Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

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Cavesa
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jan 08, 2023 12:26 am

Irena wrote:
Cavesa wrote:I know that people don't need much of persuading. But a huge part of the problem is (and brings us back to the original topic) teachers' usual lack of faith in their own work. They create a self fulfilling prophecy. They don't believe in language learning success, so they teach accordingly.


Actually, I think the main problem is time and money. 90 minutes per week, for approximately 30 weeks per year, over three years. That works out to a total of 135 hours of group lessons. That's nothing. You might be able to get to B2 with 135 hours of private lessons, plus several times that of self-study. In that sort of group setting, though? Forget it. It doesn't matter who the teacher is or what she does.

I can just imagine what happened. The employer would kinda, sorta like the foreign employees to get to a level of Czech that's at least somewhat usable professionally, as long as it doesn't cost very much and those employees don't need to spend too much time on Czech. Meanwhile, the people providing Czech instruction want to get paid, so they promise to deliver what the paying customer says is needed. And when they (predictably enough) fail to deliver, no-one really complains. People who don't want to attend those lessons don't have to. Those who do attend mostly do so to socialize (as far as I've been able to tell). Very little Czech gets learned. People who want to learn Czech (::raises hand::) go elsewhere without making a fuss. What's not to like? :roll:


It does matter a lot, what the teacher does. Either they explain sufficiently the need to put in ten more hours a week (at least) and give students enough support for that, or they don't. It is hypocritical, when teachers complain about students not studying on their own in between the classes, while they do nothing to help them with that or even discourage people. Remember, they are paid for those 90 minutes, not for preparation of other ten hours. And they want to have the steady income for as long as possible, they will not get any bonus for a successful learner passing their B2 exam after a year, they'll have to look for a new one instead.

A partial solution would be changing the way teachers are paid, especially in such professional language settings. A part of the payment in advance, the rest after the students passes a B2 exam (or reaches any other defined goal). And similarly, the student either passes the exam in the required time, or they refund a part of the money the employer has wasted on them.

I have no clue, how an employer can afford to pay socialising sessions with no results.
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Irena
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Sun Jan 08, 2023 12:33 am

Well, Cavesa, I'm really sorry you had such a terrible experience with teachers. Your bad experiences do not negate my positive ones. I did lots of reading and writing in my more advanced language courses. An advanced undergraduate course would involve something like 1000-2000 pages of reading, plus maybe 15 pages of writing over the course of a semester. Plus class discussion. I learned a lot from those classes. For private lessons, they've been particularly good for speaking and sometimes writing. I find that I need a lot of speaking practice in order to get to a reasonably fluent level. Some people are more talented than I am, though, and may not need as much. Good for them. But I'm willing to pay to get what I need.
Last edited by Irena on Sun Jan 08, 2023 1:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Sun Jan 08, 2023 12:39 am

Cavesa wrote:
Irena wrote:
Cavesa wrote:I know that people don't need much of persuading. But a huge part of the problem is (and brings us back to the original topic) teachers' usual lack of faith in their own work. They create a self fulfilling prophecy. They don't believe in language learning success, so they teach accordingly.


Actually, I think the main problem is time and money. 90 minutes per week, for approximately 30 weeks per year, over three years. That works out to a total of 135 hours of group lessons. That's nothing. You might be able to get to B2 with 135 hours of private lessons, plus several times that of self-study. In that sort of group setting, though? Forget it. It doesn't matter who the teacher is or what she does.

I can just imagine what happened. The employer would kinda, sorta like the foreign employees to get to a level of Czech that's at least somewhat usable professionally, as long as it doesn't cost very much and those employees don't need to spend too much time on Czech. Meanwhile, the people providing Czech instruction want to get paid, so they promise to deliver what the paying customer says is needed. And when they (predictably enough) fail to deliver, no-one really complains. People who don't want to attend those lessons don't have to. Those who do attend mostly do so to socialize (as far as I've been able to tell). Very little Czech gets learned. People who want to learn Czech (::raises hand::) go elsewhere without making a fuss. What's not to like? :roll:


It does matter a lot, what the teacher does. Either they explain sufficiently the need to put in ten more hours a week (at least) and give students enough support for that, or they don't. It is hypocritical, when teachers complain about students not studying on their own in between the classes, while they do nothing to help them with that or even discourage people. Remember, they are paid for those 90 minutes, not for preparation of other ten hours. And they want to have the steady income for as long as possible, they will not get any bonus for a successful learner passing their B2 exam after a year, they'll have to look for a new one instead.

A partial solution would be changing the way teachers are paid, especially in such professional language settings. A part of the payment in advance, the rest after the students passes a B2 exam (or reaches any other defined goal). And similarly, the student either passes the exam in the required time, or they refund a part of the money the employer has wasted on them.

I have no clue, how an employer can afford to pay socialising sessions with no results.


It's a combination of magical thinking ("smart people can learn this stuff fast") and no-one really caring. If you gave people 10 hours of HW per week, they wouldn't do it. Not unless they really had to, which they don't. They'd simply stop going, and then the teacher would stop getting paid. Who wants that? As for the waste of money: heh, this is the sort of thing that happens in big organizations. (I won't write it here, but PM me and I'll tell you where I work, as long as you don't share publicly.) In the grand scheme of things, it's not that much money. Meanwhile, the people who do want to learn simply make other arrangements. My Italki teacher has been great. Of course it hasn't been cheap, but at the end of the day, it's been well worth it for me.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Sun Jan 08, 2023 11:59 am

One more thing, Cavesa. Have you noticed that people can simultaneously believe blatantly contradictory things? This happens across a wide variety of domains. In the case of language learning, many people who haven't really thought about it very carefully, seem to simultaneously believe two things that cannot possibly both be true:

(1) With decent quality classes, one can get to a good conversational/borderline professional level in a foreign language quite fast, without putting in much time and effort.

(2) Learning a foreign language to a good level as an adult is incredibly difficult, and only the most talented and determined people can do so.

That's how an employer winds up paying for classes that supposedly get learners to B2, but actually only get them to something like A1+, while simply shrugging when there are no results. Classes are offered because of belief (1). The shrugging is a result of belief (2). Since the employer doesn't really need foreigners to learn Czech ("would be nice if they did, but hey, we all speak English here, so whatever"), nobody really gives this much thought or does anything about it.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby rdearman » Sun Jan 08, 2023 1:09 pm

Irena wrote:Have you noticed that people can simultaneously believe blatantly contradictory things?

It is called Cognitive Dissonance.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby badger » Sun Jan 08, 2023 1:24 pm

Irena wrote:That's how an employer winds up paying for classes that supposedly get learners to B2, but actually only get them to something like A1+, while simply shrugging when there are no results. Classes are offered because of belief (1). The shrugging is a result of belief (2). Since the employer doesn't really need foreigners to learn Czech ("would be nice if they did, but hey, we all speak English here, so whatever"), nobody really gives this much thought or does anything about it.

I suspect that the employer's desire is to be seen to be helping foreign staff to integrate with the local population, without really caring too much whether they actually do. in which case, classes work just fine.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Sun Jan 08, 2023 1:59 pm

badger wrote:
Irena wrote:That's how an employer winds up paying for classes that supposedly get learners to B2, but actually only get them to something like A1+, while simply shrugging when there are no results. Classes are offered because of belief (1). The shrugging is a result of belief (2). Since the employer doesn't really need foreigners to learn Czech ("would be nice if they did, but hey, we all speak English here, so whatever"), nobody really gives this much thought or does anything about it.

I suspect that the employer's desire is to be seen to be helping foreign staff to integrate with the local population, without really caring too much whether they actually do. in which case, classes work just fine.


You know, there's probably a lot of truth to what you say, although I doubt any one individual cynically believes that. (Well, maybe some do. But not very many.) Remember that all these decisions are made by committees. What probably happened was that some individual or group of individuals made a passionate plea for having foreign staff learn Czech. Other people on the committee would have disagreed, thinking that Czech is either far too difficult to learn, or simply not an important language to learn (yes, there are plenty of Czechs, especially those with fancy degrees, who believe just that). And then you have the third (probably largest) group of people who don't really have that strong of an opinion one way or the other, may well simultaneously believe (1) and (2) from my comment above (because they never gave it much thought), but in any case do feel vaguely uneasy about telling foreigners "don't bother learning Czech," and at the same time don't want this to be very expensive or take too much of anyone's time. Okay, now average it all out over all those opinions, and you get the situation that I described. :roll:
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jan 08, 2023 2:09 pm

With regard to such classes it matters where you are, what the TL is, where it is taught and under what circumstances (course and student), and what the entire drive is behind the course in question.

For simplicity's sake, in order to speak from experience rather than pontificating, I'll take the position of the Netherlands (though I could fairly use Belgium, Germany, France or England as an example). If you wanted to learn e.g. English or French here as someone not at school (i.e. school children, not adults), not at a university etc, it will be hit-and-miss. If you went to somewhere like de Volksuniversiteit and did one of their beginner courses you could come out of it with very little progress or some minimal functionality. It's hard to say per student, because there are 'successes' and 'failures' coming out of the same base situation.

If you wanted to learn Dutch there you might fare better, but maybe not. If however you go to one of the state-sanctioned schools (or allied independent schools) for training people to pass the NT2 exam, you'll succeed according to your abilities. Same for English, same for French, same for German and most EU languages. Some of the teachers there have worked at Volksuniversiteit, so it seems a bit odd that one would be considered useless and the other turns out people who pass exams when these are the same teachers. The differences are: frequency, intensity and total immersion.

The view that 'it's the teacher's fault' seems to me the flip side of a coin face claiming 'it's the student's fault'. Both are unreasonable propositions. If you don't succeed on a course (or part of it) it may or may not be down to the teaching. If other people succeed on the same course, it might not be the teaching; or that the teaching is not geared to helping those with more difficulty. Though it might well be that the student is in the wrong class, which could be a teaching/guidance failure or a student mistake. Whatever the case it's not enough to form the universal propositions: it's the teacher's/student's fault.

There are two parts to this. When you seek tutoring it's incumbent upon you to probe the situation and discover what you can expect to learn/achieve, and to maintain this sense of cautious overseeing for as long as necessary. It's true that the teacher is in different position, being the one with the 'answers' so-to-speak and should be able to tell you what to expect and to guide this, but this is the same as any transaction situation. Your plumber arrives, you ask what is going to happen and try and gauge the situation according to your requirements.

The main 'victims' (if that's the right word) will always be people with little-to-no language-learning experience. It's hard to know what questions to ask and really such students should be given guidance and realistic expectations. People with lots of experience who are unhappy with the outcomes of courses have no such excuse. If they consider themselves competent at self-guidance, then they should be probing for answers and working 'with' the teacher, not sitting there in expectation and then calling foul when it doesn't meet requirements.

There's another factor too. The state-sanctioned schools commonly have a bill footed by the state, especially for most immigrants, so they are eager to ensure people succeed and don't cost any more than necessary (yet will pay for as long as it realistically takes). Privately-financed classes don't have this urgency; they can take your money and merely give you exactly what was advertised in the prospectus, a large component for your success is placed upon you as a student - i.e. to be pro-active.

In general I think teachers have a wealth of knowledge to impart and are a valuable resource for answering difficult questions and shedding light on things, but they are also people, not machines. They also need stimulation to be the best they can be and a class of eager, committed, curious, positive, cooperative, positively-critical students makes a world of difference. Yes some of that has to come from the teacher, but also the students.
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby issemiyaki » Sun Jan 08, 2023 7:18 pm

issemiyaki wrote:
The teacher cannot “bestow” language on you; you have to do all the work yourself; they are coaches at best. This is a big problem that I see with people who use teachers and classes; they try to put some of the responsibility for learning the language on the teacher. Beyond relying on them to prepare effective study materials, this is a big mistake.


I never once in this thread even slightly insinuated that a teacher could "bestow" language on you. In the original post, I am the one who said: "It is the student who must walk the last mile alone on his road to fluency."

In the end, you are the one who has to take it upon yourself to diligently make that effort to learn.

CAVESA WROTE: You didn't insinuate that, but the name of your thread glorifies teachers as some sort of huge power to be harnessed. Nope, most of them are just obstacles (to use a polite term).


I did not glorify anyone. In fact, I myself am the one who put a question mark in the title!

The very word "harnessing" implies exploiting something, using it as YOU see fit. I'm not seeking to take any autonomy away from any self-learner, including myself.

You are projecting intentions on me that are not my own.

I was the first to admit that I did not have great experiences with teachers in the past.

It was only when I finally stumbled onto a good one that I thought, hmmm, perhaps, there something more there.

Then, while studying in the library and coming across literally hundreds of scholarly journals on the pedagogy of language teaching, I thought even more – hey: what’s out there? What more can I learn?

And there is a problem with the "you need to walk the last mile" mindset. First, you need to walk all the miles. It is not about a teacher getting you far and you just finishing tiny bits. More often, a teacher is the countercurrent you need to swim against, unless you have a way to take a different path.

And "the responsibility for learning". I see far too often teachers and similarly minded people use this, but in the sense of "responsibility for doing what the teacher tells you". Not in the sense of being the master of your learning plan.


On the issue of walking the last mile – I totally disagree with you. I am learning wonderful nuances about perfective and imperfective verbs that would have taken me a long time to learn. But thanks to help of my teacher, I’m making strides. That’s just one example of someone helping me on my journey.

Of course, I will take that information out into the world and now practice myself.

But no man is an island. Even the tutors and a native speaker you ask for clarification are a form of assistance.

The usual first action of most teachers is like "hmm, nice, but you should throw all this away and do it my way." They refuse to become part of the game of someone responsible for their own learning.


Again, I agree there are some dreadful, power hungry, wretched teachers out there. I know this, too.

That is WHY I had a long conversation with my teacher before my lessons started with her. I laid out my goals and what I wanted to do. In fact, it turns out that her goals might be slightly more ambitious than my own. Nonetheless, if I find that I am not headed in the right direction, then I will make a decision. But now, I have decided to move out of the way and allow her to do her job.

I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to allow my teacher to sort of control the flow. But again, she often reassures that me that X will help me achieve my goal. So, she is not operating in some vacuum.

Basically, I do not want to rely on them preparing materials. I want to rely on them doing with me and the materials what I want.


The materials that my teacher has prepared have exceeded my expectations. They are much more demanding than materials I have been able to locate. Often the exercises are not directly out of a textbook. She has modified many exercises, and even created her own for me.

But nobody is asking for a perfect formula.


The “there's no perfect formula” comment I made was referring to the previous post by someone who said that, given I already know two languages, I should know how to learn languages.

Well, I actually gave teaching a chance again (because I rather hate German, that I need) and unfortunately, some of the things I already knew were confirmed. I will write about that later, when I can compare my Italian C1 path (no teacher at all), and German C1 path (expensive teaching at B2,C1). And I can tell you right away that it is simply not as miraculous as you make it be. The self teaching path is in most ways superior.

But about what you are advocating for: the beginning of your post was about "checking what the pedagogy community does", but then it quickly turned to something like "you should get a teacher, only dumb arrogant children don't". :-D


Again, you're mischaracterizing my intentions.

The self-teaching path, as well as path of using teachers, are fraught. What I’m saying is you can dip into both wells of knowledge.

My sharing my experience with my teacher was just to illustrate some new awakenings I had experienced. I’m just sharing. It’s not an order.

Frankly, I have also shared on this forum countless experiences where certain teachers almost had me in tears. I have been on both sides of this equation.

Granted, depending on the language, it’s hard to find good teachers. However, there are many mediocre teachers who, if they are flexible, can actually be trained to be good teachers. Given you know exactly what you want, you can guide them to help you. I sort of did this with French.

My French tutor is extremely nitpicky. Loves pointing out mistakes. In the beginning it annoyed me. But eventually, I realized I can use this to my benefit. Most people wouldn't have the energy to do this sort of error correction. This guy loves it. So, I had a conversation with him and said, I would like to use your talent this way. He doesn’t really have much pedagogy, but he has a talent for sure. But is he as good as the teachers I worked with at the Alliance Française? In my opinion, absolutely. He might have fewer resources, but he is just as good. In the end, I was still in charge. I decided how the sessions would progress.

The problem is, that a lot of that research is worthless trash with bad consequences for the language learning world. As I've already said various times: If average medical research was just as sloppy as average LL research, there would be many dead people as the result.


Again – I’ll type this in plain language. I’m saying: Just take a look at what the pedagogy community is doing and see if it can be of assistance to you. If you’ve already done that, and it didn’t work for you, I understand! Then this comment is not for you. No worries.

However, there is no way I'm ready to believe all that research is flawed and useless. I do not believe that.

But they are not at odds. And you are right that more research should be done on independent learners (why just polyglots?). But the teaching community is not interested in this. For obvious reasons:

-independent learners spend less than those going to classes and other such stuff. They are also not the main center of interest for public funding either, as that is more about the main educational stream

-independent learners are harder to research, than just a few hundred students of school that cannot tell you no

-teachers usually see successful self-teaching people as a threat. And a damage to their ego.

-the researchers are in the "publish or perish" world, and they also need to come with something new at all costs. Those are some of the reasons behind the obvious low quality of their research.


Those are a lot of assumptions. Perhaps some are warranted, perhaps others are seeing things through a jaded lens. In this end, it's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
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Irena
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Re: Harnessing The Expertise of Professional Teachers? Some ideas.

Postby Irena » Sun Jan 08, 2023 7:30 pm

issemiyaki, if you found a good teacher, then use the opportunity to the max, and don't worry about anyone else's bad experiences (or even the bad experiences that you had in the past). No need to justify anything! :)
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