I started teaching German and wanted to share my experience. I decided to open a page for this as I want to keep the main section for English posts. The text of the page is a work in progress so more will be added to the text over time.
Our little language school has recently been dumped by a major company whose language classes we had been organizing and teaching for over 20 years. Their human resources department felt they could invest their training budget better by buying licences to two online platforms and releasing the practice of organising and learning into the hands of their employees.
Though I am very sad about this development – I lost groups and students of many many years – I don’t see online platforms as competition to our coaching. Even if some companies might believe in using them to replace us ‘real teachers’ (and save money?), most online platforms are there to support us. And those I would like to thank here for their very valuable services and introduce you to some.
Continue readingMuch of what I believe about learning – through experience and studies – I have already written about elsewhere (for instance in my post: ‘The Best Curriculum in the World’). But the topic regularly pops up in classes, often in connection with questions concerning memory – memorizing and forgetting – or when talking about ‘grammar’, where I still hear things like: “I hate grammar, I’m bad at grammar etc.”. Even from course members whose English is on an advanced level.
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The topic of schools, schooling, and education is one that frequently comes up. The reason is simple: education is of the utmost importance and many agree that our school systems do not always provide the best environment for learning. The whole structure is unnatural (large same age groups with one adult) and forces kids and adults (the teachers) into a strait jacket that might fit some, but many it doesn’t.
There have been educators who try to fight for better educational concepts, better schools, for approaches to education that consider the psychological and cognitive nature of humans. For concepts that cater better to our minds: our brain’s fascinating capability to figure things out, to recognize patterns, to be curious about our surroundings – and enjoy the whole process.
Continue readingOr: There is no way around quantity: loads of exposure and practice if you want to develop skills or knowledge.
Continue readingI would like to share a little exerpt from a book that tries to encourage learners of any given language not to be afraid of exposure to original material even in their early stages of learning.
Language is one of the most complex systems our minds manage to master. We should or can trust our brains to acquire a lot of skills in ways we do not always understand or are able to describe. (And that we cannot or need not always control).
Continue readingTolerance for uncertainty does not seem to be one of humanities biggest strengths. We sometimes seem more willing to believe lies when asserted or claimed strongly (and grammatically) as facts (thereby becoming truth) than live with an answer like ‘It depends’.
Continue readingA huge part of any learning process lies in repetition: doing something over and over again until whatever skill you wanted to learn has been internalized.
Though most participants in my classes are more interested in using what they already can, i.e. speaking with each other, communicating ideas, discussing issues etc. there might still be some need for additional practice in form of repetition. However, what do we mean by that? What kind? What kinds of activities might be useful, or more useful than others in language learning? Learning a language is not quite the same as learning a skill like a new figure in dancing or an instrument.
Continue readingI always tell my students to be careful whenever they resort to their native language to understand a new word they have encountered. One big disadvantage of online classes is that you cannot really stop people from ‘googling’ a word they don’t know or are not sure about by checking a translation site (hoping to get a ‘quick fix’ I guess).
Continue readingI already wrote about this issue some years ago, but every once in a while it comes up again.
I don’t like correcting students while they are communicating. My reasons are several. First of all, I don’t want to interrupt their flow of thoughts. As I strongly believe that meaningful communication leads to language acquisition, herein lies my priority. Which is not to say I never go more deeply into questions of accuracy, grammar reflection, vocabulary practice and at times even drilling of forms. Many students expect this in a language course and some profit from it. Continue reading
(Revised March, 2020)
In February, I read an article with my classes about business ethics. You can find it on onestopenglish.com, Business Spotlight Worksheet: Money or Morals.
In the introductory paragraphs, the author (Vicky Sussens) describes a group of children playing hide and seek:
It is a beautiful autumn day. The sun shines golden on a small group of children who excitedly agree to play hide and seek. “Whoopee!” calls Sarah, racing off to a tree to hide her eyes. “Count to ten!” shouts Johnny, “That’s the rule.”
Rules are so much part of human interaction that even children can stick to them – especially in a game where there are winners and losers. (p 2)
This passage led to a discussion on the nature of rules, laws, regulations etc. and someone remarked that especially – not even – children insist on following the rules of a game. We all remembered such incidences. Without everybody sticking to the rules, many games would simply be unplayable. Rules are the defining features of a game.
In larger groups, like societies, rules become laws to ensure, in the best of cases, a cooperative and peaceful life among all members of the community. In any case, there are significant reasons for rules and they are always made by humans (‘humanmade’ so to speak).
Do languages have rules too?
If the answer were yes, what would be their nature? What would they be for? And who made them up or developed them?
One of my main issues over the last years of teaching has been with traditional grammar terminology, especially with ‘present’ and ‘past’. To a certain extent I believe in linguistic relativity i.e. that the language we use to describe something has an influence on how we perceive this something. It is not such a surprising insight, if you think about it. When someone refers to an object as table, I will not think of a chair. Well, I actually might think of a chair in association with the table, but that is a different point.
So when a form is called ‘past’ tense, most people – if not all – will believe that the term refers to the meaning of the form. However … Continue reading
Thoughts on correcting someone while speaking
(edited July 2024)
This morning in class, the question of correcting came up again.
A colleague, who subbed for me while I was on vacation, seems to have a noticeably different practice from my own concerning ‘corrections’ and three of us started talking about this after class. They asked me if I could correct them more. My colleague was said to have corrected them quite extensively.
The issue of correcting someone while speaking raises a lot of questions. Most importantly: How do we learn? But also: what is it that we are actually learning? What is or should be in focus? Continue reading
One of my basic teaching or training principles and aims is to create a situation in which ‘meaningful communication’ takes place. What is meant by ‘meaningful communication’? This is one of my main tasks – and sometimes challenges – in every class, and the main thing to find out when getting to know new groups and new students: what are they interested in as individuals and what are their interests (and needs) in respect to the context in which or for which they intend to improve their language skills – in companies their respective jobs. In short, what is meaningful in any given situation. Continue reading
A reflection on my own principles
It was our end of the summer tennis season get together at an Italian restaurant. I arrived later as I had a late evening class and one of my team mates asked me where exactly I had been or came from so late and we got into talking a little about my job. One of the questions she asked me after a while was if I had a concept – for a lay person maybe not comprehensible, but I was totally overwhelmed by this question at that moment, and not only because I was tired. I didn’t want to be rude by answering too briefly and I didn’t want to appear as if I had no clue of what I was doing and why.
This morning we discussed my verb structure circle system (see under pages) in one of my classes. It was, again, as I found, a very interesting discussion. There seems to be one point of misunderstanding, though, when I question the validity of right or wrong claims: my position is not ‘anything goes’ and ‘rules don’t matter’. Continue reading
What is more important: fluency or accuracy? I’m aware of the artificiality of the opposition. It makes no sense to set the two against each other. There is no either – or.
However, the two concepts do sometimes seem to linger in the minds of foreign language speakers. Every once in a while there are participants in class who hardly say anything. Now this may just be due to the nature of their personality: they are less imposing or more laid back, prefer to listen to others before they utter their own opinion etc. Continue reading
What is grammar?
Whenever you ask this question, e.g. in a first year Introduction to Linguistics course or to learners of English, the first reaction is often one of bafflement. Isn’t the answer rather obvious? Tenses, prepositions, if-clauses: all the stuff you were supposed to learn in school.
When I ask adult learners of English, which area of grammar they feel they have the most problems with or feel they need more practice in, they most often answer: tenses – closely followed by prepositions. The first year linguistic student as well as most learners of English equate ‘grammar’ with verb structures or ‘the tenses’. Especially in a German context there seems to be a certain obsession with ‘tenses.’ And many learners of English worry about getting the ‘tenses’ right, even students I consider quite advanced. Although, when asked, most agree that vocabulary is much more important than correct ‘grammar’, there seems to be a certain unease or insecurity when it comes to using the ‘tenses’. Continue reading
“Teacher: One who carries on his (sic) education in public” (Theodore Roethke, American poet, 1908 – 1963; In: Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to Language Teaching, 3rd ed. 2011, p 8)
Keywords: learner’s autonomy, teacher as moderator
I have always felt uncomfortable with calling myself an English teacher. To me, the word ‘teaching’ assumes a way too active role on my part – or on the part of any language teacher – in the process of a language learner’s development. It also shifts the blame on the teacher when the learning seems to have failed or seems to be failing. And it gives the student of the language a false sense of security: let’s visit a class and have someone teach us the language – all we have to do is go there.
Going ‘there’ surely is a first admirable step to take when one decides to take a course, and more difficult at times than one might think. And although I do believe that some kind of learning takes place in any kind of situation in which I expect it to, the concept of ‘teacher’ places the emphasis too much on a person that will teach me; on a person Continue reading