocopiable books with worksheets (or borrow the school’s, what the heck!) and have access to a photocopier, then flog copies online. I don’t know what publishers would think of this, but it seems a lucrative black market is going on out there!

Back to the Homepage

Go to the Contents

added 23/6/05