I'm an Actor...

...but I only get paid to be a teacher. I have often felt that what I do in the classroom is a performance. I get nervous on the first day of the semester, because I am starting with a new "audience". I spend time outside of the "theatre"  researching and rehearsing. I get there early to make sure the "stage" is ready and I have all my "props". I stay late if someone needs me to run through the "scene" again.

What Do You Teach?

Does it matter? Well, yes, I suppose it does, but not in the way you might think. Until now, my answer has always been "algebra". And then I wait for the inevitable comment: "Oh, I was never any good at math!", or even "Yuck, I hate math!" At least they know that algebra is a branch of mathematics. However, this is not the kind of conversation starter that makes either party feel comfortable. In fact, it is often a conversation stopper. Check out the pie chart, third from the top on this blog.

Why is English so !@#$% hard?

I have heard it said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. I have also heard people say that it really isn't. This week I came across at least two reasons that it is. One of the reasons is that English grammar differs from that of other languages in many ways. The website from the Frankfurt International School explains some of the ways. For instance, German, which is on the same branch of the same family as English, has differences in verb tenses and verb placement in sentences, as well as differences in punctuation and pronunciation. Unrelated languages have many more differences.

What's in Your Approach

My "aha!" moment this week was about approaches to teaching. I was reminded that there is more than one way to guide one's students to learning a new language, or just about anything. As a math teacher, I nearly always used a deductive approach, but as a language teacher, it seems that an inductive approach may lead students to be able to not only learn about a new language, but to actually acquire it. Acquiring a new language means that a person can use it more like a native speaker, instead of having to translate from their first language. In the past, I have heard this referred to as thinking in the second language.

We All Need a Little Grammar Sometime

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of English grammar. After all, I always get 100% on those Facebook quizzes. They like to tell me I could be an English professor! It turns out that in a more rigorous test, I'm not quite there yet. Specifically, I seem to have trouble identifying the various types of conditional sentences (first, second, third) and their verb forms. Fortunately, I found a resource that explains it well and includes plenty of practice.

My "aha!" moment is coming to me in pieces, and I think I now have first conditional and second conditional internalized. Still working on third conditional, but I'm almost there. (If I hadn't taken this course, I wouldn't have cared about conditional sentences.)