Torsten and Alan, care to introduce yourselves?

I used to think Torsten is British but now I am not really sure. Sometimes he sounds British and sometimes he doesn’t.

Is Alan from England?

Where are both of you from? What academic qualifications do both of you hold? How many years have you been teaching English? Which Countries have you both taught in?

Torsten is obviously an English teacher or linguist of some sort. He knows all these English learning techniques.

1 Like

Hi Blue,

Thanks a lot for your questions. I’m German and you can read more about me by googling my name.

By the way, what is your real name and what do you do?
Regards,
Torsten

hi torsten,

no wonder you sound the way you do. wow so you are tri-lingual? you speak russian, english and german? amazing. i’ve heard german and english are very similar as they belong to the same language family, is that true?

i am thinking of doing a celta or ma tesol. currently i have a BA from the UK under my belt. i am thinking of teaching english as a career after getting certified. i think it is a good career, you get to travel the world. some of my friends are teaching in japan or china and they seem to be having a good time.

but i have heard esl students and their parents can be very demanding. there is also a preference for caucasians teachers in china and many parts of asia. it is just ignorance and plain stereotype. some of them can be rather rediculous. i’ve heard teaching english can also be rather tiring, having to be concious of every word you say and repeating the same things over and over again. i am singaporean chinese so i expect to face some discrimination.

another problem is my accent is obviously not british or american, so i would get the shaft from schools looking for teachers with those accents. i started my thread in the forum to solicit some feedback about my accent.

i have received a few job offers from some schools in china and japan but something tells me i would have received more if i was white, lol.

i am running a fever right now …gotta go rest…see ya…

1 Like

Hi Blue,

Why do want to be an ‘English teacher’? Why not an English language trainer or a language coach? As a teacher you will always struggle with the drawbacks of conventional classroom situations:

  • most of the time the students hear themselves speak English
  • they usually have little to no exposure to authentic spoken English
  • they usually spend lots of time on ‘reviewing grammar rules’, ‘completing exercises’ and trying to speak to each other

It is impossible to learn English in an ‘English classroom’ because in an English classroom there usually is only one person who speaks proper English: the English teacher. This means that a student is exposed to ESL English or ‘school English’ as people in Germany call it.

Imagine what would happen to a child that grew up entirely in English language classrooms. What kind of language would that poor child end up speaking?

So as a conventional English teacher you will always have a hard time get your ‘students’ to start learning English in earnest no matter if you are Caucasian, African, Asian or European. You can have the best accent in the world and it will amount to little if you don’t get your learners to change their habits permanently. This is something you can’t accomplish in a traditional classroom setting and neither CELTA, DELTA or whatever certificate you might acquire can change this.

You can do the following. Browse through the forum to find those users whose English is excellent. Ask them how and where they learned English. I bet that the vast majority will tell you they watched a lot of movies, listened to a lot of audio books/radio, etc. read a lot of books/articles, etc. and asked a lot of questions. Which of these things can you do in an ‘English classroom’ where there are 4, 5, 10 or more learners in one room?

TOEIC listening, talks: Bank executive briefs staff on business goals

As they say, the teacher’s profession is a calling, not a job. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Try telling that to the backpackers in Asia “teaching English” for beer money :slight_smile:

1 Like

The role of the teacher has changed dramatically since this topic began. In fact, I don’t think there is such a thing as a “teacher” anymore, since you can pretty much learn everything yourself these days.

1 Like

My neighbor is a native speaker and an ESL teacher at a local school here in the US. A lot of those students are immigrants and many of them have NO English when they move here. The parents who moved might know some English, but it’s common for their kids to have little or no English. However that is very different than teaching in another country. The kids here are fully immersed, so the ESL teacher is a supplement rather than the only exposure to native English like the situation Torsten described.

2 Likes