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Teach English in Yuhuangmiao Zhen - Heze Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Yuhuangmiao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Heze Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.

It has been an interesting process undertaking the 120 hour TEFL course to teach English. I’m sure many would feel the same way, but what has made it all the more interesting for me is that I’m also trying to learn to speak French at the same time. The reason I’m trying to learn French which is also partly why I’m taking the TEFL course, is because I’m a native English speaker who moved to Paris from Toronto, Canada. As a confident and capable English communicator, re-learning some of the formal rules, structures and tenses of English has been challenging, fun and interesting. As someone who is studying to teach a second language to others, I often think about my own struggles with simultaneously learning a second language. What seems important and what doesn’t, what is hard, what is easy, what helps me learn and makes it easy to remember? Of all the things we’re learning about teaching a second language, I feel like not enough attention is paid to the area I find the most challenging as a second language learner: Learning how to think in a second language. To me this is of vital importance as it is where the root of all communication stems from. I had some basic formal French training growing up in Canada till about the age of thirteen, but at the time had zero interest and zero motivation, other then to get a passing grade on my report card. Now as an adult, I am much more motivated and interested, but unfortunately older. And every time I try to express myself in French, the thought occurs in my mind in English first and I’m tasked with mentally converting it before I speak. Often this has lead me to wonder, whenever I hear about learning a second language, why isn’t there more attention paid to thinking in the second language? Sometimes I try and force myself to think in French, and it will work for a little while, but as the ideas I want to communicate become more complex, my thoughts naturally revert back to English. My wife, who is fluent in both English and French, told me that after being in Paris for a few weeks, she had dreamt in French which is something she had not done for a long time. When learning to teach English, we’re taught about the four main components of language: speaking, listening, reading & writing. And it almost feels like “thinking” is an elephant in the room. We’re taught that immersing yourself in the new language is good, and that learning a language through translation is bad. But what is happening in your mind? You’re thinking in your native language and then trying to express that thought with a different language by translating it. If I’m hungry, I think “I’m hungry” - not - “J’ai faim” and then I’ll convert that English thought to French language if I need to express it to someone. The mind is such a powerful tool and I think when learning a second language, we may be able to utilize it better to accelerate our learning. We may be able to trick it, force it even, into thinking differently. I’m not a neuroscientist or a linguist, but I hope there are those folks out there who are trying to come up with ways to make the brain more receptive to thinking in another language. I’m sure age plays a part in this, the older you get, the less receptive you become, the more set in your ways and blah blah blah we’ve all heard it before. But other than formal lessons, I’ve used apps on my phone, rosetta stone on my computer, I moved to Paris, I am married to a bilingual person, we watch French TV, and yet I still cannot help but to think in English all the time. Who knows, by the time we figure out how to trick or teach or coach our brains into thinking in a new language, it may be too late. Everyone will be walking around with earbuds in that work as real-time universal language translators. I speak to you in my native language, your earbuds translate it to your native language, and vice versa. But until that time comes, as a second language learner, I wish more emphasis was put on how to think in a new language, and not just how to speak, listen, read and write.


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