Main five vices of teachers of English

[Bonobo]

PS. In my uni times I was taught that an English teacher isn`t the same as a teacher of English. Later I found out that only a few people stick to that old rule. What should I do???

Every day I am exposed to an indirect contact with two dozen teachers of English through my private tutoring. Pupils and students report to me what happened in the English class and they comment on their teachers` actions. Sometimes those comments are not nice and then I can`t help being critical, too because some teachers do (or don`t do) things which are completely unacceptable to me.


The main vice of some teachers of English seems their incompetence. An example: a 5th grade pupil asked me to check his homework. He made a few mistakes in a grammar exercise, including Present Simple tense in a sentence with "today." I corrected it but he told me that their teacher had clearly admonished pupils not to use Present Continuous in such contexts: "Today I am taking a bus to work."

A few times a day I have to correct the pronunciation of my students, e.g., when they try to utter "apple" like "April" or vice versa. Or the common mispronunciation of words like "they" as "day," or "three" as "free" etc etc. Students always say it was the teacher who spoke so in class. One student even told me that his teacher forbade him to use good pronunciation which I was trying to teach him at home.

This inaptitude to provide quality English teaching is characteristic to elementary school teachers. The problem is many of them are not original teachers of English. They finished various studies 20, 15 years ago and became teachers of biology, Polish, geography, etc. Later they realised they would benefit more from teaching a foreign language so they enrolled postgraduate two-year courses and gained a new profession.

Why are they employed at all? Probably there are still not enough teachers of the language so principals suppose it is better to keep a lousy one than have no teacher at all. Once I thought it mostly applied to rural schools but today I see it is a global problem.

I am not a saint myself, I have my limits, too, but for goodness`s sake, I don`t do such silly things in class.

[jeanne]

Nov 17, 2017 22:59:45 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

I am not a saint myself, I have my limits, too, but for goodness` sake, I don`t do such silly things in class.

Of course you don't...but are you being fair to those teachers by believing what the students are saying about them? Kids love to shift the blame to others for their mistakes!

The same principle applies to what kids tell teachers about their home lives. I once read of a teacher who used to tell parents at the beginning of the school year, "I promise not to believe everything your child says happens at home if you agree not to believe everything he/she says happens in my class!" I think there is a lot of truth in that statement.

I can remember instances when a child swears that the teacher "yelled" at them, insists it happened, and causes problems for that teacher. As someone who witnessed the event, I know what really happened was the teacher appropriately corrected them or perhaps reprimanded them in a normal tone of voice!

[Bonobo]

Nov 18, 2017 22:54:23 GMT 1 jeanne said:

Of course you don't...but are you being fair to those teachers by believing what the students are saying about them? Kids love to shift the blame to others for their mistakes!
The same principle applies to what kids tell teachers about their home lives. I once read of a teacher who used to tell parents at the beginning of the school year, "I promise not to believe everything your child says happens at home if you agree not to believe everything he/she says happens in my class!" I think there is a lot of truth in that statement.
I can remember instances when a child swears that the teacher "yelled" at them, insists it happened, and causes problems for that teacher. As someone who witnessed the event, I know what really happened was the teacher appropriately corrected them or perhaps reprimanded them in a normal tone of voice!

What you say about shifting the blame is very true.

However, I would rather ascribe it to older children who have already learnt school smartness in order to survive. Those young ones in first grades of elementary school are still innocent.
Besides, they don`t need to lay anything on thick because I am only a private tutor for them, I don`t cause that feeling of danger which many pupils experience in real school class so they don`t have to look for excuses talking to me.
Finally, after 26 years in teaching, I learnt some basic psychology and I suppose I am able to sieve facts from romance.

As for yelling or another type of abuse, it is easy to prove. If other kids don`t support the accusation, the accusers must take back their words.

[jeanne]

source="/post/35809/thread" timestamp="1511046969" author="Bonobo "]

What you say about shifting the blame is very true.

However, I would rather ascribe it to older children who have already learnt school smartness in order to survive. Those young ones in first grades of elementary school are still innocent.
Besides, they don`t need to lay anything on thick because I am only a private tutor for them, I don`t cause that feeling of danger which many pupils experience in real school class so they don`t have to look for excuses talking to me.
Finally, after 26 years in teaching, I learnt some basic psychology and I suppose I am able to sieve facts from romance.

Okay, then, I will defer to your good judgement!

As for yelling or another type of abuse, it is easy to prove. If other kids don`t support the accusation, the accusers must take back their words.

The strange thing about the "yelling" accusations is that young students really do think that if a teacher reprimands them or corrects them, that she/he is yelling at them. Perhaps the kids are used to getting their own way at home and don't like the correction/admonition...they don't know how else to describe the teacher's actions, so they say they were yelled at. I have seen this happen time and again!

[Bonobo]

Vices in a pill, new outlook, especially on homework problem



some
Polish teachers of English

- rely only on the textbook, avoid or openly skip the workbook (I once provoked the mother to make the teacher order the workbooks for kids. She consulted the form tutor who later talked to the teacher)

- do not assign homework despite the fact that all experts claim it develops students` knowledge and skills.
setting a test without checking homework,

- set a test without doing all material in the chapter, especially workbook.

- set homework without explaining the theory

- assign homework with some parts of it not discussed in class, e.g., students learnt about Conditional 0 and 1 but homework also includes conditional 2.

- don`t explain the pronunciation of difficult unknown sounds, e.g., they/day is the same to them
( some do but don`t make students write it down in copybooks so they forget it soon)

[jeanne]

My thought on this is that if these teachers were not doing such a poor job, you would not have as many students as you do. You should be glad the teachers have failings so that their students need extra help!

By the way, a current trend in education in the U.S. is to not give homework at all. Some study has apparently shown that it is not productive. Also, many parents with their busy lives do not want their children to have homework because it interferes with family life at home. Parents report constant battles with their children over homework.

[Bonobo]

Feb 28, 2019 1:34:54 GMT 1 jeanne said:

My thought on this is that if these teachers were not doing such a poor job, you would not have as many students as you do. You should be glad the teachers have failings so that their students need extra help!

By the way, a current trend in education in the U.S. is to not give homework at all. Some study has apparently shown that it is not productive. Also, many parents with their busy lives do not want their children to have homework because it interferes with family life at home. Parents report constant battles with their children over homework.

Yes, it is true. All the faults I have just enumarated come from my private tutorials. I listen to my students, take everything what they say with a grain of salt, and I am still horrified at what is left.

Yes, the same trend prevails in Poland, it came from leftist European education boards which decided to defend the rights of students who were encumbered with too much homework.

But it is a vicious circle. Students who I work with at school are worse each new school year, because, partly, it can be attributed to lack of homework in junior high school. I can see that some of my students look at me like an alien when I tell them they have to do it. The weaker the students, the more time I lose at the lesson to teach them basic things. Then I see I won`t manage to finish the book on time and give them more and more homework which they reject. Hopeless situation. I am not able to do two textbooks within 3 years and successfully prepare students to final exams without assigning homework.