Job Discussion Forums

[guest of Japan]

Hi, Tuttifruitti.

The benefit of youth is that you are allowed to be naive. The curse of experience is cynicism. What depresses me is that I haven't even turned 30 yet, and I've got the cynicism of a village elder.

[Tuttifruitti]

Ah, don't be so hard on yourself If it works for you... go with it!
I bet you're not as cynical as you think though! Take the test and find out...And I bet you'll enjoy the site

http://www.i-cynic.com/quiz.asp

[veiledsentiments]

Oh Guest,

Cynical already?? What will happen by the time you get to my age!!

But, to be honest, I think I was born cynical, but I prefer to think of it as practical or discerning. Of course, I didn't really start teaching until I was 35, so I got to get cynical in another career first.

VS

[guest of Japan]

Tuttifruiti, I've taken your test and it has been confirmed that I am a cynic. To make matters worse I thought it was a waste of my time, but realized I have nothing better to do with that time. Thanks for the epithany.

VS, I wasn't born a cynic. I was a raving optimist. All it took to change me were a few jiltings in high school, a few fellow cynics in university, the study of 10,000 years of repetition with different names and new theories, and finally my stint in the workforce watching hacks trying to mold young carbon fiber minds under the guidance of administrators who've reached the highest level of their incompetence.

On the bright side, I've met some pretty good people too.

I'm hoping that cynicism correlates to unfullfilled desire, and that neither will exist when I reach you age and wisdom VS.

[veiledsentiments]

Gee Guest,

I often ponder whether I am actually any wiser. I know for sure that I am older since life presents daily reminders.

You have to stop reading history!! Therein lies the problem.

And about those unfulfilled desires... ahem... haven't you noted that the ones that were fulfilled ended up being not exactly what you were expecting? The key is to be able to laugh at it all - especially oneself.

Is that wisdom? (or senility?)

VS

[guest of Japan]

It sounds like wisdom, but then I don't have much experience with either.

"Quit reading history" - but then I won't know what happens next. It will kill my gambling average.

Thanks, for the morning read. Have a wonderful day.

[noonlite]

Interesting dialogue.

I have an MAT in ESL/EFL from the School for International Training in Vermont which is a school that has a highly practical hands on curriculum for teaching. Before that, I was in the MA program at the University of Hawaii which has a strong theoretical component and has a Second Language Aquisition team that produces a large amount of reasearch in the field.

I left Hawaii, however, to go to Vermont because I felt that as a teacher, I needed more practical skills and that some of the theoretical stuff (linguistically, psycholinguistically, socio-psycholinguistically, etc...) was too divorced from the reality of the classroom, especiall according to my then limited experience in teaching.

Anyway, having been exposed to both perspectives (practical and theoretical) my experience has been that both help me a great deal in the classroom now, after teaching for almost ten years, but nothing was more useful or has ever been more useful, than actual experience in the classroom. Experience in the classroom that is supported by the knowledge from an MA, however, is more effective for learning than experience without it. After experience, the most helpful thing was the practical aspect of my experience at SIT, especially certain components of their experiential learning in the Approaches Courses where I was exposed to a variety of useful techniques practiced by masters in the field that I have now adopted into my own teaching in my own ways.

In general I feel confident in stating that a teacher with a masters in the field with say three years of experience, is going to be a better teacher than someone in the field with three years and only a BA.

On the other hand, a teacher with three years experience and only a BA, will be a better teacher (generally speaking as there are always exceptional cases) than someone with an MA fresh out of college and no real teaching experience.

These are my observations based on looking at my own experiences working in the field and sometimes hiring for my employers. In the end, having an MA shows that you are committed to growing and becoming a more evolved teacher and the knowledge that is encountered through such programs is going to have a lasting impact that can especially be seen over time, but may not be apparent immediately. I know that I still felt like I didn't know #$#@ even after graduating with my MA and having taught for a few years. Now, however, I can look back and see how all of that knowledge has gradually played iteself out and emerged into my own teaching.

However, the one thing that it seems all of the programs are missing that I feel would most prepare would be teachers is an awareness of human beings and how and why we experience things and behave in the ways that we do. Keys to these issues can be found in studying human feelings, and the roles that varying states of consciousness and beliefs structures play in learning and teaching. Nothing has helped me more in my teaching than being able to read where my students are at in themselves emotionally and intellectually as well as linguistically. This is true for each individual and the classroom as a hole when all of the enrgies of where each are at combine into this magical and wonderful "atmosphere" that becomes our linguistic playpen. When you know where the class is and how they are feeling about things, it is much easier to figure out where they need to go next and what will best serve in taking them there. This kind of knowledge, I suspect, is often called "experience" because it results from having experience, but I believe that we can cause this level of knowledge to occur much faster were we to teach about it and research it.


Furthermore, knowledge about a subject and knowledge about how to communicate knowledge are two totally different things. Teaching is much more about being able to communicate knowledge than it is about having knowledge. In teaching, how well you can communicate what you do know will always be more important than the amount of what you know.

[veiledsentiments]

Very interesting, noonlite. And I agree completely. I have taught with a number of excellent teachers out of the Vermont program. And I have taught with a number of excellent teachers from the more theoretical programs. (let's ignore the bad teachers for the moment...) My first degree was in Secondary Education - and after 15 years in business, I went for my MA in EFL.

Partially this is the old question of whether teaching is an art or a science. But, I agree that you don't really have that much idea what you are doing until you have actually done it for a few years. I really felt that my first 6 years were where I learned what I was doing - trial and error - different types of learners... different types of schools... And, I think my age was a positive.

As to understanding the psychology of it all... this may very well come down to something so simple as: Do you like your job? Do you like your students? If you don't enjoy teaching, that is usually obvious to the students rather quickly. And I don't mean that your students are your friends and buddies, but that you honestly care about them and their lives and their success in their educational endeavor. I give most of the credit to what success I had as a teacher to the fact that I seemed to be able to motivate them - and it was not by making the class fun... because I usually taught writing, which few students find a pleasant experience. Other teachers have asked me how I managed it, but to be honest, I really don't know. That is one of those things that makes it an art.

VS

[cmp45]

I agree with you VS, teaching must be something you enjoy doing and one really needs to be genuine in the classroom because if you are not happy teaching, the students are quick to pick up on the negative vibes.

[abufletcher]

One shouldn't assume that what gets taught in most US-based linguisitics departments (e.g. phonology, morphology, Chomskyan perspectives on syntax, and semantics) is necessarily the "content" that language teachers need to do their job well.

I've got a BA and MA in linguistics but I no longer support the mainstream views on language and learning which underly much of that field. I just completed a Ph.D. in the area of conversation analysis which has more in common with sociology (not sociolinguistics) than linguistics. My daughter is now interested in possibly pursuing a career in EFL and I've suggested that a BA in something like Intercultural Communication might be a better foundation for a subsequent MATESOL.

[abufletcher]

And don't even get me started on the culturally inherited common-wisdom that passes for "grammar" in most MATESOL programs.