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TEFL Epping North Dakota

Check out Tesolcourse.com about TEFL Epping North Dakota and apply today to be certified to teach English abroad.

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This is how our TEFL graduates feel they have gained from their course, and how they plan to put into action what they learned:

said:
For the past year, I have been working as an english teacher at a German high school. Aside from one other teacher, all of my colleagues are Germans and native German speakers. Among them, however, are english teachers. When I first met them and they introduced themselves as english teachers, I had to pause for a moment: non-native english speaking individuals teaching english? The concept was alien to me, as all of the foreign language teachers at both my high school and university had been native speakers of the language they were instructing, i.e. my Arabic teachers were from egypt or Lebanon, and my German teachers were from Germany, Austria or Switzerland. The idea of having a non-native speaker teaching the language seemed bizarre to me, but I was curious to see how it was done. I sat in on a number of their classes and came to a number of surprising conclusions. First and foremost, I was impressed at the linguistic ability of the older, more experienced German english teachers. They made few, if any, mistakes and taught with a confidence and ease that I admired and envied. The younger teachers, however, were raw, both in their teaching ability and in their language ability. Most were clever enough to stick to language they were comfortable with and knew well, but some made frequent and alarming mistakes, and I was concerned that the students were learning the mistakes as well. However, even for these somewhat mediocre teachers with their satisfactory but not impressive english skills, they brought something to the table which I do not and probably never can, namely, the experience of having learned english as a second language themselves. I grew up speaking english and it comes naturally to me; when I hear something wrong, I sometimes cannot explain why it is wrong, but I know it is. And while I have studied pedagogy and the methods of teaching english as a foreign language, I lack the experience of actually having learned it as a foreign language. These German english teachers know the snags, the tricks, the confusion, the frustrating non-phonetic spelling and ways to get around it that I do not. I know general problem areas, but I do not know the specific problem areas for German students learning english, the way the German english teachers do. I do not know the cute phrases they learned during their own course of english study, such as ‘if plus will makes ill,' which warns against using ‘if' and ‘will' in the same clause in ‘if' clauses. The German english teachers possess an added patience and understanding that I do not. They know exactly what it feels like to be a German student learning english, and they use their experience and knowledge to guide their students carefully around snags and obstacles that I as a native speaker cannot understand or foresee. They laugh with amusement at the incorrect sentence structure that their students formulate and know instantly why the students are making these mistakes and how to correct them, whereas I fumble with understanding where these odd mistakes are coming from and struggle to find ways of correcting them and helping my students understand their mistakes. It is a different skill set that these German english teachers bring to the table; they may mispronounce words, be ignorant of slang, get catchy phrases and slogans wrong, make the occasional grammar mistakes, and use some archaic vocabulary that probably not even my great grandmother would understand, but they have the advantage of knowing what it is like to learn english, something of which I, and most native english teachers, remain woefully ignorant. As William Bradridge writes in his article Do non-native english speakers make better tefl teachers, “Non-native english speaking tefl teachers sometimes suffer from ‘second class citizen' syndrome from employers, colleagues and (dare I say it) english students as well. After all, there is something prized about learning english from a native english language speaker.” I daresay I also had a skeptical view of the German english teachers before I properly watched them in action. However, as I learned and as Bradridge contends, these teachers have usually studied english far more in depth than native speakers and have probably been speaking it for a significant part of their lives, many starting to learn english at a very young age and continuing up through and past university level, thus sometimes making them better english teachers than native speakers. In conclusion, I can safely say that while the concept still seems strange to me, I appreciate non-native english speaking teachers and the unusual gifts they bring to their classrooms. My colleagues were enormously helpful to me during my time at my high school, and I have a deep and profound respect for them. If all non-native english speaking teachers possess such skill and linguistic ability, I daresay they should be as sought after as native speakers, if not for their experience of going through it themselves, then simply for the daring and nerve to learn english well enough to be qualified to teach it! Sources Cited: http://www.global-english.com/news/do-non-native-english-speakers-make-better-tefl-teachers/


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