Do you feel you’re actually teaching English? I kinda suspect it’s more like a “status symbol” to have some foreign person “teach” you. I know how the idea of Taiwanese chasing status symbols is pretty absurd, but ever get the feeling that learning English is at best a secondary reason for enrolling?
I was reading this website where an English teacher posted a pic of a “thank-you” card. The students wrote “Nice to miss you” several times. I’m assuming this was given to him at the end of the last class.
Isn’t that a slap in the face?
I don’t know if I can repeatedly correct the pronounciation of the letter “f” only to keep hearing “effu, effu”.
But seriously folks. Huh? I love teaching English and while no student of mine puts in the four or five hours a day that I would like to see, I would say that my classes definitely make a huge difference for most of my students. I was thinking today about how a lot of people seem to think that English teaching is some kind of slacker job. They probably think that because almost any knucklehead can get a job teaching just now. But what does it take to be a great teacher? I would suggest the following for a start.
Near fluency in your students language.
Tremendous people skills.
A warm heart and a great sense of humor.
Creative inclinations.
A background in modern (and not so modern) ESL theories and methodologies.
The ability to stay organized.
The ability to think on your feet.
I’m not saying that I am a great teacher but I am working on it. If your students don’t seem motivated it may be because the class actually “is” boring. Listen to your students. They are the best teachers you will ever have. P.S. Show them the phonetic for each letter’s name. For example a,b,c,d = /e/ /bi/ /si/ /di/ etc.
Fatty.
Try teaching kids anythig anywhere, they always get it wrong at some point. You are just asking if teaching is a crap job or not really.
Answer: It isn’t.
Question, How many times can you input numbers into a computer and feel valued? How many times can you look at a bit of metal and say “Too thick/thin/malleable.”
Baby, lifes what you make it… (Talking heads, or Talk Talk, help me out it’s well early)
This weekend I had a very interesting conversation with two university students, one from Cheng Kung U, Tainan and the other from Taiwan U. Both of them decried the English language teaching in Taiwan. One of these students just returned from an intensive 6-week Yale ELI course and found out just how he stacked up against the rest of the world. It was sobering for him to say the least.
I think one should ask this question to the students, not the teacher themselves.
Feel? Man, I know they’re learning. The fact that these Grade 2 kids who couldn’t speak a word of English 2 years ago are now taking home chapter books to read, suggests they’ve learnt a bit.
I have taken a class of 5 year olds with no English to near fluency within a year. How did I do this? To be honest in the immersion system they learnt just as much having me take them to the bathroom and sit with them at lunch as they did in the classroom. And that is the beauty of immersion preschool.
All I have to do is think of the three kids who started off in my class with absolutely no English as 3-year-olds who are reading books and getting ready to start accelerated 1st grade language arts at a higher level of reading abilities than their peers in North America. I have no doubt that I have made a difference or that I am really teaching them.
Kids in my kindergarten class learnt a lot of English by accident. I had the baby class and by 6 months they were really talking. Did I do that ? Probably not. Another bloke may have done it better. But yes, I felt I did make a difference.
I disagree with Bob’s 1) strongly. I’ve found native language ability a hinderance and feel I was much better when I didn’t understand the comment. I would replace it with something like "knowing there is always room for improvement for both the teacher and the students.
There are always students and sometimes teachers who will get it wrong. A lot of native English speakers don’t know the difference between laps and lengths.
Personally I’ll never know if I’m a good teacher by judging student results or the number of bums on seats or not but I know I have improved
When I moved to Alishan I taught privately at home as well as in the local primary schools up here.
I taught these kids for 2 years and then they joined an 85 interschool English competition… damn it they romped into first place and made the papers an all… partly for being Abo’s and partly because people were shocked at their pronunciation. I focus on that a lot…
Most of these kids spend time at my house at the weekend playing around or watching satellite tv… no subtitles… Not speaking Chinese in my house also helps…
Unfortunately a lot of schools hired teachers for the competition and that didnt work. What does work is that I don’t take in kids who don’t want to study English. I teach several gratis because they really like to learn and their parents can’t afford it… best kids to teach, the ones that don’t have to come but want to…
Matchstick man I am not entirely sure that you understand my post. What I said (or at least meant) was that if you are going to be a truly phenomenal teacher for adults you will need to be working towards fluency in “their” language. This is true for such mundane reasons as because it is extremely convenient for them if they can ask something like “How do you say ‘shangxiawen’ in English?” and get an accurate answer. And there are some things that they just don’t really need to learn in English but still need to understand. I think for example that quite a few students would rather be able to ask questions about English grammar in Chinese. And knowing Chinese makes you more aware of the differences between the languages and allows you to empathize with their plight as second language learners.
There are reasons I listed “near fluent second language ability” as the first characteristic of a great second language teacher.