Teaching English
October 10, 2008
I now begin to teach English to one Chinese and two French Students. The woman who called 2 days ago about her daughter having problem with her English did not call back. She has phoned twice for this matter, the 2nd time she asked me where I live and how long I have been living here etc.
The 2 French boys both have hard time to understand me even I have spoken to them very slowly. Obviously, their teacher have a very different accent from mine. I found it’s very common that the French students can speak English better than they understanding it. This is because their teacher is French and they teach English using French. Even the examine questions are written in French rather than in English. That is obviously a bad practice in learning a foreign language. However, this seem to be not true with the Chinese students. I find their English are much better and advanced than the French students despite the fact that there are no similarities between Chinese and English languages.
I’ll need to think and develop my own teaching materials to talor my students’ needs. With 3 students, I’m already spending a whole day per week to develop course materials. I need to find a better way to customize my teaching needs. I also need to make them speak more often.
I always believe that teaching is the best way to learn. By doing teaching English, I’m actually learning English and French myself. It takes a lot time and discipline to stick to the agenda and the plan, one course for one student at a time.
What’s really rewarding is to hear the parents telling me their kid is doing better and getting better scores from the examines. My personal feeling is very different, I never believe the test score is the true measure of a student’s progress. I much prefer that a student is gaining real ability in understanding, speaking, reading and writing English correctly rather than hit right on everything the instructor is asking.
This is very true for my own learning experiences at school. I remember getting very upset with getting a good grade and felt did not learn anything; and felt good with learnt something with a not so good grade. It’s like going to a restaurant ording a dish, my stomach and I know very well when I enjoyed it or not regardless it’s presented from a fancy restaurant or from a booth of a street fair.
Although learning a second or a third language for a mature adult is not as easy as for a child, it’s not impossible. I think it has a lot to do with what the stereotype of thinking people put into their own head. I have learnt English at age 25, then French at age 50. Sure, my English is not perfect like the English professors but enough for me to enjoy the great English literature and express myself freely. Writting well with French will take much longer as the verbs is a killer. I still have life time to tackle it, so I’m not anxious with my ignorance and incompleteness.
