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ESL forum >
Grammar and Linguistics > What do I need to know as a teacher?
What do I need to know as a teacher?
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sorji
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What do I need to know as a teacher?
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Dear all,
I would like you to answer this question for me.
As an English teacher,what am I supposed to know concerning English as a language?I mean am I supposed to know its linguistic properties,phonology, morpohology, as on and so forth....?
What do I have to grasp in particular? |
17 Jan 2010
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Amaras
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There are a lot of things that come to my mind; but I have to hurry, since I �m already half out the door to go out; so here just something that popped into my mind :)
I think first of all you have to know how to deal with the students and how to bring them to understand what you want to teach. I have seen so many great speakers and even natives, and they were the worst teachers I have ever seen, because they just had no connection to the students and didn �t know how to explain. Also I think you should be flexible in your ways of teaching. If one method doesnt work; you must be able to think of another way of explaining quickly and try different methods and approaches that suit the student.
Greetings from france |
17 Jan 2010
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sorji
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Thanks Amaras but that �s not what I meant when I asked the question.I meant whether , as as teacher,I should be "linguistically-literate", that is know the English linguistic properties.(ie phonology, morphology,syntax,discourse analysis,language acquisition,etc).I didn �t mean teaching methods.
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17 Jan 2010
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MarionG
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I think it really depends on what and who you are to be teaching...A university couse on linguistics to adult native speakers holding a master �s in literature, or English as a foreign language to 7 year old total beginners who have a different alphabet in their mother tongue.... |
17 Jan 2010
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sorji
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Dear Marion, I am teaching in middle school.My students are from 13 to 15, but they are absolute beginners.They have been learning Eglish for 8 months now,their mother tongue is Arabic, and the second language is French, |
17 Jan 2010
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MarionG
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In that case, IMHO, i would not worry too much about linguistic knowledge. They have such a long way to go before anything like that becomes relevant! A love for the language and a love for teaching besides a good level of English (which you obviously have) will get you far! Sometimes, knowing how much there is to be known can be a handicap rather than an asset when teaching beginners!
In your case I would focus my attention on teaching and classroom management skills rather than worry about technical knowledge of the language!
We all learned to speak our mother tongue and few of our parents were able to explain the finer points of phonology, morphology,syntax,discourse analysis etc. probably they would even have a hard time explaining why you use a possessive adjective in one case and a pronoun in the other - chances are they have no idea what they are and yet, we all speak, read and write! |
17 Jan 2010
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kons
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To my mind, I think knowing all those things helps the teacher master the language and teach it to their students. Let �s take for instance language acquisition. when the teacher knows the different stages learners go through in their acquisition-learning of English as a second language, they make appropriate decisions to choose what to teach first. Also, teachers become aware of the difficulties students face in their acquisition-learning of English as well as the interference of their L1. so teachers can let the students be aware of so many things that could be of great help in their learning. I think having a certain level of knowledge in the linguistic properties of the language can be helpful to some extent because there are other things such as approaches, methods, and techniques. another point is that teaching university students requires a full mastery of all those branches of the language because university students learning English are specialized in language learning and their teacher or let �s say their professor needs to be knowledgeable in linguistic properties and this is totally different from middle and high school teaching. hope this has answered your question. |
17 Jan 2010
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sorji
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Thanks a lot, dear teachers
I asked that question because I felt that it �s obvious for an English teacher to know all the aspects of this language.I got my BA in linguistics and yet Iknow that there �s still a lot more to know in this field.
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17 Jan 2010
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