TEFL Nouakchott

Students learning english as a foreign language have to face multiple problems. Many of these problems are the same regardless the nationality. Nowadays, english is taught in almost all schools in Poland, but unfortunately the quality of teaching is rather low. Regular public school is usually understaffed, teachers are underpaid and in result they don’t care for quality of teaching so students end up under taught. But let’s face it, how much a teacher can teach a class of 30 students during two hours of lessons per week? Without extra lessons students are not able to learn the language. I practice one-to-one teaching so I deal with all kind of problems which Polish students have with the language. And when I say students I mean all ages, all schools or backgrounds. The very first thing I realize when I check potential student’s advance level is that most of them has stuck at elementary level, no matter how long they have studied english so far. I guess their knowledge is like a sieve. They do posses some general grammar basics, but there are too many “holes” which make absorption of new information quite difficult. Even if somebody seems more advanced he barely is capable of having even a basic conversation, since speaking and pronunciation is very neglected here. The major problem the teacher encounters when it comes to teaching english in Poland is pronunciation. Polish language has very difficult grammar but is easy to speak. The rule is simple: you have to say every single letter in a word. Basically whatever is written, is read. Students in Poland, as everywhere I believe, have the problem with “th” sound. There is no such sound in Polish language and trying to say it correctly in english make people think that they make big fools of themselves, since it sounds like they were lisping. In many cases this sound is replaced by “z”, “d” or “s” sound. In order to show that “nobody is perfect” I make the sound correctly myself so students get use to “lisping teacher” and start to improve their pronunciation as well. No shame in having little fun during the lesson, especially if it can help build confidence and break barriers. Many students don’t feel the difference between “w” and “v” as in Polish both letters sound exactly the same. It doesn’t seem that bad, but hearing too many of “villiam, vill, betveen etc.” can really give you creeps, especially at the beginning. Other sounds which cause problems to students are: “double o”, “double e” and confusion between sound “i” and “a”. I dare to believe the reason for all these issues is lack of proper english alphabet knowledge. The alphabet and spelling is always the first thing I check. The main rule: no good alphabet knowledge, no possibility of correct reading or writing. Second major problem when it comes to teaching language in Poland is related to grammar tenses. In Polish there are only three tenses, so it’s hard for students to understand why there are so many of them in english and to learn differences between their usages. Especially weird ones and hard to learn seem to be perfect tenses. There is no such thing in Polish so despite explaining forming of these tenses, it’s also necessary to carefully explain when to use them and how they differ from simple past or present sentences. Drawing the timeline and keeping it from the very first lesson always help. How does it work in practice? On the very first lesson related to present simple tense I take piece of paper, draw a line and put mark somewhere in the middle in order to mark where this tense is located in time. Another lesson about tenses and this piece of paper comes out of the file and new mark is made, either on the right or left side of present simple tense mark, depending on which tense I currently talk about. So far it works quite well, even with adult learners. Obviously there are few more problems which students have to deal with but these two are the major ones and cause biggest troubles. On the other hand, once these obstacles are overtaken, students gain more confidence, become actually interested in learning the language and then… everything is possible, even pronouncing “th” correctly every time.