Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

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issemiyaki
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Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby issemiyaki » Tue Jan 03, 2023 4:24 am

As I look over the topics in this forum, many things come to mind. But the one burning question I have is:

Should the polyglot community call on the expertise of professional language teachers, at least periodically?

It just seems that many of us are trying to go it alone, when it doesn't have to be that way. And we also have to recognize our limitations.

So many of us have had bad experiences with “traditional language teaching,” that we see it as some sort of poison that kills our joy of language learning.

Many of us don’t want to use textbooks. Well, a good teacher can tell you when to use the textbook, and when to put it down. A qualified teacher knows a textbook is only a part of the puzzle. It’s pivotal, but it’s just the starting point. Heck, some teachers even make their own material!!!

I wonder if many consider consulting or exchanging ideas with a serious, qualified language teacher. Even if it’s only once every two weeks. Many of us are experienced language learners, so we don’t need handholding. We can shoulder the brunt work.

But, at the very least, having some input from a teacher is key for several reasons:

a) They have been there done that. Countless students have come before them, they know all the common mistakes by heart, and many have plans ready to go to help you.

b) They can draft up a long-term plan to ENSURE you progress. It will push you out of your comfort zone. But, with language learning, just like any other skills-based activity, you need OBJECTIVE feedback. It’s very easy to fool ourselves into thinking we are one level, when we’re not.

c) Teachers (particularly native-speaking teachers) hear things that you don’t. You might think one area is important when ALL a native speaker wants you to do is to PLEASE stop pronouncing “tous” like “tu.” Sometimes, it’s just that simple. In Spanish, maybe you need a thorough review of genders. Some Spanish speakers just want you to stop saying “LA planeta.” Having a teacher will help you address that issue, and STICK WITH YOU UNTIL IT IS RESOVLED.

d) What about those conversation sessions we have without our tandem partners? Not so fast. A teacher can instruct you on what to work on during those conversation sessions, and HOW to work on it. Every little bit helps. It takes a village.

I recognize some teachers are expensive. But you can reach out to universities. Email teachers. Ask them questions. Some of them write books. One actually sent me a FREE audio book, and it's damn good, too. And yes, I still keep in contact with her. Many work in universities, dealing with students forced to take their classes. So, trust me, many would love to hear from leaners anxious to learn.

There’s a lot more research out there. Instructors are championing Comprehensive Input more and more and achieving wonderful results.

One of the major proponents for this, in Russian, is the YouTube channel "Russian with Max." Max is a trained professional language teacher. So, he uses his pedagogical background, along with Comprehensible Input, to create wonderfully effective podcasts. He has clearly studied Krashen, but he also clearly ascribes to what Steve Kauffman has been promoting for years - comprehensible input accompanied by the text for crying out loud! In fact, if Max's model from Russian could be copied in other languages, my goodness, the fluency levels would skyrocket. I kid you not, if you look on any of Max's YouTube videos you have hundreds, literally HUNDREDS of foreigners commenting on his YouTube videos IN RUSSIAN. I get exciting just thinking about it. Max really get it!

Also, many of the good teachers have shepherded students to extremely high levels of proficiency. So, it may be nice to get their take. After all, they see this equation from a completely different lens.

The polyglot community and the language-teaching community need not be at odds. It is the language-teaching community that has the money, AND they have done epic amounts of research. That have a great deal to offer. Trust me, they don’t come to the table empty handed.

I just think that if the two fields join forces more often, the results could be astounding.
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Irena
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:58 am

I have never tried to go it alone with languages. Overall, I had a pretty good experience with university-level language courses, with one caveat: not enough speaking practice. Alas. That's how it is with group lessons, unless the group is miniscule. But I'm not against teachers at all.

Still, after one bad experience with a (since abandoned) dabbled-in language, I now prefer to be at the steering wheel of my language learning. I decide what to do and when. I select most of the materials by myself. The teacher helps me by correcting my mistakes and just talking to me for extended periods of time. I'm generally happy with the results.

One thing you should keep in mind is that, actually, not that many teachers have guided students from the beginning stages to something resembling fluency. Sure, some have, but how many teachers have done it, and just how many students have they guided? It generally takes years to get from zero to a decent level, and many teachers don't have that much experience. Still, an experienced learner can get great results even with a not-particularly-experienced teacher, provided the teacher has a solid understanding of the mechanics of the language and is generally nice to talk to. :)
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issemiyaki
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby issemiyaki » Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:47 pm

Hi Irena, great comment.

At the end of the day, it is the student who has to make the effort and, more importantly, it is the student who really has to walk that last mile on their own. It's very emotional for me to even talk about this because it is like watching a child grow up and leave the house.

But that's what I mean by "sheparding" a student to fluency. You don't need to have encountered your mentor or teacher from the very beginning. Sometimes, you'll meet them when you are already advanced. The point is, you never stop learning a language and no teacher can teach you everything you need to know, but good ones can instill good habits that will last a lifetime.

Language learning is very much like life itself. None of us have made it this far alone. We have had mentors who have guided us in some way.

It's also great that you are informed, Irene. True professionals will will allow the student to eventually do some of the steering.

There's no one size fits all.

That's why in the title of this post I used the word "harnessing." I was very specific about that. It implies you're exploiting / leveraging a resource. You take what you need and leave the rest.

The same goes here. Teachers, well-trained teachers, are a particularly rich resource to help us attain higher levels of fluency. Other mediums are great (tv, internet, podcast) - but they can't talk back to you; they can't evaluate you. Yet, they still hold an important place in the equation. And so do teachers.

Such a rich discussion. Thank you Irene.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby jackb » Wed Jan 04, 2023 5:02 pm

This topic comes up periodically and is hotly debated. It usually ends without anyone being convinced to change their position. Those who like using teachers continue to use them and those that don't don't. The advocates for using teachers always expect to have good teachers or at least be able to use less than good teachers effectively.

If I'm an intermediate learner that thinks using teachers may be a good idea, how would I go about finding a good teacher as you describe in your first post? In the absence of finding a good teacher, what techniques can be with less than good teachers?
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:09 pm

Are you talking about input as in the forum (as you mention community call for expertise), or individual consultations (as you talk about individual teaching)? It looks like you mix those ideas (or I read it like that), so I'll react to both.
issemiyaki wrote:Should the polyglot community call on the expertise of professional language teachers, at least periodically?

It just seems that many of us are trying to go it alone, when it doesn't have to be that way. And we also have to recognize our limitations.

So many of us have had bad experiences with “traditional language teaching,” that we see it as some sort of poison that kills our joy of language learning.

Many of us don’t want to use textbooks. Well, a good teacher can tell you when to use the textbook, and when to put it down. A qualified teacher knows a textbook is only a part of the puzzle. It’s pivotal, but it’s just the starting point. Heck, some teachers even make their own material!!!


My problem with "traditional language teaching" has always never been a textbook but almost always the teacher.

This whole huge online language learning communities phenomenon is a direct result of the fact that most language teachers are horrible. Most of them are not too bright, just went for a relatively easy degree, a relatively easy career path (they don't want to do manual work, but they are not clever enough to get to a competitive degree. And let's not forget that until rather recently, and in some places even now, a ridiculously low level in the language has been sufficient to become a teacher. In case of natives, they are often severely lacking as they have no experience with being a language learner. Two sides of the same coin).

Vast majority of teachers are the problem. Many are rather stupid, many are actively hindering the progress of the students, many have psychological issues leading them to traumatise the students. Do you really want their input?

I can tell you the input 99% of language teachers would give you right away: "Oh, B1 in less than 5 years is impossible, B2 is the most you can achieve if you really work very hard for a decade. You need to pay for a class for a few years. You need a teacher, you shouldn't pick your media on your own, it is too hard and it will be something inappropriate. Stick to graded readers because classics are too hard (and normal contemporary books and lower genres don't exist). You should not use this or that grammar resource, you should rely just on the chaos of worksheet copies from me. You should not push yourself too hard, because you won't be that good anyways. Oh, it's ok that you make horrible mistakes, you just need to speak.".

Teachers are the primary source of failure in language learning and of trauma. There are some exceptions, but how are you gonna filter what teacher gives their input here?


I wonder if many consider consulting or exchanging ideas with a serious, qualified language teacher. Even if it’s only once every two weeks. Many of us are experienced language learners, so we don’t need handholding. We can shoulder the brunt work.


Yeah, we are advanced enough to filter their advice for the few bits of value. But newbies are not. If you start introducing teacher input in the forum, you risk newbies being naturally drawn to it as an authority, and as the result failing.

But, at the very least, having some input from a teacher is key for several reasons:

a) They have been there done that. Countless students have come before them, they know all the common mistakes by heart, and many have plans ready to go to help you.


No, they haven't. Vast majority has never seen a C1 or C2 student, let alone gotten someone from zero to the high level. In the successful cases, students succeed in spite of the teacher, or while using them as just one of many resources (while the teacher usually actively discourages from using those). And don't forget that most teachers have zero experience with motivated students. And they usually have zero idea of what intensive studying means, as they have never done that (few have gotten to C2, and nearly none of them have done any intensive degree or something. A language degree is just primary school compared to engineering or medicine).

They have plans, that make most people fail. And actually the best plan is usually a textbook (those are often made by the exceptional teachers), which many teachers refuse to normally use these days and instead introduce their stupid chaos.

They know the common mistakes, yet we don't really see most learners profiting from that.


b) They can draft up a long-term plan to ENSURE you progress. It will push you out of your comfort zone. But, with language learning, just like any other skills-based activity, you need OBJECTIVE feedback. It’s very easy to fool ourselves into thinking we are one level, when we’re not.


Following a teacher's plan is one of the most common ways to fail. Don't forget, teachers are not paid for your success. They are paid for their students sticking with them for as long as possible.

Objective feedback is excellent, true, but only some teachers are capable of it. Many have rather twisted ideas of the CEFR (not all of them are educated as evaluators), and most of them have no idea what do the successful students looks like.

An average teacher is just as likely to make you think something else as you are, because in their minds, a wonderful result is a student with B1ish skills. They will praise you for anything, to encourage you, and also because they don't know any better. But their advice will be more on how to make you fit their mold and be a paying customer for as long as possible.


c) Teachers (particularly native-speaking teachers) hear things that you don’t. You might think one area is important when ALL a native speaker wants you to do is to PLEASE stop pronouncing “tous” like “tu.” Sometimes, it’s just that simple. In Spanish, maybe you need a thorough review of genders. Some Spanish speakers just want you to stop saying “LA planeta.” Having a teacher will help you address that issue, and STICK WITH YOU UNTIL IT IS RESOVLED.


Yes, they can hear that. And the few capable of pointing it out are a treasure worth paying for, I agree.

But most of them do not correct enough, because it is now the prevailing opinion that people shouldn't be discouraged by too many corrections. So, unless you find an exceptionally capable teacher, who will also accept that you WANT to be corrected (instead of assuming you just don't know what you want and need to be praised even for trash like a baby), it is risky.

And again, we are facing the main problem of most teachers having really low standards. They may correct the biggest mistakes, but they often let slide those an intermediate learner needs corrected. Because their idea of what is the ceiling is very low.

My main pronunciation mistakes, including fossilised ones, had come from teachers. And I've seen the same thing pretty much everywhere.

d) What about those conversation sessions we have without our tandem partners? Not so fast. A teacher can instruct you on what to work on during those conversation sessions, and HOW to work on it. Every little bit helps. It takes a village.


That's sometimes very useful, if you get an exceptional teacher, but often exactly the problem. Most teachers have a rather superficial way to work, and also very little system. Also, the "I'll tailor the lessons to your unique needs" means "I'll assume you're just a tourist and give you the same stuff as to everyone else" :-D

Take teachers' advice on HOW to work stuff with a grain of salt, especially if they are not C2 speakers of something themselves. Take their pronunciation and writing feedback seriously (if they are good and critical enough!), but not the methodology.

I recognize some teachers are expensive. But you can reach out to universities. Email teachers. Ask them questions. Some of them write books. One actually sent me a FREE audio book, and it's damn good, too. And yes, I still keep in contact with her. Many work in universities, dealing with students forced to take their classes. So, trust me, many would love to hear from leaners anxious to learn.


Again, there are some exceptions. But most university teachers are examples of how NOT to teach. Their collective incompetence is one of the very reasons of the existence and popularity of communities like ours.

And I think you overestimate how much most of them care. Also, let's not forget that there is often a reason why these people get less prestigious and less paid jobs at university, instead of working privately. It's not like most other fields, where university is the point of excellence and the major and most desired job giver.


There’s a lot more research out there. Instructors are championing Comprehensive Input more and more and achieving wonderful results.


Yeah? The research I've seen showed serious methodological flaws and unadressed bias. Ridiculously tiny samples, a very biased choice of participants, obvious huge factors neglected (just to make the result look the desired way) and so on.

In the real world, many of the "CI" instructors face a class of burnt out students, unable to put together a sentence after half a year of fun, conversation and input filled classes. With one or two exceptionally successful students, who actually bought a grammar book and studied in spite of the CI instructor's advice :-D


One of the major proponents for this, in Russian, is the YouTube channel "Russian with Max." Max is a trained professional language teacher. So, he uses his pedagogical background, along with Comprehensible Input, to create wonderfully effective podcasts. He has clearly studied Krashen, but he also clearly ascribes to what Steve Kauffman has been promoting for years - comprehensible input accompanied by the text for crying out loud! In fact, if Max's model from Russian could be copied in other languages, my goodness, the fluency levels would skyrocket. I kid you not, if you look on any of Max's YouTube videos you have hundreds, literally HUNDREDS of foreigners commenting on his YouTube videos IN RUSSIAN. I get exciting just thinking about it. Max really get it!


Cannot comment on Russian with Max. But are you sure the people successful with his videos aren't just using them alongside a solid coursebook with tons of grammar? Just a thought.


Also, many of the good teachers have shepherded students to extremely high levels of proficiency. So, it may be nice to get their take. After all, they see this equation from a completely different lens.


I have yet to see one. I have gathered experience with like 30 teachers so far. And I haven't seen a single one "shepherd" a student to an extremely high level. People reaching C2 usually do it just because they use the teacher as just one of the resources and do a lot of other stuff, including stuff the teacher either never mentions, or directly tells them not to do.

I am not saying those exceptional teachers capable of this don't exist. They do. The problem is finding them without losing tons of money and time trying out tons of the usual failures.

Don't get me wrong, you can get teachers that are good at something. More likely at the low levels. More likely, if they are tied to a strong stucture (such as a textbook they are really required to follow without any "creativity"). More likely, if they are not strong CI believers. Natives or non natives. But they are still a minority. And they still know much less about language learning than an average member of this forum.

The polyglot community and the language-teaching community need not be at odds. It is the language-teaching community that has the money, AND they have done epic amounts of research. That have a great deal to offer. Trust me, they don’t come to the table empty handed.

I just think that if the two fields join forces more often, the results could be astounding.


It's not about being at odds. It is not about independent learners being stupid children refusing authorities. It is about vast majority of teachers being failures, and vast majority of the LL researching having huge methodological flaws (if medicine research was that sloppy, there would be many dead people because of it. In LL, it passes).

Yes, the results could be astounding. Yet, most people paying teachers get to B1 in five years or so and that's the great result.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:16 pm

jackb wrote:If I'm an intermediate learner that thinks using teachers may be a good idea, how would I go about finding a good teacher as you describe in your first post? In the absence of finding a good teacher, what techniques can be with less than good teachers?


You should definitely be able to find a good teacher. You might or might not be able to find an excellent one. On Italki or similar, it may be a challenge to find someone who can do this:

issemiyaki wrote:They can draft up a long-term plan to ENSURE you progress. It will push you out of your comfort zone.


This is something university departments (try to) do, but a tutor you hire on the Internet is not really incentivized to do that, since student turnover is so high. Some tutors may be able to do it, but you might not be able to tell who those are in advance, and if you just take your chances, it may take you several dozen lessons before you realize the teacher's plan (if there is one) isn't really working. This is going to be very frustrating for inexperienced learners, but experienced ones can easily compensate for it by having their own long-term plan, and then having the tutor help them execute that plan.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:49 pm

Cavesa wrote:Vast majority of teachers are the problem. Many are rather stupid, many are actively hindering the progress of the students, many have psychological issues leading them to traumatise the students. Do you really want their input?

I can tell you the input 99% of language teachers would give you right away: "Oh, B1 in less than 5 years is impossible, B2 is the most you can achieve if you really work very hard for a decade. You need to pay for a class for a few years. You need a teacher, you shouldn't pick your media on your own, it is too hard and it will be something inappropriate. Stick to graded readers because classics are too hard (and normal contemporary books and lower genres don't exist). You should not use this or that grammar resource, you should rely just on the chaos of worksheet copies from me. You should not push yourself too hard, because you won't be that good anyways. Oh, it's ok that you make horrible mistakes, you just need to speak.".

Teachers are the primary source of failure in language learning and of trauma. There are some exceptions, but how are you gonna filter what teacher gives their input here?


Maybe I've been lucky, but I've mostly had good-to-excellent language teachers. The single worst language learning experience I've ever had was down to a horrible, terrible, downright awful textbook. If you want to blame the teacher, you can only blame her for actually sticking to the (horrible, terrible, downright awful) curriculum that the Ministry of Education gave her, rather than improvising something better. Lemme tell ya how it was. I was in the 3rd grade, starting French. We got this textbook full of pictures, with almost no text. :? You'd get something like a picture of a building, with l'école written on it, plus a boy and a girl in front of it. That's kind of it. And then, the teacher would play a recording of a dialog somehow related to this picture. She'd play it several times and expect us to memorize it and then play it out in front of the class. I was never able to do this, and it was one big exercise in humiliation. I don't blame the teacher, though. I blame the curriculum-makers.

Cavesa wrote:
But, at the very least, having some input from a teacher is key for several reasons:

a) They have been there done that. Countless students have come before them, they know all the common mistakes by heart, and many have plans ready to go to help you.


No, they haven't. Vast majority has never seen a C1 or C2 student, let alone gotten someone from zero to the high level. In the successful cases, students succeed in spite of the teacher, or while using them as just one of many resources (while the teacher usually actively discourages from using those). And don't forget that most teachers have zero experience with motivated students. And they usually have zero idea of what intensive studying means, as they have never done that (few have gotten to C2, and nearly none of them have done any intensive degree or something. A language degree is just primary school compared to engineering or medicine).


You know, my Czech teacher has a degree in English, and I can tell you her English is excellent (we hardly use English at all now, but did so quite a bit when I was a beginner), and I know she has a C2 English certificate (CPE). She's no dummy, I can tell you that! She was still a student when I started taking lessons from her, and she wasn't very experienced. But she was eager, and I came to her with a plan, which she helped me execute. I took (and passed) a B2 level exam exactly two years and one day after my first lesson with her. I hope to pass the C1 level exam this year, but we'll see. Would I have gotten where I am without her help? I'll let you know once I stop laughing. :lol:

Anyway, back when I was starting out with her, I'm tolerably certain all of her students were B1 or lower. But by now, she's seen at least one student start from zero and get to something at least resembling C1 level: me. 8-) So, she now has that experience. I don't think you'll find very many Czech teachers who've guided lots and lots of students to that level. There simply aren't that many foreigners who ever get to that level in Czech, and there's no reason to assume they were all guided by the same few teachers.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:46 pm

Irena wrote:
Maybe I've been lucky, but I've mostly had good-to-excellent language teachers. The single worst language learning experience I've ever had was down to a horrible, terrible, downright awful textbook. If you want to blame the teacher, you can only blame her for actually sticking to the (horrible, terrible, downright awful) curriculum that the Ministry of Education gave her, rather than improvising something better. Lemme tell ya how it was. I was in the 3rd grade, starting French. We got this textbook full of pictures, with almost no text. :? You'd get something like a picture of a building, with l'école written on it, plus a boy and a girl in front of it. That's kind of it. And then, the teacher would play a recording of a dialog somehow related to this picture. She'd play it several times and expect us to memorize it and then play it out in front of the class. I was never able to do this, and it was one big exercise in humiliation. I don't blame the teacher, though. I blame the curriculum-makers.


I think you've been lucky. In my case, vast majority of the teacher was unable to just follow a textbook. They wanted to be creative at all costs (even those teaching in schools up to high school and university) and just one out of the whole bunch was any good at such a creative approach. In all the other cases, it lead to a huge chaos of resources, no clear goals, and not really clear idea on how and what to self study in between the lessons, what would be tested, what were the goals.

The curriculum is just a tiny part of the problem (but yes, any curriculum expecting you to get to weak B1 in like 10 years is a problem).

Your teacher sounds bad, and the method and coursebook surely was bad! I agree that there are many bad textbooks on the market. But I've mostly seen teachers not follow any textbook, or making a chaos of a dozen.

They should have just picked a good coursebook and followed it with as few deviations as possible.


You know, my Czech teacher has a degree in English, and I can tell you her English is excellent (we hardly use English at all now, but did so quite a bit when I was a beginner), and I know she has a C2 English certificate (CPE). She's no dummy, I can tell you that! She was still a student when I started taking lessons from her, and she wasn't very experienced. But she was eager, and I came to her with a plan, which she helped me execute. I took (and passed) a B2 level exam exactly two years and one day after my first lesson with her. I hope to pass the C1 level exam this year, but we'll see. Would I have gotten where I am without her help? I'll let you know once I stop laughing. :lol:


Yes, she is exceptional in that way. It is not a prevailing thing. For example most English or French teachers have never reached C2 in any foreign language and may not have even tried.

She is exceptional and you are lucky. Most people I've met, who studied a language at a Czech university, were not really that good. Yeah, they formally reached a C1 or perhaps C2 (but usually didn't take a real exam, just relied on the official claims about the degree). But let me quote someone studying a master in French: "Oh you read in French? I read translations, it would take me too much time in original".

The sad thing is, that the really good students are known to finish their studies and then get very quickly discouraged by the system and burnt out. Those who actually become and stay language teachers are usually those, who fail at several points. They fail to get to a more prestigious degree. They fail to get into a better paying field after university. And if they fail to succeed in the private sector, they teach kids, teens, and young adults in normal schools.

Would you have gotten there? With serious self study: sure.

The main problem of people, who prefer teachers, is inability to self study. I've experienced this too in one language: I am now paying for German lessons. I had self studied to B2. I passed the exam. And then I had a huge motivation problem. I thought paying for teaching would help. It did for a while. Let's see how it works from now on, with all the problems I am now facing, and which I wouldn't have had as a self teaching student.

On the other hand, I took a C1 Italian exam last month, and without having had any tutor. It is not really a problem.

Anyway, back when I was starting out with her, I'm tolerably certain all of her students were B1 or lower. But by now, she's seen at least one student start from zero and get to something at least resembling C1 level: me. 8-) So, she now has that experience. I don't think you'll find very many Czech teachers who've guided lots and lots of students to that level. There simply aren't that many foreigners who ever get to that level in Czech, and there's no reason to assume they were all guided by the same few teachers.


Yes, it is a nice success story. I was the first advanced student for someone too. He had lied about his experience. I had taken some classes with him before my first C2 French exam. But was he the one to "shepherd me to C2"? Nope. I had to push him to correct more, I had to insist on not doing the useless stuff, I had to point out too easy exercises proposed, I had to keep motivating myself for all the extra work he had considered impossible.

When I pay someone, I want them to give value to me, I do not want to be their guinea pig, I do not want the added work of teaching them how to teach. This wasn't just communicating my needs (which is normal), it was me teaching them to teach a high level.

As to Czech: You are not entirely correct. I've actually met quite a lot of successful B2/C1 Czech speakers with various native languages. Most of them had taken the same intensive 1 year course by Charles University in order to study medicine in Czech (=really study. Not just pay for the easier degree in English).

You are also not entirely wrong, it is still rare to learn Czech and to a solid level. But that changes very little. When I pay, I want an experienced person. If they are not experienced and I will be their teaching teacher and a guinea pig, it needs to be said openly before (no lies, half truths, or question avoidance) and the price should be adjusted accordingly.

And it is really different from the opinion expressed by OP, who paints it as if independent language learners were just stubborn children, who refuse the help of wonderful teachers :-D
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Thu Jan 05, 2023 2:22 pm

Cavesa wrote:Your teacher sounds bad, and the method and coursebook surely was bad! I agree that there are many bad textbooks on the market. But I've mostly seen teachers not follow any textbook, or making a chaos of a dozen.

They should have just picked a good coursebook and followed it with as few deviations as possible.


That was not her choice to make. The Ministry of Education selected the textbook, and all the 3rd grade French teachers in the country had to use it. If she'd selected something else, she may very well have gotten herself fired.

Cavesa wrote:Would you have gotten there? With serious self study: sure.


No, I wouldn't have. Not in a million years. Czechs (at least in Prague) are generally not willing to talk to foreigners in Czech. Not unless those foreigners are at least a solid B2. At least that's been my experience, and I keep hearing similar stories. People rolling their eyes at you, or bursting out laughing, or (most commonly) just switching to English. Okay, so how do you get to a solid B2 if no-one will talk to you? Simple: pay someone to talk to you until you get there. I honestly cannot think of a different way that wouldn't involve me completely overhauling my entire life. (Sure, if I moved to some village somewhere where no-one spoke English, that might indeed work.)

Cavesa wrote:As to Czech: You are not entirely correct. I've actually met quite a lot of successful B2/C1 Czech speakers with various native languages. Most of them had taken the same intensive 1 year course by Charles University in order to study medicine in Czech


You're right. I should have mentioned those. But unless a person is about to take one full year off to study Czech (which very few people can), this is of no use. Hence, Italki. I'm happy with the results.

Cavesa wrote:And it is really different from the opinion expressed by OP, who paints it as if independent language learners were just stubborn children, who refuse the help of wonderful teachers :-D


I don't really agree with the OP, either. At this point, I wouldn't let a teacher make a study plan for me. I do that for myself, and I want the teacher to help me execute it.

The flip side is that I'd be quite reluctant to try a distant language. I'm pretty sure my approach to language learning would work for any Slavic, Romance, or Germanic language (it's only a matter of being disciplined enough to follow through), but I'm far from convinced it would work for something like Chinese (any variety thereof). How would I find/identify a Chinese teacher who could make a solid long-term study plan for me, without my paying for dozens or even hundreds of lessons first? So, no Chinese for me.
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Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jan 05, 2023 2:38 pm

Irena wrote:That was not her choice to make. The Ministry of Education selected the textbook, and all the 3rd grade French teachers in the country had to use it. If she'd selected something else, she may very well have gotten herself fired.


That's an interesting point. In your country, it was fixed like this. In mine, there was no one single obligatory coursebook. It was the teacher's choice. But many chose to just bring chaos of worksheet copies instead of any coursebook.


Cavesa wrote:Would you have gotten there? With serious self study: sure.


No, I wouldn't have. Not in a million years. Czechs (at least in Prague) are generally not willing to talk to foreigners in Czech. Not unless those foreigners are at least a solid B2. At least that's been my experience, and I keep hearing similar stories. People rolling their eyes at you, or bursting out laughing, or (most commonly) just switching to English. Okay, so how do you get to a solid B2 if no-one will talk to you? Simple: pay someone to talk to you until you get there. I honestly cannot think of a different way that wouldn't involve me completely overhauling my entire life. (Sure, if I moved to some village somewhere where no-one spoke English, that might indeed work.)


You could try the same way I got to German B2 and to Italian C1. Coursebooks, grammar books, doing the exercises very actively, speaking alone, consuming a lot of content in the target language, a bit of SRS. You don't strictly need other people to get to B2. It gets much harder at C2 (but still possible), but you don't really need them to reach B2.

Such opportunities to talk to other people are a wonderful bonus, I agree. But they are in no way necessary.

Cavesa wrote:As to Czech: You are not entirely correct. I've actually met quite a lot of successful B2/C1 Czech speakers with various native languages. Most of them had taken the same intensive 1 year course by Charles University in order to study medicine in Czech


You're right. I should have mentioned those. But unless a person is about to take one full year off to study Czech (which very few people can), this is of no use. Hence, Italki. I'm happy with the results.


True. But that is different from your original claim that people don't really get to B2, and that there is nobody with the experience of having brought many people to the level.


The flip side is that I'd be quite reluctant to try a distant language. I'm pretty sure my approach to language learning would work for any Slavic, Romance, or Germanic language (it's only a matter of being disciplined enough to follow through), but I'm far from convinced it would work for something like Chinese (any variety thereof). How would I find/identify a Chinese teacher who could make a solid long-term study plan for me, without my paying for dozens or even hundreds of lessons first? So, no Chinese for me.


Yes, those are valid points. And some of the things keeping me "in Europe" with my languages too for now. But my dream language project is self teaching Hebrew to a solid level. If I manage to get to it, we'll see whether it works, or whether I'll fail.
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