native speakers teaching

[evanny]

i dig it
of course different people will want different things but that doesn't mean a teacher should slack off in aspects that are not so demanded. that is why i don't like what Realism said. i think everyone benefits if a teacher can speak fluently, can understand and explain and not just talk. i mean, why only go for the one aspect when you can get all of them.

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by evanny

i dig it
of course different people will want different things but that doesn't mean a teacher should slack off in aspects that are not so demanded. that is why i don't like what Realism said. i think everyone benefits if a teacher can speak fluently, can understand and explain and not just talk. i mean, why only go for the one aspect when you can get all of them.

Yeah for sure.
As a bonus, non-native teachers tend to be a hell of a lot cheaper!

Trained native speakers, though, I believe will still be better than trained non-native speakers as teachers.
You have a good point that they can relate to how that person learned the language, and the native speaker doesn't have that.
Actually a big part of why I took learning Japanese seriously was to improve my ability to teach them, not so I would speak Japanese during the lesson, but to understand where they are coming from and how their language differs so as to better understand the challenges.


After Edit;


Another point is that it's a lot more difficult to unlearn and relearn something correctly than to simply learn it correctly the first time.
When learning from a non-native speaker, there's always a good chance that you might learn something flat out wrong, as opposed to learning something that's "wrong" but doesn't actually disturb the ears of native speakers.

There are many non-native teachers who are excellent teachers, who don't make these mistakes and in fact speak English just as well as I do. But there are FAR more who don't but profess to.
As a student, especially a beginning student, it's nearly impossible to differentiate these from each other.

How can you know, as a beginning student, that the non-native teacher you select is in fact reliable?
A native speaker, once he starts teaching you, if you learn, he's good, if you don't, he's not, but there's no doubt that what he's saying is correct English regardless of his ability to teach it.
A non-native speaker, once he starts teaching you, if you learn, he's good, if you don't, he's not, but there's no guarantee that what he's teaching is correct English.

See what I mean?

[BobbyCooper]

Originally Posted by RealJames

Is she the one teaching you all this incorrect English you've been using?

Is she the one preventing you from sounding like your "ideal American accent" ?

Is she the one filling your head with insane notions of the rest of the world?

Learning a language is just as much about learning the words and grammar as it is about learning culture and about new places.

You're just putting words together, sometimes in the right order, can you make a TH sound?

Well, she studied the English language in London for several years.

Like I said before, she hands out great marks to me.

Oh we just went through Australia and NewZealand. In a couple of week we will start with Great-Britian and then in the end with America.

Originally Posted by TheLastFortnight

It's the first time I see someone complaining so much about British accents, I think British accents are much cooler. It's true General American sounds more clear than certain British accents such as Cockney, but this variety of accents is much better to train the ears when you're a non-native speaker. If you can understand English even when it's not spoken so clearly this makes things a lot easier in most situations. American accents usually sound boring to me, especially because the majority of people who study English in my country tend to pick the American variety.

I always had a preference towards British English and Received Pronunciation sounds to me almost as clear and understandable as General American is, also most dictionaries seems to give the phonetic transcription of RP and I always thought this was the most ideal pronunciation to a foreigner speaker to learn.

If you take a dictionary with phonetic transcription of General American and compare this with RP transcription you'll see they're quite similar, so if you understand one you'll understand the other most certainly. It's true however, that only a few people use RP in England.

Also, any form of pronunciation is itself an accent so there's no such a thing as "hiding" your accent, if you're going to speak then you'll be using an accent anyway. Foreigner speakers usually learn those accents that are considered standard such as General American and RP instead of a regional like Cockney, Estuary or Scouse, but it doesn't mean there is a "correct" or "number one" accent for any given language, there are just forms that are considered more neutral and understandable.

Their is no ideal accent in the English language. The pronunciation, students all over the world are learning is written behind every letter in your English dictionary. This is how we learned to speak the language!

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by BobbyCooper

Well, she studied the English language in London for several years.

Like I said before, she hands out great marks to me.

Any horrible teacher can just give out good marks to students...
You aren't very bright are you?

By the way, are you afraid of radiation levels in Japan?

[Suki]

Originally Posted by BobbyCooper

Everybody knows that British people hard to understand and Americans not so much.

I wouldn't be so sure. I insist, it depends entirely on the accent you have gotten used to when learning and the one you have been more in contact with.

Originally Posted by BobbyCooper

Also of course, German or Dutch English speakers are much easier to understand than Spanish ones. thats obviously correct!

That may be true for you because you are German so you are used to people speaking English with a German accent. I am way more used to hearing English spoken with a Spanish accent so to me it is easier to understand a Spanish person speaking English than a German. It's only logical.

Originally Posted by BobbyCooper

Well, she studied the English language in London for several years.

If she studied English in London then I suppose her accent must be closer to British than American, yeah? Then how come you say the good thing about her is she is easy to understand when talking when she probably has a British accent, which is the one you have a hard time understanding?

[BobbyCooper]

Originally Posted by RealJames

Any horrible teacher can just give out good marks to students...
You aren't very bright are you?

By the way, are you afraid of radiation levels in Japan?

Oh I didn't say that^^ but I like my teacher even more because of that

Cause unfortunetly.. we live in a world where only evidence counts!

Oh not at all! You have to absorb so many radiate-burben every day.. that it doesn't really make a difference anymore. Your risk of getting cancer or damaging your genotype is always present.

Also next year February the wall around the Reactors will be done. I would be a little worried right now if I stayed 100-200 kilometres close to Fukushima considering the highest amount so far is spreading out right now.

Originally Posted by Suki

I wouldn't be so sure. I insist, it depends entirely on the accent you have gotten used to when learning and the one you have been more in contact with.



That may be true for you because you are German so you are used to people speaking English with a German accent. I am way more used to hearing English spoken with a Spanish accent so to me it is easier to understand a Spanish person speaking English than a German. It's only logical.



If she studied English in London then I suppose her accent must be closer to British than American, yeah? Then how come you say the good thing about her is she is easy to understand when talking when she probably has a British accent, which is the one you have a hard time understanding?

Well I should have answered all of your questions already if you would have payed attention.

[evanny]

well. i think most of what BobbyChopper has said is shit, but i will give him that so far English english has been the hardest to understand losing only to american southern accents (red-neck and hill-billy) on which i have given up completely. .
in IELTS i got 7.5 and then went to england to study for a week. with some people i could speak freely but others -i had no idea what they were saying. i could understand my substitute native-english teacher as good as any and most of the women at the bar or on streets, but almost never any personal in the shops except for the IT guy when i bought my laptop. it was in Nottingham but sounded like half of the people were from Liverpool.

[BobbyCooper]

Originally Posted by evanny

well. i think most of what BobbyChopper has said is shit, but i will give him that so far English english has been the hardest to understand losing only to american southern accents (red-neck and hill-billy) on which i have given up completely. .
in IELTS i got 7.5 and then went to england to study for a week. with some people i could speak freely but others -i had no idea what they were saying. i could understand my substitute native-english teacher as good as any and most of the women at the bar or on streets, but almost never any personal in the shops except for the IT guy when i bought my laptop. it was in Nottingham but sounded like half of the people were from Liverpool.

you should work on your reading skills then, cause I mentioned all this in the very first post already..

[MMM]

If this thread gets into a p*ssing match, it will be closed.

[evanny]

yes. and then you went on talking about how 90% of them are speaking incorrectly because they have accents. accent doesn't mean incorrect the way you make it to be and it is nothing that person's ears can't get used to in a single month.

i met a girl on a street one night and started talking. after 15 minute conversation it turned out she was an exchange student who had been studying in england for a single year, and yet after 15minutes i could not tell the difference between her and a native. and even more - she came from the same country i did.