Teacher, how do I learn good English?

[woodcutter]

Alright then, something more suitably low-brow from me!

Teacher, how do I learn good English?/study English well?

The most common answer to this annoyingly common question is
"Oh, read newspapers, watch movies and TV, listen to music, just have fun! And remeber to wash your hands before din-dins!" which is commonly held to be motivating.

I think in the long run, due to the extremely strong possibility of failure in adopting this study pattern, (especially since low level students in non-English speaking nations are usually asking this) it is not ultimately motivating. It is saying "be as lazy as you want!"

Work very, very, very hard, grind at it, let it possess your very nightmares, and especially do the things you really hate, is a much more truthful answer.

Students somehow seem to prefer to hear that kind of thing than my favourite answer - you must know a lot of people who have the same native language as you and speak English very well, why are you asking some guy who learnt English from his mummy? Don't you know all English teachers are monolingual, or at ex-pat level in one or two languages (dumbilingual?) and have as much idea how to master a foreign language as build a nuclear reactor?

I also like the answer "Aaaaaaaaargh".

What's your favourite response?

[revel]

Hey all!

I won't take offense at woodcutters comment about ESL teachers not mastering another language (I myself master one and a half and a half besides my native language) since I know many teachers who, as he points out, don't master another language and who give the pat answer he has offered as example when asked this question.

My answer is like woodcutter's: English study is a life-long activity that will involve hours and hours of work. I suggest that the student plan a prolonged visit to an English speaking country. Most can not do so, but I also thought I could not take the time to do so, and in the end I realized that I could, so I did so and learned more Spanish in one year than my colleagues did in six years in university. They are all teaching Spanish in high schools in the States while speaking little Spanish themselves, and only one has spent any time in a Spanish speaking country, don't even have Spanish speaking friends to chat with and practice with. And yet, the most valuable language learning experience that I can suggest to my students is just that, get thee to Illinois, live thee with a farming family, suffer thee the culture shock, get thee what thou wantest through use of English. Finally, believe thee that it is possible, because it is.

peace,
revel.

[metal56]

What's your favourite response?

Normally I say:

Do as I do when learning Spanish. Make hundreds of resolutions about what you will do to become a more proficient user, and try to do one of those.

M56, the laziest language learner on this planet.

[lolwhites]

Date a native speaker.

Works every time

[metal56]

Date a native speaker.

Works every time

I wish. I'm married to one and my Spanish is a disaster. Her English has improved a lot though.

[lolwhites]

Then again, by your own admission you're the laziest language learner on the planet

I should've said "Date a native speaker who doesn't speak your language".

[metal56]

I should've said "Date a native speaker who doesn't speak your language".

Are you suggesting I commit adultery?

[lolwhites]

[lolwhites]

Back to the original question, when students ask me what the best way to learn English is I usually reply "If there was one best way, we'd all do it like that".

Alternative reply: "I'll tell you....for the right fee".

[fluffyhamster]

I reckon one of the best ways to find out what you need to learn in a foreign language is to teach and study your own native language, suss out what is absolutely essential for your learners to know, and then (once you've got those essentials sussed) find out how to say more or less the "same" things in the other language you want to achieve a similarly high level in (but of course, things won't overlap entirely); learners who bow down before and depend entirely and just upon the "expertise" of a native speaker, who give up on deciding for themselves what they need to learn are like patients asking to be drip-fed some randomly mixed junky palliative laced with opiates. Why don't they make themselves a nutritious "shopping list" for a feast in their L1, and then see if the items can be "had" in the L2 community!

[woodcutter]

Teacher X says "there isn't only ONE way to learn"
Student X hears "Teacher doesn't know either"

Or Student X is told to watch Die Hard IV, or to date somebody.

However, consider what that great educational thinker, HRH the Prince of Wales might have us do. Since nearly every textbook has a "how to be a good learner" page, telling us to preview, participate in the lesson, review often, put what we learn into practice, take things one step at a time etc, we should have the student find that page, and shout each item out loud, while we follow up each sentence with a stern and kindly thwack of our zen-masters staff.

It is sure to help, 'cause you can guarantee student X doesn't do all those things.

[JuanTwoThree]

Some advice for students when they are in an English speaking country that could easily apply to insular teachers of English in the students' countries:

Don't congregate in pubs where you can speak your language.

Don't buy and carry around like a proud badge of office a one-day old newspaper in your language.

Use shops where you have to make contact, not supermarkets.

Get a good grammar or "doubts" book ( eg like Swan).

Don't moan about everything.


BTW Have you noticed that although the received wisdom is that students should use an English-English dictionary, Teacher invariably only has an English- ???ish dictionary?

[LarryLatham]

All good suggestions, I think. But my fav is the one from fluffy. (But every time I type his handle I try in vain to imagine how he could possibly have come up with that name.) I like his ideas here because he asks learners not only to work hard, but to actually think about what they're doing and why. He's asking them to be involved in designing the course of study. I agree with him that it's not enough to do all the exercises in the textbook or coursebook. It's not enough to go to every class and participate in the classroom activities. It's not enough to ask the teacher "how do I learn English?", and then follow whatever advice is given. If you really want to learn it, you're going to have to tell yourself how, because only you know how you personally best learn. If it's important enough to you so that success is personally necessary, then you'll damn well see to it that you succeed. Every normal person can do it with greater or lesser degrees of ease. But you'll have to break a sweat.

Larry Latham
Oh, and BTW, I did carry a Chinese only dictionary in Taipei. Nevertheless, your point still sticks JTT. Perhaps we should concede that both types are useful. Besides, it looks better if you carry more books.

[fluffyhamster]

When I was typing the above post, I was thinking of "learners" mainly in high schools in Japan. To me, they fall into 3 or so groups: 1) High school students, very few of whom are motivated to enquire; 2) Teachers who would e.g. be good translators, but who seem to have no love of teaching and who peddle stuff that is not only communicatively leagues below their level, but which they actually know and concede is wrong and misleading (too simplistic or too complex)...presumably they have personal, private reasons for having studied/studying (?) English, but are teaching just because it is a job that naturally and all too easily followed on from their degrees; and 3) Teachers who do ask and enquire, but who "bend the knee" too much sometimes and ask "neurotic", often pointless questions, and who often do not reach even the level of "easy" expertise assumed by their "cooler" colleagues above. (Incidentally, both types of teacher use huge lashings of L1, but only the type 3) teacher insists on prefacing this with embarrassing and soon-to-be redundant instructions in the L2/"Classroom English". In either instance, little thought is given to genuine quality input/"performance" - which might more illuminatingly be called "a natural demonstration of true competence"! ).

In all 3 groups, none of them has taught motivated foreign students who might ask challenging questions and demand fuller, "cutting-edge" treatments of a language (that is, their only experience educationally in their own language has been of an even duller and even more "received" "wisdom", if such a thing were possible, than that of their foreign language, therefore dull and traditional is how they go about their own teaching). Received "wisdom", and at heart still quite traditional methods and views of language also inform even ostensibly more "communicative" western approaches.

What I am trying to say is that foreign language teachers will become better at their jobs if they have had to consider the needs of foreign learners of their native language; and that, by the same token (and as I said in my above post), anyone learning a foreign language would do well to do so with reference to the language they know best too (that is, their native language) - that will be the surest indication of what needs to be learnt in order to become "good" at a second language. As it is, we have e.g. Japanese teachers of English teaching very sketchy English and not filling in the huge gaps in the syllabus (because they are thinking only of English as exam subject, not as a living language like their Japanese); learners of whatever language also not asking themselves what they could learn (in addition to what is being taught/offered), again in relation to their "complete" L1 knowledge; and many of us TEFL teachers not exactly keeping up with the research. Basically, to learn ultimately involves taking responsibility to teach yourself, and there is no better touchstone than one's native language, even (especially?) when the language to be learnt is a second one (of which the knowledge is necessarily partial at first).

Regarding dictionaries, students predominantly go for (often babyish and/or dated) bilingual ones (but I did once see a girl with the Oxford/Z-Kai Wordpower), often in electronic form, whilst teachers usually have at least one monolingual learner's dictionary in addition to their bilingual ones (most popular seems to be OALDCE).

Most of the native English teachers that I have known own absolutely no dictionaries of their own at all, because they seem to resent the need to study the language of whatever country they are backpacking through, and presume they know enough about English to be confident they are covering all the bases beyond the "playing field" of the textbook (with their randomly collected, "interesting" newspaper clippings, off-the-cuff and often only temporarily satisfying (not totally satisfactory!)answers to those questions they never anticipated etc).

Chinese-only dictionaries such as the Xinhua pocket can give you a sense of accomplishment at how many characters you can recognize in the definitions, and how much meaning you can generally extract, but the nature of the script (and our foreigner's limited starting basis in the spoken language, compared to natives) makes it really difficult to learn or retain the sounds of the characters in the definitions (thankfully the main entries themselves are ordered according to Pinyin).* Still, I guess learners of English face a similar problem beyond the IPA given at the headword when they use English-English dictionaries! It would be great if at least the harder words in definitions could be read aloud by native teachers and recorded onto accompanying CD-ROMs. But HEY, the important thing is the entry item/headword/phrase itself, not the definition, the definition (presuming that it isn't trying to pack in even more info on collocations) could just as well be in Venutian translation!

* There can end up a situation in which foreign learners of Chinese can often embarrass a native speaker by being able to write characters that the native speaker can't recall, but it is only the native speaker who knows the pronunciation of almost every character you might encounter.

A link originally supplied by Woodcutter (on the "Does Chinese take more brainpower?" thread). Note especially the very first post (by dmoser):
http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1692

When it comes to English, it seems we natives can pronounce and pretty much spell most of what we usually say.

[fluffyhamster]

All good suggestions, I think. But my fav is the one from fluffy. (But every time I type his handle I try in vain to imagine how he could possibly have come up with that name.)

I came up with that name because a) I like hamsters (especially fluffy ones), b) I am fluffy and cute myself (not very hamster-like though), and c) it represents a total change in attitude from the monstrous personality that DP was becoming (in his dealings with a certain problem poster...well, maybe not a total change, but still...).