Search from various English teachers...
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Teacher, Teach me some Teacherese!
A language teacher speaking only at a regular native speed with its student, using way to say or rare vocabulary can be more than useless, it can even be discouraging for that student, who is going to feel overwhelmed by the linguistic challenge, and may eventually give up learning that language.
“Teacherese” is a word that identifies the simplified language used by language teachers with their students.
It is functional to have an understandable input reaching the learner, that especially at the beginning of its journey needs easy, slow and well-spelled sentences. The potential bad side of this practice, when not well balanced, is the linguistic shock a student will have when first interacting with a non-teacherese native speaker of that language: “hey, they speak so quickly, I have my B2/C1 degree but I can’t understand anything”. I personally experienced that, and it can be pretty discouraging, it makes you feel that if after all of what you have studied you are not able to speak to a native, then you should give up: that language is not for you.
As always, the truth lies in the middle. A good balance is required between some teacherese and some real language input.
At which stage of learning do you think one should start interacting with some real language material (movies, interviews, the teacher itself…)?
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The Academic way and the Insults
Language learning is a process that can be approached in many ways. Though, nowhere, public or private schools, I have been learning some true deep slang, some of those way to say that are really at the edge of being insulting, or proper insults – single words or articulated constructions.
I think it is a big loss for a language learner. They are expressions of a society, they are dense in meaning. It is tough to explain an offence to a non-native speaker of that language: since this vocabulary part “should be handled with care”, a teacher has to give a whole sociological explanation behind even a single insulting word, to have the student understanding why, such word is considered to be insulting within a certain society.
If you think about it, how do we insults? If we want to hit hard with words, we will go to hit where it hurts, on those aspects that are important for the opponent. Common insults are common, because a whole society feels that what is held inside them is something that hurts when touched. Learning insults, in a way, is tasting some of the most important values of a society.
I think there is no point in arguing on how useful knowing them (as linguistic constructions to use, or to be able to understand) is – they may be fun for young learners, rather useless (or maybe not?) for business English learners.
I have never been asked by a teacher if I wanted to learn them, but I would have appreciated it. I think they are seen as some “unprofessionalism indicators” by language teachers. I actually see a lot of complexity in them, they are some of the hardest words or constructions to handle and understand in a language. I think that many are not teaching them, not just because they want to be “professional”, but also because they are not able to, or because they don’t want to take the responsibility of showing how a language can be used to hurt, and at the same time, how to control it.
Who should be taking this responsibility, if not a language teacher?
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Nobody like roleplays during lessons
Looking on teachers/tutors presentation video, it seems that the only possible technique to teach any language is to have the learner speaking about topic of his/her interest. Very few teachers avoid mentioning this, and I have seen nobody so far sponsoring roleplays or given topics as means to develope dialogue/monologue skills.
How comes?
This choice, is coming - other than from a "marketing" strategy for some - from a convinction, the one in which every learner is different, with a different learning style, so...everything has to be adjusted according to his/her peculiarity, starting from the topics one is talking about during the lesson, which are going to be stuff that the learner likes.
Is it actually a good idea? Can't it be the case, that leaving too much "freedom" in the topic choice could lead to a slower progress of the learner?
"adjusting" the teaching style to the learner is clearly something to be done, but, how far should this go to be really beneficial?
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