New English 'teacher' in Poland (I have no qualifications).

It probably is best to advertise yourself for conversation lessons...

None. If you get a decent student and give them something useful then you don't need this 'grammar chart' you speak of.


Does a hammer need a degree in engineering to do its job? Does a horse need a driving license? Of course not. The teacher is at the disposal of the student - the student practises and the teacher offers feedback and motivation. Grammar explanations are the last recourse because they don't work.


Why would you ask such a pointless question?

This makes no sense

I was wondering whether to mention it - I think she's trying to make a point of sorts

We all went to school and took English(people from English speaking countries) for several years, learning grammar, spelling, writing, poetry, literary works, I think it may be enough to teach English if you understand what was taught in school.

Who said the OP has no skill. They said they don't have experience or qualifications. He might have plenty to offer which another, qualified teacher doesn't.


It's not the decent ones I worry about. If I lose one of them then I need to get another job. It's the ones who have an idea of teaching from 50 years ago (even if they ar not 50) and cling to an idea that if they can recite a grammar chart (I don't have/use them, it was a bit of a joke) they'll somehow have the secrets of English unlocked...meanwhile they won't have to speak in class and can write everything during conversation pairwork (does this sound like I have one or two of these people?). Then they stop coming to class and complain that they couldn't understand the teacher and he never gave homework(read: they never did it) or never taught grammar, just because the elementary class didn't cover future perfect passive continuous in reported speech.

Ahhhhhh!

Sorry, was that a little off-topic?


Oh boy, do I agree with you there! People showing me how to cut wood (I didn't speak much Polish so I mustn't know how to do it... despite the fact I lived on the endge of a forest for a year!) or the lovely lady in the post office who explained to me about how I had to take the stamp... and wet it... and stick it on the envelope! It was just because she heard my accent, not because I don't speak Polish. Don't get me started on the story of the barman who insisted on explaining in English (after I asked him in Polish) about which beers were Polish in the bar.

Funny, that. Have actually written v successful ELT course for Poland. And yes, it did include conversation.


It makes sense in an appropriate context, although, admittedly, it is a rare example. Was trying to demonstrate that being a native speaker alone, without training, doesn't qualify you to teach that language - most native speakers of a language don't have the language-consciousness to be able to explain the nuts and bolts of their own language, as they haven't yet looked at it like that - they've just spoken it without thinking, without analysis. A more palatable example of the above tense might be:

'Shall we take the children to see your sister in hospital tomorrow afternoon?'

'No way - she's having an operation tomorrow morning. She'll have been being operated on for 3 hours - she won't be in a fit state for anything.'

Without getting into total English tense deconstruction, yes, we do tend to avoid the more wordy tenses in favour of simpler options - so in the situation above, wd be much more likely to say 'No way - she's having that op - she won't be up to it' - BUT, learners coming to a foreign language will encounter all/most of the tenses, and will want to know what they are, why they are like they are, and when we use them.

OK, I know - it was late last night - I was harsh on the innocent poster. I'm not knocking conversation with a native speaker - it is a great thing. I first started teaching when I was 21, on a Greek island. I had an English literature degree, but had never taught English (so similar situation to the poster). My first English lesson was a disaster: the guy from the beach bar wanted to do First Certificate. He came in with a neat little piece of paper on which he had 20 questions. The first was: 'What is difference - 'I have gone' and 'I went'?' He looked at me expectantly. I though 'oh fxxk ...' Straight after the lesson I bought the whole of 'Headway' and first taught myself English ... taking cash off someone when I didn't have a clue seemed like a bad thing to do. He didn't have a lot of cash, and maybe the kids or adults going to the poster's lessons don't have much either.

My point is: if you want to teach English, you first need to learn how to teach it. You can do that fairly simply, if you have the right mind for it. Get hold of a good ELT course - probably for adults, or gimnazjum+ (13-15 year olds), and read it - fast!


See above. Students do. They don't know it's pointless - they just know there's something going on there, and want to understand why. No questions are pointless when you're trying to get hold of a language (in my humble opinion - but hey, you guys sure seem to know better ... ; )

Well that wasn't your original sentence but for the benefit of the other Poles reading this kind of construction is often substituted for a prepositional phrase such as "She'll have been in the operating theatre for 3 hours" or maybe "She'll have been under the knife for 3 hours" although both are artificial.


It's interesting that you mention coursebooks as I firmly believe that they are one of the great evils in ELT today. If exams are the engine that drives the market, coursebooks are the fluffy dice and leopard skin seats that dress it up. 90% of schools and teachers rely far too heavily on them and they often perpetuate outdated theories of learning and teaching to guarantee market share. Sure one or two books have come out that are worth a peek (Cutting Edge, Inside out and English File are the best) but most are so dreadful you end up praying for a team of Fascist brownshirts to add them to their 'to burn' list.

Most successful coursebooks offer an easy ride for the teacher, not necessarily a rewarding learning experience for the student. what's the name of your book? I'll review it here for you.


I gno where you're coming from man...

have to disagree - in context they could both sound perfectly normal, to me


sorry - not likely ; )
have a confidentiality clause in my contract ...


I don't entirely disagree with you - a language classroom is, in itself, a highly artificial environment, and almost the worst place in which to learn. See all the Polish builders who now speak beautiful English and have never seen an ELT book in their lives ...

However, it IS possible to learn a lot in the right classroom, with the right teacher, and the right book. I fought a battle for natural English and made myself v unpopular with the publisher for refusing to write unnatural crap for the sake of contextualising grammar - they may well have edited the crap in later, though ; ) An ELT book is v much Frankenstein's monster - so many people contribute, and yes, there is often a mishmash of old-school grammar and new-school 'communicative' methodology ... it is a totally imperfect science, in my view, and it's all up to the teacher, really, in the end, to use the material the best he/she can. Authors generally get something around a 10% royalty on the student's book - that shows you how much the publisher considers 'authorial' input to have been ... ; )

A number of years ago I decided the purpose of most monolingual English textbooks isn't to teach at all. The purpose is pathologize the student by diagnosing them ("you're at the upper pre-intermediate level!") and getting them into a graded system where finishing one level doesn't prepare you to do anything but take a course at the next higher level. That is, the purpose is to keep students paying money for as long as possible.

I've yet to find any evidence to make me change my mind.

That said, there are some good Polish-produced textbooks that a student can learn from. But the monolingual books from the UK seem like all filling and no content.

Fortunately I only deal with very advanced uni students (not technically English specialists but close) and can avoid using the mandated textbooks over 90% of the time.


The problem is that the language curriculum in English speaking countries is awful. The traditional grammar model for English is terrible and wrong (since it's based on Latin) and can't be operationalized but for various reasons schools can't use anything else. The last I knew British schools had mostly dropped any mention of grammar for students.

The grammar that ESL students get (when grammar is covered) is far superior to what native speakers get (mostly a bunch of zombie rules that have never been valid).

Also, most everyday explanations that untrained English speakers give are wrong.
The "simple present" is not a present tense at all (it's a habitual and gnomic tense) and the "present continuous" does not necessarily describe something happening now (the single most relevant parameter is 'not over yet').

Actually, pretty much all of the UK-produced books now have targeted Polish language elements - eg, rubrics at lower levels are almost always in Polish, plus there are grammar explanations/summary in Polish, wordlists, etc. The big UK publishers have large Polish workforces on the ground in Poland, offices in all major cities, etc. It is very much a collaboration now, with the Polish offices having, generally, absolutely final say over published materials. It has changed hugely in the past ten or twelve years.


Agree with Mafketis that this is a nonsense - grammar per se is not taught/not properly taught in most UK schools any more, and anyhow, even when it was, it was not taught from the perspective of English as a foreign language. Tense labels such as 'present perfect passive continuous' (oh, my favourite ; ) and aspects of simple and continuous and oh, so much, just aren't taught - as they aren't needed.

Nope, just going to school in England really doesn't qualify you to teach English as a foreign language. I stick to my original point: teaching any language requires some form of training and skill acquirement and experience - otherwise you are taking cash from people under false pretences. Not on.

Sometimes yes and sometimes no, it depends on the level of your own understanding and knowledge of the English language. Many people have great knowledge of the English language but are not qualified teachers.


You're only taking money under false pretences if you are not teaching the students anything. There are some qualified teachers who are guilty of that. Some training might be beneficial for new teachers but experience is only gained through actual teaching.

also necessary is certain socialistic outlook for correct indoctrinate of cadres

I'm 23. When I was at school we were threatened with grammar as punishment for either not doing homework or being bad in the class. All through school and my first(and only) year of uni I was constantly told I had bad grammar and that my essays would be B's if my grammar was better. But as I didn't care much for school I never took the initiative to teach myself. Pathetic that we don't learn grammar at our schools.

My grammar improved after taking a 40 hour online tefl course and getting in the classroom and reading the grammar boxes in my teenage students textbooks!!! LOL

You're not wrong. I was running an Upper-Int course and I gave a mountain of extra material, practice of job interviews etc, but no unit tests (at least for a while). At last 2 poeple left because they said (to my boss), "I don't feel I'm making progress (no tests to prove it to them) and we've only done 3 units (semester hadn't finished and we'd started late).

Now I glue religiously to a book and they all love it!

I'm actually of the opinion these books aren't to teach students to speak with native speakers, they're to teach them to speak to other L2 speakers. Funnily enough, when 2 studes from different countries get together and parle Anglais it is not unknown for a native speaker to find it hard to understand. The L2's understand each other because they make similar mistakes. The mistake then ceases to be a mistake in their form of English.

One example was the French and Polish businessmen in a meeting with an English businessman. The Frenchman and Pole started talking about supply and delivery of cardboard boxes. They started joking about the "Karton Network" (pun on "Cartoon Network") but the English guy was mystified because he didn't get the word-play.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that the new COUNTDOWN to FCE is a pile of poo. It is so full of mistakes that my students wanted to know why they had to spend good money on a crap product (with mistakes they wouldn't make!).

Getting kids to learn grammar is a bit like gettin them to eat vegetables. You have to be creative and try and sneak them in without the kids noticing.

While I agree ESL students get better English grammar training, I still say this may be sufficient to be competant enough to teach ESL. The school system where I live is actually really good when it comes to English, we learned pretty much everything but I don't live in Britain. Plus I don't feel like a native English speaker needs to know enough grammar as an ESL student because some things can be easily explained just by being a native speaker.

We don't. We just know (generally, but lots don't) how it is used instinctively (I mean, we know what sounds strange). European students tend to get trained solidly in their grammar, particularly Poles.

I had heard that in UK primary schools were starting to reintroduce grammar, bit by bit.

yeh that is true but as the teachers are now uneducated half wits who dont know the difference between a noun and a verb, it's a bit late.

My kid told me that WILL was the future tense in English, for example........is that useful?

Yeah - they don't appreciate you putting effort in. I find I have a choice - I spend over an hour planning and they don't care, I flop something out of a coursebook and they don't care. What's the fricken point eh?






Lordy lordy what's with all the grammar? I know it's easy to present and students find it easy to quote but why is everyone so obsessed with it? Isn't there more to the language than making a stream of 'accurate' sentences? One of the reasons I think we don't do that much grammar at school in the UK is that no conclusive link has been shown between a declarative knowledge of grammar and the standard of L1 production. Encouraging students to use the language creatively has far more benefits and fosters language diversity.


Are you sure about that? The nomenclature 'past' and 'present' for the tenses come from Latin but as English carries very few case or gender markers, I can't see how you can analyse English in a Latin way.


Quite probably, but then again there are so many exam books that blow. The only ones I've liked were the Gold series. I had some magic hours with those beauties. And my students did too if I may be so bold. The new 'Objective' series looks sort of OK. Upstream, however, sucks big donkey cock.


Hmm I wonder if I gno you....

spot on, tha answer is right in the question..."students find it easy" therefore that is what makes them happpy..it is quantative...and also enables students to feel superior.

Therefore private language schools demand it....£££££...kerching...$$$$$


Yes youre right unfortunately only experienced teachers like u see it like that,,it terrifies the hell out of many students, and language owners dont see kerching

Oo I like you. You can call me Bubbles.


I suppose so. It's a good system if the teacher isn't overworked and has a rough idea about what they want to achieve, but as you know, most state school teachers don't have either luxury - they simply flop the book out and run through the exercises. A friend was writing a teacher's book to accompany a course and the publishers were relentlessly purging anything that looked too 'interesting', preferring instead to have 'You opens the book, you asks the students the answer, you tells the students the answer, you does the next exercise' and so on.

Teachers rely on the book and treat it as gospel. Publishers look at this reaction and continue to produce the same material and on it goes. Coursebooks are one of the great conservative influences in ELT.

cor thanks....:}
..


YES! more KERCHING ££££$$$$$ Zl Zl Zl

My kid told me that WILL was the future tense in English, for example........is that useful?[/quote]

Can thy spell? I remeber something called "Letterland", where all the letters had names. I asked my niece to spell out a word, something like "seven". All she could do was say "Eddie elephant" but not relate it to the sound of the letter.

Funny thing I find is that British kids make mistakes no Polish kid would make, such as "I must of lost it on the train"



No, this takes a new prize. It is so full of typoes and mistakes that it is unbeleivable. I wrote to the publishers and said that if they couldn't afford a decent proof-reader they could spend their money on me and I'd do a better job.

Probably because Natives learn it phonetically while Poles and other non natives often learn it through written texts / gramatically. These kids should read more and place more importance on correct spelling, if that is important in kids' discourse...

You know that... and we know that... but the paying students know better.


Exactly.

Still, I had no idea what the past perfect was when I stepped into the classroom to work for NOVA. Natives just don't know the labels.

Another point is, the AmE Vs BrE dimension. I reckon I know AmE pretty well, having watched a lot of American TV and spent time with Americans. They almost never use perfect tenses, especially the past perfect. Even in large parts of Britain, it is redundant. It just shows the more elastic nature of time/the relationship between two past actions.

For example, I wouldn't even have known to teach things like, 'I didn't eat yet'. In school, I'd've felt that to have been wrong. Still, as my exposure increased, I came to see that it was used widely. Brits would say, 'I haven't eaten yet' instead. There have been quite a few occasions in class where I was thinking, how on earth would my friend teach this when he doesn't even use it? One could easily argue that Americans have to fight that bit harder to get to grips with the labels.

You're saying this is wrong? That's how I speak. Lol...

Please read my post again, Randal. Then ask me again if you feel the need. Thanks :)