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Native teachers without linguistic talent | ||
Tags: Talent | Language Teaching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 106 13 July 2013 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My wife arrived in the US in her late 20s, just after 6 months of English-speaking immersion in Sweden. At the time, her speaking and listening comprehension were probably somewhere between B2 and C1. Ten years later, her spoken English was virtually flawless. I have a good ear for things like preposition errors, and I can't remember the last time I heard her make one. She still has a light but noticeable accent, but it doesn't interfere with anyone's comprehension. Her use of informal English is idiomatic. I live near a research university, and we have lots of immigrant friends with PhDs who arrived in their late 20s with varying levels of English. My wife's case is not unusual; plenty of these people are near-native after a decade. In many cases, they married native English speakers. But even when they didn't, their social peer group was always English-speaking. However, not all of the people with near-native spoken English have near-native written English. As far as I can tell, developing a good written style requires lots and lots of reading—and not all research scientists with young children manage to find the time to read. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 42 of 106 13 July 2013 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Learners must be self-motivated if it's really their own choice, not if they are required to take a language at school.
It sounds like Spanish is a trendy language in Norway and the school heads thought they would get away with a crappy teacher because of that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4260 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 43 of 106 13 July 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I second what he says. If you have decades to live in a country and even if the target language is very different from your native language, you can reach a level that is almost indistinguishable from that of a native. My father has lived in the US for over 40 years and is as good as a native in grammar, idiomatic expressions, and word choice. Some relatives say that he has a slight accent but if he does have one, it is extremely slight and something that I don't notice. He came when he was an adult. What IS rare is somebody that comes to the US without knowing any English from, say, Japan, and reaches the same very high level of my father (40+ years in the US, uses English 80% of the day, the rest in his native language) in six months. THAT I have never seen. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4260 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 44 of 106 13 July 2013 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Did they have formal classes in Norwegian? I know an American in Spain that has lived there for like 5 years and speaks Spanish about 50% of the day, but still makes basic errors in gender and concordance. :( But the person probably never had formal classes and doesn't have a good base. I think that your example of the two people would be an exception, right? Or are they just bad at languages or have never bothered in speaking correctly? One thing is having a mediocre accent and another is just butchering the pronunciation rules so that comprehension is impaired. Also, they shouldn't be getting basic grammatical concepts wrong if they have lived there many years, are married to native speakers, AND work in Norwegian. :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4171 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 45 of 106 13 July 2013 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Even fairly advanced speakers still make basic errors occasionally. And a lot of people get stuck at intermediate level simply because they're good enough to be understood most of the time, so they don't really have the motivation to get any better. The reality is that "I go to school yesterday" is not harming communication, so it takes some extra motivation to get past that. Obviously there are situations where this error would harm communication, but they're rare enough to not matter (and they get rarer the more advanced the language becomes).
But I actually find that it's often the beginner level that's the most difficult/discouraging for native English-speakers learning a foreign language, especially doing so from scratch in a foreign country. In Vietnam, for example, even though the standard of English isn't particularly good, lots of people in the service industry at least know how to do the basics of their job in English. Not only that, but they're very keen to practice. Hell, I've got a friend who goes to a Vietnamese language school and the receptionists at the school she's learning at won't speak to her in Vietnamese (despite her VNese being far better than their English). Whether it's people wanting to practice their English, being impatient, or simply embarrassed at potentially not understanding you, it can be massively frustrating, and often feels like they don't actually want you to make an effort. I know a hell of a lot of people who've been discouraged by this. I can't count the times that I've asked the price of something in Vietnamese and been given the answer in English. I've even had quite a lot of occasions where someone who doesn't even speak English decides to write down the numbers for me rather than actually tell me. I don't know if this is a uniquely Vietnamese thing, but I'd be interested to know people's experiences in other countries. As for language teaching, I would never try to explain a grammar point to a student in their own language. Most of them have been taught for years by teachers who could explain every aspect of the grammar to them and they still don't have a clue how to actually use it in conversation. It's the equivalent of learning to play a guitar by reading a book about it. Grammatical knowledge of the teacher should only come into play in designing activities that present the grammar in a realistic context and where the grammar is vital to proper communication of something. The actual learning comes from practising it. No-one ever learned a language by being told the rules. And if students are really interested out of general curiosity, they can no doubt look it up when they get home. I've sat through language classes in which the teacher speaks English and had to put up with other students asking questions about every little aspect of the language. The result is that you get absolutely no practice using it. You get told everything and remember none of it. I've also sat through a beginner Greek class performed by my teacher trainer and despite the teacher speaking nothing but Greek (in fact, nothing but the target language) throughout the 45 minute lesson, I managed to learn the numbers 1 to 5, five colours, one object, the grammar of plural forms, and how to give and receive something. But more impressively, I remembered pretty much all of that 2 months later despite never attending another Greek lesson or having any exposure to it. I even still remember some of it 3 years later, in particular the grammar. It's also worth pointing out that almost all of the interaction was between students, not teacher to student. It was so massively more powerful than anything I learned in high school (in which the teachers spoke English) or Vietnamese classes (in which the teachers speak English). The only reason for an English teacher to learn the language of their students, AFAIC is to familiarise themselves with some of the problems their students might face, not to actually use it in the classroom, even at beginner level. Very occasionally, it might be useful for some administrative purpose at a very low level. Edited by I'm With Stupid on 13 July 2013 at 6:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4260 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 46 of 106 13 July 2013 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know exactly what she meant, but I understood her paragraph to mean that the coworkers made basic mistakes *often*. Everybody makes mistakes, even natives, but if somebody makes basic mistakes every 5 words, that is different. For an English speaker that learns a Romance or Germanic language, it shouldn't take 20 years of daily immersion to reach an advanced level. Even if somebody is not interested in the language, if you speak it 8 hours a day, I don't see how you could not reach a very high level unless you have some learning disability. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 47 of 106 13 July 2013 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't agree that explaining grammar is so pointless and the grammar should be just behind the "designed realistic activities". Even as a child, I liked it better to be told the rules, or rather read them because teachers were too busy "designing the realistic activities", than just being expected to discover them in those activities. I just believe things should be learnt first and practiced later than vice versa. (Learning from context while practicing is of course possible and awesome but class activities fail in this area totally, especially when compared with good input.)
That is the way to learn, in my opinion, therefore I believe the statement "The actual learning comes from practising it. No-one ever learned a language by being told the rules. And if students are really interested out of general curiosity, they can no doubt look it up when they get home." flawed, no offence meant. The children go to school to learn. If they do pointless activities in class and only the interested ones properly learn at home, than the school is waste of public money and everyone would have better results from home schooling. The trouble is that many teachers explain grammar in a wrong way. There is a huge difference between a teacher who explains you how to use it and when to use it and the one that wants you to recite the rules. Both this extreme and the one expecting people to learn grammar just from the "realistic" activities are wrong. Well, the Cristina's example, after all, was one of the things that were meant to be realistic situation with grammar and vocab background. What it seems to have been instead (and usually is in such cases), was an exercise in acting and finding out how to please the teacher. I actually doubt the value of such activities in any classes but the conversational ones. A usual beginner learns much faster without listening to people at his/her own level too much and without the pressure to be liked by the teacher. But I agree with I'm With Stupid that the main advantage of the teacher knowing the native language of the students is knowing their troubles better in order to help them learn. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5726 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 48 of 106 14 July 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
A couple of points I want to make:
Not if they're professional. If they remember that the lesson is the time for the students, they'll have conversations in the country's language outside of class.
Hear, hear. I completely agree. When I was a teenager I went to a language school that hired natives from the UK. It was a great experience, but mainly because the teachers were young and relaxed, different from regular school teachers. It sometimes irritates me that just having English as your native language and a pretty short course seem to be enough to teach it. It's great for many college graduates who don't exactly know what to do with their life, sure, but is it the best option for the students? I'm not sure.
They don't have to be language lovers, but if I had it my way, I would expect them to know one language well. Any language, not necessarily of the country they're going to be teaching in. They're supposed to teach a language! They must be somewhat interested in the subject! With time I came to the conclusion that the most important thing is to know how to go about learning a language and you can't learn this theoretically, you have to experience it. If you have a teacher who will speak perfect English at you but won't be able to tell you why you should say it this or that way, you might as well be listening to a podcast, reading a book, watching TV. The outcome will be the same. But podcasts have this advantage that you can replay them all the times you want. Edited by pesahson on 14 July 2013 at 4:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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