Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Are you really an English Teacher?

In my country, Venezuela, it is common to know about people who work as English Teachers without any knowledge of pedagogy or education principles. However, there are people who study at least five years at university to get a degree to teach English. If you are a future English Teacher, what do you think about this matter? Is the knowledge of methodology necessary to teach English?

7 comments:

Nahir said...

Hi Yasodhara,

Congrats for your blog! Great achievements you´ve got.

There are principles in learning that we, as teacher, should take into account when dealing with students. It's not an easy job since many psychological factors are involved. Mastering a language doesn't qualify people to teach it. Understanding many processes that influence learning help people to become better teachers, and understand why students make some mistakes or don't get a point we've taught straightforward. Using proper techniques that facilitate language learning is not instinct, we have to be trained, specially if we want to be part of any educational system.

Bfn

Mayrelis said...

Of course I do! Due to the fact that teaching is a process we have to do it step by step, trying not to skip any detail because we are dealing with human beings. As the teacher said, there are many aspects involved when teaching, that is why not anyone
can do it if they are not prepare to face the real thing behind teaching a language. To teach is not only to stand in front of an audience and say "my name is", "this is the verb to-be". To teach, for me, is to go beyond letters,sounds and beyond all those things. To teach is more than that.Teaching deals with the different ways you can present a content, the different way to work with the same group of people and how to get involved with them. To teach is not only to test but to follow a process in order the students to achieve what they have to.That is why we have to be careful about the way that we teach.There are many ways in which you can teach, but you have to learn them, to study them, to experiment with them.That is why we are studying methodology. Anyone can speak English, but not anyone can teach English because you need the tools to do so..

youngEnglishTeachers said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
youngEnglishTeachers said...

Hi my friend!!!! of course. The fact that people know how to speak english it is not enought to be a good english teacher or to be able to teach english(sorry for my mistakesjejeje.)
You need strategies, methods, identify typical problems in a classroom, and how to teach what you learned, a mean how to transmitt your knowledge. Also the most important thing: how to motivate your students... It is not an easy job but we have to do it. congratulation for your blog dear... kisses

June 19, 2007 2:49 PM

rotistyle6 said...

Hi
I completely agree with all of you. I think there should be more to teaching than only knowing the language. So all teacher should be trained pedagogicaly and academicly.

Albis Tovar said...

I agree with you. many people think that everybody can be an English Teacher and they do not take into account the importance of pedagogical aspects.

Karina Clemente said...

Hi, Yaso!!! I really like your blog. Regarding to your question, I think (that) when we want to teach something we have to manage the information well, but also, we have to know information about the teaching-learning process itself. As Mayelis was saying,we are dealing with human beings, so they do not learn the same. Some of our students like to learn by playing games, others by looking at pictures and others by listening to music, for example. Consequently, it is important that teachers manage this. Educators have to get in contact with useful techniques and they have to be updated. In that way, we can help learners to internilize the content and they can learn how to use the target language for communication.