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When some teachers are blunt | ||
Tags: Language Teaching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6083 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 1 of 32 10 January 2009 at 9:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't mean to come up with controversy but there's something that is still stuck in my throat though....
About one month ago I was in Florianopolis, a stunning island located in south Brazil, just going through a public test to attempt to become a civil servant. While I was around downtown after undergoing such test, I found out a Cervantes school's branch near the hostel where I was staying....so I had the idea to undergo a replacement test as there was a prospect of residing there. Well, getting right to the point, the teacher responsible for the test was a Spaniard....she started it out with a brief conversation....neverthless, she suddenly reached the conclusion I would fit in the intermediate level...anyway she handed me out a sheet of paper with questions only for intermediate students.....however, I asked her to give me one more with advanced grammar questions but she had declined my request.....so she started behaving roughly and said: "if you don't want to work on these questions, I don't really give a shit"...as though she told me to get out if I disliked her way of evaluating their probable customers....in other words, I had no choice and then decided to get through the test.... I did it well in the end and she got surprised....I scored 18 questions of 20......even so I asked her again for the the same sheet....and she turned around as though couldn't hear me or there was no one in the same office....but what it also grabbed my attention is that she didn't tell me to write down a composition in order to let her know how good is my writing. Within a few weeks, I'll make the same attempt at another Cervantes Institute's branch, but in Sao Paulo, hoping for a better time with a kind and rather prepared teacher. Has someone ever had to deal with this kind of teacher? Best regards. Edited by Alvinho on 10 January 2009 at 11:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| RisaXKoizumiX Diglot Newbie United States last.fm/user/rei_hii Joined 5814 days ago 35 posts - 34 votes Studies: Italian, Spanish*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 32 10 January 2009 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fortunately enough I have not experienced such an attitude from a language teacher (my one & only Italian teacher was a hilarious man). But what she exhibited was a unprofessional conduct to a prospective student. Her attitude doesnot make sense. She questions your request to take an advanced test & she gets harsh. & then she ignores you right after that. hmmm. I can only guess at what she would have done to a beginner student. & its attitudes like these that can scare away a beginner as well...I dont pity her I just pity her students...
hopefully at the other school you will not have to deal with people like her...or else i'll be even more annoyed...but you already know this ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6598 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 3 of 32 11 January 2009 at 7:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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The truth is that some teachers are just bad, both in the sense of lacking ability neaded for their job and in the sense of having black hearts. Some are just bad people with bad attitudes, bad personalities. Some are very cold and have no real interest in their students. Those teachers can be an impediment to learning, especially psychologically.
When I was in an immersion school in Spain I had excellent teachers, both excellent at instruction and with good friendly personalities, humorous and warm. In Japanese immersion school I had these kind of ideal teachers. They were awesome and this satisfaction which I derived from our personal relationships really encouraged me to associate happiness with the Japanese language and life in Japan. Consequently I made huge progress in Japanese. I even dated a female teacher and I male teacher one treated me by tacking me to a a girlbar and a メイド喫茶 (maid cafe). He also took me for nights out around Nagoya. They were perfect teachers. However, back home my Japanese teachers for most part are terrible. I cannot stomach them yet alone stand them. They refuse to explain anything ahead of the syllabus. When being talked to be students, they don't seem to understand. I don't get it! I was understood almost 100 per cent of the time in Japan, yet the expressions of these teachers show that they are struggling to understand what I say. I actually got depressed about this for a while. But then I overheared a similar conversation concerning the same anxieties. This time it was the conversation of a student who speaks excellent Japanese. If he was having the same problems with these two silly teachers, I knew that I had nothing to worry about. I started to get the impression that they just pretend not to understand the Japanese of the students, for what I can only imagine! I get the feeling that some Japanese people do this pretending not to understand thing when talking to foreigners. The only explanation I can think of it that they have hard feeling because their 5 years English classes went to waste and consequenty they cannot manage anything beyond the basic greetings. I heared for the guy at alljapaneseallthetime that the better the foreigner speaks Japanese, the more Japanese people dislike it and have hard feelings towards the foreigner. Maybe this mignt be the case with those two teachers of mine. Even though they have lived in England for over 3 years, their English is appauling, especially their listening comprehension, and as theachers they seem underqualified. Maybe this is the root of their attitude in which they seem to pretend not to understand. Because of their attitudes, I have started to ignore them. I was rude to them for a while because I hate having to be taught by them. I started to use Kansai-ben in class and they really didn't like it. Also my other Japanese teacher always inserts English words in her conversation with her students because she thinks "Japanese is too hard for foreigners". When she does it with me I feel annoyed. I know that have have a large vocabulary compared with most people in the class, and much more Kanji power. So when my teacher speaks to me like a child, I naturally get get angry in side and fantasise about slamming her like one does in UFC or doing pro-wrestling moves on her. That would be funny because she is a little weak Japanese women with a bad attitude while I am a big strong dude. Back to serious points, their negative attitudes, which don't encourage the students to open up and speak, not only are a major annoyance for me, they make me have bad feeling to the language itself. The opposite effect of my excellent teachers in Japan and my experiences of happiness. Because of their attitudes, I often feel like "what is the point?" and just don't participate in class knowing that I can teach myself much more. In fact I have even started to skip classes so that I can study more by myself. Because of their negative attitudes, the more I start to dislike Japanese culture and Japan itself. I sometimes wonder why I learned their language. Sometimes I can understand why they are the most hated nation in Asia. I only have to put up with their idiocy for one semmester, then I will be back in Japan. Edited by Maximus on 11 January 2009 at 7:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6083 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 4 of 32 11 January 2009 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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huuummmm.....these guys according to your statements should be glad to talk to a western student in their mother tongue, once Japanese is quite hard to understand and a few people have been willingly to learn, due to such difficulty......there's an evident lack of professionalism and humility amongst those guys....
I won't give up studying my target languages because of some people's misbehaviour and frustration. Edited by Alvinho on 11 January 2009 at 1:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6296 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 32 11 January 2009 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If she actually used these words you need to lodge a complaint with the institute. It is your duty to do so, as a well-informed language learner. There are plenty of good teachers looking for work.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6083 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 6 of 32 11 January 2009 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, mate, I know that.....but actually if I did really so I doubt the S.Paulo staff would make a move to fire her at once....at most they would warn her as she's a Spanish-speaking teacher and this fact is rather importan to attract students.....but if I'm not wrong she's the head of that Cervantes Institute's branch....despite my complaints on this thread, I'd better forget it.....better teachers will come out over time. Edited by Alvinho on 11 January 2009 at 2:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6288 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 32 11 January 2009 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
So what if they don't take action? Why are you better off forgetting it? It's not like they're going to shoot you for filing a complaint (I assume) - so, file one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6165 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 8 of 32 11 January 2009 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah I'd agree, that it's a good idea to file a complaint. Behaviour like that is unacceptable and there's no reason you should take crap like that from anyone, let alone a qualified, presumably professional teacher. File a complaint, and then follow up on it a few days later to see what they've done about it. If nothing, keep hounding them. Edited by ChristopherB on 11 January 2009 at 6:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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