Re:How to Almost Learn Italian
by joshvm on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:37AM
(#18550535)
>My tutor definitely spoke Spanish to me, but the first several months was all in English. I hate the teaching method where a teacher just yammers away in the target language, as if (again) by magic and special miming gestures, the students will 'pick it up.' Bleh.
This is usually the difference between a trained teacher and someone who's teaching to earn a bit of money. When English speakers go and teach English abroad, it's normally to give already-fluent people conversation practice. They don't have the training to be able to teach beginners effectively.
It is remarkably difficult to drop your language to a beginner's level. You need to remember exactly which tenses the students know (which may just be the simple present) and their extremely limited vocabulary.
The best lessons I had were where the difficult concepts were explained in English, but the majority of the lesson was in Spanish. I think a lot of teachers view dropping to English as cheating or breaking immersion, so they don't do it.
This is usually the difference between a trained teacher and someone who's teaching to earn a bit of money. When English speakers go and teach English abroad, it's normally to give already-fluent people conversation practice. They don't have the training to be able to teach beginners effectively.
It is remarkably difficult to drop your language to a beginner's level. You need to remember exactly which tenses the students know (which may just be the simple present) and their extremely limited vocabulary.
The best lessons I had were where the difficult concepts were explained in English, but the majority of the lesson was in Spanish. I think a lot of teachers view dropping to English as cheating or breaking immersion, so they don't do it.