If I were a language teacher.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. I am the Founder of LingQ and I have, of course, a blog on language learning called The Linguist on Language. I want to respond to a post, a comment, made by Jacob, I believe, who follows my blog. Let me see. Yes, it was Jacob.

He said “I am a teacher. While you” – referring to me – “are critical of traditional language teaching, which is sometimes interpreted as being critical of all language teachers,” Jacob said, “I am in the system. I recognize the problems in the system.”  He says “I think sometimes the debate becomes too argumentative with criticisms flying back and forth and it's not as constructive as it could be. Do you have some advice for teachers?” So I'd like to talk here about what I would do if I were a language teacher. Now, first of all, bear in mind that I am not a language teacher and have never been a language teacher. I have been a language learner. I have sat in a language class in school. I spent eight months as a full-time learner of Mandarin Chinese in Hong Kong and I have spoken to many people who have been language teachers.

I should also say that some of the most enthusiastic members of LingQ are teachers. Some of the most supportive people we have are themselves teachers. So I don't want my criticism of the traditional language teaching establishment to be considered a blanket condemnation of everyone who is in the field of language teaching. I should also point out that I have had a lot of negative experience with the sort of management level or more senior teachers who have been systematically opposed to what we are doing at LingQ, unwilling to look at what we are doing. Opposed, in principle, to eLearning to the extent that they felt it threatened their jobs. They would often disguise this protectionism with the arguments that people can only learn in a classroom. I heard one teacher tell me that if there's one thing you can't learn through eLearning it's language. There was a vote taken locally here by teachers to oppose eLearning. We've seen even in terms of the immigrant ESL teaching that people are only allowed to take advantage of eLearning if they can prove that they are unable to come to the classroom and I have mentioned the strange one-size-fits-all approach to immigrant language learning taken by the Canadian Government and so forth -- all this under the leadership of the established teaching institution. So I am opposed to those people, I think they do a lot of damage. However, I know personally that there are many motivated teachers who genuinely would like to help their students learn, many of these people are themselves language learners.

Alright, I am venturing into sort of uncharted waters, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not a teacher. So much of what I say may be tremendously impractical, but Jacob asks me for my advice, so here it comes.

If I were a language teacher and I had a classroom of 10 or 20 language learners who were learning, say, English, I would say to them on the first day that my job is to make myself unnecessary. My job is to make them independent of me; in other words, not dependent on me so that they do not expect me to teach them the language.

My job is to give them the kinds of habits and the kind of attitude that are going to enable them to learn the language because I cannot teach it to them and they cannot learn it just in the classroom.

I would refer to the three keys of language learning, which I mentioned in a previous podcast. I would point out to them the kind of attitude that they need to have -- one of wanting to learn the language, believing that they can do it, projecting into another culture, willing to accept that they can be very competent speakers of another language without being perfect in the language, these kinds of attitudinal things. I'd say we're going to train and we're going to make sure that you get this kind of attitude. The second thing, of course, is time. And, again, I'm going to help you create habits that make sure that you spend enough time with the language, not just in the classroom; in fact, in particular, outside the classroom. We're going to find ways so that you find it enjoyable to engage with the language outside the classroom because if you don't do that you won't achieve success. The third thing is I'm going to work with you to help you establish, again, habits that enable you to notice what is happening in the language. So that is going to be my major emphasis during this course. I would structure the classes in the following way: I would want to make the classes as positive as possible and I would want to build them around genuine communication as much as possible and, of course, it all depends on what the level of the students is. If these are absolute beginners then I would have one approach. If these are people who have been trying to learn English, which is very often the case and have not been as successful as they would like, then that's a different approach. But, in principle, I would say to them I want you to find a book, a story, that you're going to read on your own and if you have trouble finding such a book or a story I will help you find one that is at your level and of interest and I want you to be reading it on your own. When you come to class you can talk about it. I will not question you on your comprehension. You can ask me questions. You can talk about it with other people in the classroom. I want it to be something that you enjoy doing.

Similarly, other things in the language that you find enjoyable, please, bring them to the classroom; songs, TV programs, videos, it doesn't matter. I want you to engage with the language outside the classroom and bring your experience into the classroom to talk about these with your classmates.

Now, obviously, if these are beginning learners then the most we can do is to go over these beginner texts with them. And, probably, with a beginner group we may have to go over the same text, but as soon as possible I would try to move to where they can choose -- from a list that I might direct them to – things that are of interest to them to read, to listen to, to watch and so forth.

Then I would say the next thing is that you will come across words that you either have trouble using or that you would like to use or that you don't fully understand. I want you all to bring your words -- and we will again call them ‘your favorite words' -- bring them to class; five, 10, it doesn't matter. We're going to try to talk about them and how they are used in the classroom and we want these to become your favorite words; incidentally, words both in terms of meaning and in terms of how the words are pronounced. So you, the learner, are going to bring your favorite words to the classroom and we're going to talk about them. Similarly, with different grammar structures, structures that you have trouble understanding that you came across in your reading or your listening or that you would like to be able to use, bring them -- two or three each time -- and we'll talk about them and these will be, again, your favorite structures. So I would try to make everything as positive as possible in the classroom. Now I may fall flat on my face. They may say we're not interested, just teach me so that I can get my language requirement. Leave me alone, I have other things to do on my own time. That's fine, but what I would attempt to do is what I just described. Again, I'm speaking here without any experience. They may totally reject this approach, I have no idea. I would like the students to develop the ability to notice what's happening in the language rather than relying on the teacher to teach them specific structures or points of grammar because there's no guarantee that the order in which I teach certain structures corresponds to what they are interested in or what they are now able to learn. I would work on different ways of improving their ability to notice. I mean we all know we need to cultivate the ability to notice. If I am looking for something and I walk into a room and I kind of half think that whatever I'm looking for is not there I won't find it. Even if it is there I won't notice it. If I go there and I'm convinced that it's there I'll find it. I know that in my Russian studying every so often I'll go back and kind of go other the declension tables or some rules and stuff because, as I've said before, we do need, occasionally, to review these rules of grammar. Not with the intention of learning them, but with the intention of increasing our ability to be attentive to at least some of them when we see them.

So I'll get keen on the dative case or something, so the fact I'm keen on the dative case and I've tried to learn the dative case then when I'm reading I'm more attentive to the dative case. I notice it more when I listen and I notice it more when I read and the mere fact of noticing it helps start to get the brain to pick up on it and, eventually, to be able to use it.

It's one thing to understand the text that I'm reading without specifically noticing that this was the dative case because I get it from the context, there's enough. I mean language is quite redundant, as we know. We can misspell words, we can miss words and we still understand. There's lots of redundancy in language that still enables us to understand, but sometimes we need to be specifically trying to notice certain things and that's why I would work on this idea of favorite words, favorite structures, favorite aspects of grammar even, if you want, so that we would then encourage people to start noticing these things in the reading and listening. So it would be a heavy emphasis on reading and listening or watching movies or listening, singing songs, whatever people like to do, a lot of conversation in the classroom, because we have to use the classroom time, but trying to bring into this learning process the ability for people to focus and be attentive to specific aspects of the language, all the while explaining to them that they are not necessarily going to get it right and that I would not test them.

This is another thing; I would not test them on their learning. I would say I am only interested in making sure that you engage with the language. In other words, if we can get you to have a positive attitude about the language and about your own abilities, if we can get you to spend the time -- I might want to measure their activity level as we do at LingQ -- and if we can train in you the ability to notice what's happening in the language, the rest will take care of itself. I don't need to test you. Some people will pronounce better, some people will learn certain structures sooner, some people will start speaking sooner, some people will write better sooner, but we will all achieve our goals if we remain focused on those three keys: Having the right attitude, Spending the time, and Developing the ability to notice. So that's what I would do in a classroom. Now, having never been in a classroom as a teacher and having never encountered that situation in the public school system where 70% or 90% of the students are totally uninterested in the subject, I may be quite unsuccessful with this approach, but there you have it.

I'd be interested in hearing feedback. Thank you.