Teacher Discussion Forums

Many of my asian students call me 'Teacher' instead of my name-- it's a habit I want to break them off, since it's not natural English. But it's a hard topic in any language, figuring out what jobs are titles ("Doctor," "Senator") what jobs have special titles ("Your Honor," "Officer,") and what jobs you just call the person by name (like teacher or salesclerk(if they have a nametag)). Any ideas for games or activities on the subject of titles?

What an interesting topic. You know, after 35 years of teaching, "teacher" started to sound normal . I guess I got lazy and/or decided there wre more important things. I wonder why English doesn't have some sort of "teacher honorific." Mostly I have them call me by my name anyway.

I think it is kind of nice to be called "teacher" when in Asia, because you do have a position in the local society, and the use of your first name by students is probably odd in the local context. "Mr" "Dr" and "Professor" sound so formal, but "teacher!" always has such a friendly ring to it. Students seem very enthusiastic about using this inappropriate term, and it takes a great atmosphere-killing effort to stop them doing so. So, like Lorikeet, I tend to feel there are more important things to worry about.

Hey all.

My real name (which is not revel) is very difficult for my Spanish students to pronounce, and is actually spelled like a word in Spanish which is, of course, not at all close to the same in pronunciation as my name. Older students are applauded for getting close to saying it "correctly", but I let the little ones call me "teacher" mostly because they realise that they are using English for something that in school they usually do naturally in Spanish, that is, call their teachers profe. It gives them a feeling that they are really using English and though it might be a bit artificial in a native speaker's world, in the ESL classroom it is far from unnatural, and I certainly wouldn't consider it "wrong" -- and hard to correct because of that lack of official title. Maybe we should call ourselves, oh, I don't know, "Easle" (ee es el). The feminists in the '70's didn't have qualms with calling themselves "Message" (one of the definitions of "Ms" at the time it was adopted.)

My .02€!

peace,
revel (not my real name.... )