Job Discussion Forums

[Glenski]

[Roger]

[Roger]

[JZer]

[JZer]

[SueH]

I also wonder how much pressure there is from students for teaching in L1.
A couple of years ago in the UK I taught an evening class in beginner's Italian where one student withdrew after 4 weeks ( and asked for their money back) because I hadn't used a book and had used too much Italian... !
In my own opinion I hadn't actually been using enough, and had been easing them into it (it wasn't an exam course - more a holiday preparation one:-)).

My boss asked for a comment on the letter, and they didn't get their money back.

[Henry_Cowell]

[Justin Trullinger]

Most of the classroom study I've had in Spanish was in Spanish only, and I didn't get lost.

I've also taught English for a substantial number of years, and never really felt the need to offer complex grammatical explanations in the students L1.

Maybe you've come to a conclusion based on not enough evidence, Sonya. You seem to feel that it was impossible to teach Finnish without using some other language, based on the fact that you had a teacher who didn't know how to do so.

best regards,
Justin

[Perpetual Traveller]

I agree with you Justin, it sounds to me as though the teacher just took the easy way out. I'd like to know what they would have done if some of the students hadn't spoken English (as often happens in a situation like that). I have taken language classes in English and in the language I was learning and I know that I learnt far more from the second option.

PT

[william wallace]

nil

[guangho]

[sonya]

Like I said earlier, certain concepts cannot just be picked up by context. I gave a few examples in my original post. There are concepts in a foreign language that don't exist for you yet because it doesn't exist in the languages that you speak, that you wouldn't pick up on your own, unless your brain is just amazing. The context and implications of it need to be explained. And if your skills aren't really so fluid, it may need to be explained in a language you understand - so you can get a better idea of the concept - until you can hang and be weaned off it.

My Finnish teacher, well, I hold her in the utmost respect. As I said, it was an anecdote, not the sole basis for what I think. It's worth noting, I suppose, that in the end her real objective (to make us learn and get along language-wise in our new/temporary home, not necessarily to teach in one language or another) was met. To everyone's amazement. It's really kind of cool how one day you get off the train and you see the same ad you've seen everyday - only today, you understand what it says. You get the joke. And you hear the same language around you, only it's no longer meaningless strings of sound with the occasional word zooming by.

The problem is sometimes the material being taught. If the language is archaic and strange, it's because that's the course material that was chosen to be taught. Archaic and awkward English could be taught spoken, as well.

I really think the best method to teach is use a balance of both - to explain tricky concepts in a language the student understands, and to practice a lot in the target language. Too much of one or the other, I think, isn't as effective; it should be an appropriate balance, until the student is sufficiently capable of.. I don't know.. leaving the nest and flying on his own in the target language.

But I guess you do what you can with what you have.
Oh well.

[Roger]

The issue at hand revolves around East Asian, i.e. Japanese and Chinese, students, and obviously we are all faced with some similar dilemmas: our learners are not used to seeing English as a means of communication. They view it as an academic subject.

And as such it is abstract, and abstract ideas cannot travel unless you as the listener share the language with the speaker. Our Chinese and Japanese teachers don't even assume they could talk to their charges in our language, and that chore is left to us to do - who are routinely overwhelmed by the passivity of our students. They haven't learnt to imagine the semantic contents of the language we use in talking to them; they translate every single word, hence their sluggish responses.

I don't believe in the qualitative differences between the two languages our students are supposed to master as being the sole reason for this problem; a spoken language is a living organism that must be grown in and cultivated adequately. As Sonia said above, some concepts exist only in one of the learner's two languages; what's the point of talking about foreign concepts in the learner's mother tongue that doesn't use such concepts? For example grammatical concepts such as tenses, SVA, the use of articles, numbers, - you can "explain" them to a Chinese person in either language, but what it really takes for the student to become proficient is to actively juggle those lexical items that differ from sentence to sentence! Unfortunately, Chinese (and Japanese?) students don't practise enough; they merely memorise.
And the ENglish teaching goals are usually defined in terms of so-and-so-many words to be able to spell and translate (we have here in China two tests called Cet 4 and CET 6, each with its own number of words the students must "remember").
No matter how different English may be from Japanese or Chinese, a local teacher ought to be able to give assignments, grammar instructions and those routine statements all teachers have to give ("open book on page 52") in English. Who does?

[Justin Trullinger]

Glad it worked for you, Sonya. And what little I know about Finnish makes it sound like an accomplishment. Not an easy language.

But I think that a salient question is still: How would your teacher have dealt with a non-English speaker in your class?

And for me, as someone who is in charge of a lot of teachers- why the surprise? If she had done this before, and was still trying to do the whole thing in Finnish, you have to assume that it had worked in the past. If she'd done it before, and had to use English, you have to wonder why she waited for requests from students to use it this time. Unless it was her first time, it sounds to me like something is missing in the story.

I think Roger has something, in terms of identifying the problem. Many students, the world over, see English as a code, some sort of obstacle to be jumped in pursuit of academic or professional success. But they often don't embrace it as a language, with all the richness and communicative ability of their own.

One sign of this is how many students have commented to me, early in their language learning, on how hard Spanish must have been for me to learn- because it is so much more difficult and complicated than English. They really believe this, because they think that English, as presented in a level one textbook, is all there is to English. Sometimes they say that Spanish must be harder, because it has so many synonyms, whereas English is easier because it has only one word for each thing. (They only know one, and assume there only is one.)

But as teachers, we have to help them to come to understand English as a means of communication. I just don't see how you get there by talking about English in another language. In my experience, you only get there by using English.

The idea that grammar needs to be explained, rather than experienced, from a basic level, goes against the experience that many of us have had. I simply know that it isn't necessary to offer long L1 grammar explanations, because I teach English grammar, each and every day, without having to do so. And for people who teach multi lingual groups, there would be no way to do so, even if it were necessary.

Some people, especially non-teachers, assume that only high level classes can be taught primarily in the target language, but again, this goes against the experiences that we've all had. I teach from beginner level (true level zero) and up, and from a minimum age of four. And the classroom language is English.


Best regards,
Justin

[sonya]