You'll never believe these 8 incredible signs your Chinese teacher isn't very good

[Gharial]

I think you're missing the forest for the trees. Yes the examples are contrived and not natural. The point Roddy was making though is that you shouldn't ask whether someone understands something, but rather get them to demonstrate that they understand.

Note also that your 'more natural' sentence completely leaves out any sort of feedback for the teacher, which is arguably worse than using contrived examples.

 

Perhaps I'll take ELT (well, the sort of ELT as presented here) more seriously when it starts waving something other than these contrived and bit-part examples for illustrative purposes, Imron. And at no point did I suggest that anyone actually ask students "Do you understand?" (but hey, who needs that particular exponent when those others, such as "What's the opposite of 'dry'?", fufil pretty much the same function). I guess you missed my point about the students developing checking skills, like they'll have to in the real world. Anyway, my lessons ultimately have more drive and "upcoming, wider" than just "past, narrow" point to be stopping every dozen words to seek feedback or check comprehension (unless of course the students are complete beginners). Not that I don't ever deal in, work through, establish or check vocabulary etc using a variety of means whatever the level.

 

I wonder what came before 'Where I come from the summer is very dry'. Heaven forbid that it might've been a more capable student or whoever bemoaning the summer monsoon and asking if it's as wet where the teacher comes from, because that might start to resemble an actual conversation far too much for most classroom purposes.

[roddy]

I missed your point too, Gharial.

[Gharial]

Ah, I was about to add something like "Roddy is right that teaching can be interesting, but...". Time for the actual addition and expansion LOL:

 

I think it only really becomes so (in the sense of being cognitively compelling and thus more useful in the long-term to students) when these TEFL certs (and the RSA hasn't even partly administered the now UCLES CELTA for what must be over a decade) and any allied hoop-jumping observed practices fade from the picture and more authentic and genuine discourse enters the fray. But I appreciate that unobtrusive natural additions like "it doesn't rain for months!" may not seem explicit enough for some teachers (I don't think they're lost on perceptive students, though).

 

Think of it this way: the more we strive to gently introduce authentic language (and if you really have no idea what I'm on about here, perhaps you can tell me how often actual speakers suddenly strive to pepper their speech with stuff like "What's the opposite of X?") into speech-based methodology, the greater the chance that our students will be able to make a successful transition to and function in the real world.

 

Putting that another way, we're both claiming if not trying to teach English, but as ever the exact approach is what's up for grabs - which one is more effective ("less is more" or even "more is more") rather than possibly being a case of "more is less"?

 

I don't doubt that certs are a useful starting point for some (many?), and that at least a bit of learning can take place with the methodology they present. I just don't think they do a very good job of teaching conversational skills is all. In fact, I'd say standard approaches are quite inimical to and even risk retarding them.

 

"It isn't rocket science, but ELT likes to try, and too hard, to be".

 

 

I missed your point too, Gharial.

 

Yeah, I get that a lot from those who seem convinced that certy CLT is the first and last word in actual effective communication ("It has a big C on the tin so it must be good"), that it necessarily epitomizes and embodies the best interaction patterns, so as to enable assured language acquisition, yadda yadda. I don't know what's so hard to grasp about (my) counter-suggesting that teachers should try to make anything and everything they say that bit more conversational than "teachery". But then, if ELT were generally to become a much more empirically-based and thus "recognizable" venture ("People actually talk like this, not like that"), a lot of so-called conversation schools would be rumbled and potentially out of business.

 

Maybe we should start a similar thread entitled "You'll soon spot these signs that your English teacher probably isn't that good either".

[Gharial]

"So this zebra walks into a bar...but is a zebra an animal, vegetable, or mineral? And does it have spots or stripes?"

 

"Does this joke have a punchline? If so, can we please get to it! But very quickly, what is 'stripes'?"

 

"Better yet, when was the last time you saw a phrase like 'But very quickly' or 'very briefly' in a language textbook?"

 

"It isn't in Headway?!"

 

"'Fraid not!"

 

"Awww. Anyway, sorry I had to give you that kick up the butt there, Teacher"

 

"No worries Grasshopper, I needed it. Thanks. Now, where were we?"

 

"Zebras. (You say ebb, I say EEbras for some reason)"

 

"Right. So, this zebra walks into a bar....."

[hedwards]

Gharial, I think you don't understand communicative language teaching at all. You're harping on things that aren't an issue just because teachers can overdo it. I'm not aware of any approach that can't be taken too far. One of the reasons for certifications like the CELTA is that it gives teachers at least some basis for judgment about what does and doesn't get clarified.

 

 

In many cultures it's normal to engage in negotiation for meaning, but even where that's not common, people still engage in this sort of thing when the meaning is not clear. And for better or for worse any student who doesn't learn how to do it is going to be in trouble when the try to go to a place where they're speaking a different dialect or even with a different register.

 

You're also painting with far too broad of a brush. My TESL was 240 contact hours, or about a year of master's level work. A CELTA is about 120 contact hours, I believe including classroom time where they're not learning any theory,  and there are others that are even less. But, even with more time spent, people have different strengths and weakness, some people have better ears than others do, and blaming the certification programs because the techniques can be under or over done seems rather silly.

 

I wouldn't personally study from somebody that didn't have knowledge of the theories available as I've tried that and it usually doesn't work out well.

 

The point of communicative styles is to make sure that the students are able to communicate. If students can't communicate then it really doesn't matter how good their grammatical knowledge is as they'll never get anywhere with the language. Once that barrier is met, the teacher can select the grammatical mistakes that most hinder expression and focus attention on a workable number of structures until they're understood and mastered.

[Gharial]

Well, all I really have to go on there is your insistence that communication should and does take place more or less "because it's CLT", Hedwards. While all I'm pointing out is that teaching and actual communication aren't necessarily the same thing (though they could more often be, if teachers just gave a little more thought to what they're saying, and why and how etc each time they open their mouths to make noises). Surely you are familiar with (in "Direct" methods at least)  the content=medium nature of language teaching (versus other subjects) and of the potential for the chosen pedagogy to help or hinder that equation, or do you never ponder it too much?

 

You're harping on things that aren't an issue just because teachers can overdo it.

 

No, just picking up on those things that, by their ubiquity in training at least, would appear to be all that teachers do or can do (or are expected or allowed to do). If you'd prefer that we discuss other stuff that teachers might get up to, then by all means knock yourself out and present something "truly dazzling".

 

The point of communicative styles is to make sure that the students are able to communicate. If students can't communicate then it really doesn't matter blah blah blah

 

Often this is little more than lip service. What actually happens more often than not is that the students ATTEMPT to communicate (often among themselves in group or pairwork) while the teacher monitors and notes a myriad of problems that are never quite fully resolved given the constraints of the "communicative" set-up. I'm not sure by the way quite where you've got the idea that I'm a stickler for grammar (per se, in and of only itself), but never mind.

 

As for my understanding of CLT, I go back to formative publications (e.g. Brumfit & Johnson) and on to areas I personally find quite interesting (Discourse, and Conversation Analysis, lexicogrammar etc etc etc), and usually find that what some trainer, increasingly with little more than just a few years' experience and reflection between cert and dip (master's?), or what some generally light methodology guide, has to say can often be little more than question-begging hand-waving, glossed-over thinness and faith~indoctrination almost. Yet teachers are supposed to work and perform miracles day in and out with merely that (until eventually they get supposedly better training~education, or finally start using empirical resources a lot more). Teacher, teach thyself! And above all, BE THE LANGUAGE (not just 50% or less of the time, but as near to 100% as possible).

[roddy]

Well, I got my viral wish! In a very small way - nice little traffic spike from reddit these last couple of days. Thanks to whoever posted over there, do keep doing it ;-)

[hedwards]

Gharial, I have better things to do with my time if you're going to be so obstinate.

 

If you don't like it when teachers use CLT, then you must love the ways that students use of learning without the teacher because they're even further along the spectrum there. At least with professional teachers there's supposed to be a bit more order to the madness and over all a bit of efficiency. It would be daft of me to suggest that one can't or shouldn't learn on ones own, but it makes a huge difference when you're using a technique that's got some organization and method to it.

[Gharial]

Obstinate? (That's pretty patronizing, you really must be a CLT practitioner then!). All I've ultimately done is query what Imron for one has admitted is a rather contrived example (perhaps it had come straight off the top of Roddy's head), and then relatedly ask why teachers don't try harder to make their talk more conversational (in order to make the content more the medium and actual message, and vice versa. If you're still not sure what the possible advantages of that might be, I'll be happy to try to explain further). But if it's too much for you to think about or answer even just those two points, then fine, that's your prerogative.

 

But to quickly address your last few points regardless, yes, I think good old-fashioned self-study (teach-yourself course, dictionary, possibly a supplementary grammar) beats a lot of the "professional" classes on offer. At least with self-study you can be assured of (set up) some form of dependably regular review, spaced repetition etc. Plus you get reasonably succinct and considered explanations written in your native language (hardly just an incidental bonus).

 

Then, I can tell you that not one of the colleagues that I've had in ELT (in Asia, at any rate) has ever seemed to own or retain any reference works, thus putting themselves rather at the mercy of whatever school library there may or may not be in each workplace, and somewhat limiting the research and linguistic preparation they can do, especially when outside work/at home and potentially offline. (The unspoken thinking seems to be that once you've done a cert and/or gained a year or two of experience, you've learnt all the grammar and lexis you'll ever need to know, and can get by by e.g. deferring tricky questions until a later class, before which you go and ask colleagues, search the internet, ask around on internet forums etc for the necessary pointers and advice). Occasionally they buy small two-way bilingual dictionaries (such as the Oxford/CP Concise E-C/C-E), but that is more to help them learn a bit of the local lingo for outside work, and such dictionaries soon reveal themselves to be insufficient for establishing that much about Chinese let alone English (the powers of native intuition notwithstanding!).

 

So there isn't really that much nitty gritty organization going on beyond what the set textbook provides (assuming there is one, and of which very few are that good), and whatever essentially time-filling supplementary "fluency" activities these teachers have happened upon and then crack out time and time again (but hey, we're all guilty of that to some degree!).

 

Perhaps that all sounds like substandard ELT to you, but I reckon it's fairly typical actually. To be sure, most colleagues are pleasant enough people and reasonably conscientious (that is, not too unprofessional, at the very least!), but I think it would be disingenuous to pretend that whatever actual learning takes place in most (i.e. average) ELT is often much more than serendipitous moments amid a lot of ad hoc improvisation and half-measures. Few bases are really covered that thoroughly (though there may be some good ESP providers around). Do say though if your experiences have been vastly different.

 

The thing I like about learners of Chinese is how clued-up a lot of them are or soon become (me, I'm unfortunately now just a "part-timer" again). They know what they want, and can smell potentially iffy, inefficient or time-wasting stuff a mile off, so there's consequently often blood in the water. Many seem to be able to more or less teach themselves, and may only really need native speakers for a bit of practice or to check a few things every now and then. It's like the learners have gone to the mountain rather than having or seeing the mountain come to them (but perhaps that will change if China ever annexes afar, the way the West did. Annexing neighbouring territory doesn't quite count as that). If I were a teacher of Chinese (especially if I were just a native speaker with minimal training - now who does that remind you of?), I'd be quite intimidated at the prospect of teaching such learners.

 

Now it may well be that all that is due to these learners of Chinese having a communicative mindset, but this mindset is perfectly natural, and hardly (or not necessarily) due to CLT per se (for a start, how many learners of Chinese are actual English teachers, or have even read a book on English teaching), and CLT doesn't have, never has had, and never will have a monopoly (in the intellectual if not the monetary sense) on the concept and phenomenon of communication itself (Applied Linguistics as an explicit discipline is but a relatively recent subset of Linguistics, and informal language learning has been going on since time immemorial).

 

Which is why I don't feel the need to bend the knee to the CLT establishment or use its every technique (even though I am ostensibly a trained, "qualified" and reasonably experienced TEFLer). And which is why I find the unquestioning acceptance of much so-called (C)ommunicative methodology among some learners of Chinese (on this thread at least) a bit puzzling and somewhat "out of character". But maybe that's just me.