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Native teachers without linguistic talent | ||
Tags: Talent | Language Teaching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 106 09 June 2010 at 7:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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My daughter is fortunate enough to have native speakers as teachers in both English and Spanish. What however is uncomprehensible to me, is that these people who teach languages, and who one must assume are interested in languages, speak such a horrible Norwegian. In particular the American guy, who has worked and lived in Norway for 20 years, has an accent so heavy that it borders on being incomprehensible. The guy from Colombia has a less heavy accent, but they both write a really bad Norwegian, where they rarely have more than three sentences in a row that are spelled correctly.
Having been a language teacher myself, I know fully well that you make lots of mistakes, even if you are the teacher, but 10-20 years of living and working in that language should have some impact. People who have English as their mother tongue seem to struggle more than others, but I have also met Americans who spoke flawless Norwegian after 8 months - even though their chosen field of study was not languages. Have you had similar experiences of language teachers who were unable to learn the language properly? 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6377 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 106 09 June 2010 at 7:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, this is a big problem with English in Singapore, but in a much worse way. Previously, Singapore would recruit English teachers from England to teach here (maybe other countries as well I don't know specifically), but they've gone away from that to some extent and now have native Singaporeans teaching English in the primary and secondary schools. The problem is that the level of English has deteriorated drastically over the past 10 to 20 years in the general population, and the mistakes of the teachers are being transferred to the new students.
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| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5350 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 106 09 June 2010 at 7:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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My first German professor was a man who worked at the university that I attend. He was from Cameroon, Africa, and spoke German with a thick accent, although his English also had a thick accent. When I went to speak with him in his office, I quickly became under the impression that he did not speak a very good English (i.e. did not know enough vocabulary, etc) despite the fact that he lived in America for quite some time.
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6048 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 4 of 106 09 June 2010 at 8:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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That also makes me think, high school math teachers seem to be universally bad at math....
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| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5333 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 5 of 106 09 June 2010 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I used to have a native Dutch speaker as a Dutch teacher and she made silly grammatical mistakes in her native language on multiple occasions. One time I even caught her saying "als mij" in a comparison which is the very worst of grammatical mistakes in my opinion. This woman happened to be a bad teacher in other areas as well and my class gave her such a rough time that she left the school after teaching there for only one year.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6766 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 106 09 June 2010 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
The situation is similar in Japan. All English teachers in school (and probably teachers of other languages as well) are Japanese and generally speak English poorly or not at all. Typical practice is to hire a foreigner as the "teaching assistant" to provide native-speaker input, but the people applying for these jobs often come from countries where English isn't even spoken and lie to get the job. Even those who do speak English natively and sign up to be teaching assistants usually have no teaching skills or credentials, know nothing about how languages work, are unable to explain anything in Japanese, and are only there because they heard that teaching English in Asia was a good way for people without any career ambitions or skills to make money. At dedicated language schools like Berlitz and ECC, they always advertise that their French teachers, Korean teachers, Spanish teachers, etc. speak Japanese and can converse with the student. They never advertise this about their English teachers. Why? Because the English speakers are always the laziest of the bunch and can't be bothered to learn another language themselves. Edited by Captain Haddock on 09 June 2010 at 1:50pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 106 09 June 2010 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
They're not; a majority of my high school math teachers were good at it (the best had just finished a degree in math). There are plenty of bad math teachers, but there are some excellent ones too. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5583 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 8 of 106 09 June 2010 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
We were probably speaking about US teachers, 99% of which are terrible. I know for a fact I taught myself math all 12 years. Our math and science program is a TRAINWRECK. My physics teacher (quad major, probably one of the smartest women I have ever met in my life) helped me with math. Out of 60 teachers in my school, there were probably 5 respectable ones. As for the original question, the English native speaker probably uses English to get by in your country. 20 years in a country should allow the person to have native or near native like skills, including a decent accent. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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