What does it mean to be an English Teacher?

[:en]When I watched this talk, I immediately thought I should share it on this blog, as it’s a blog for TEFL teachers in Madrid.

The speaker, Jack C. Richards, a teacher himself and trainer of teachers, tackles many of the questions I’ve seen in forums, Facebook groups and pages.

Questions such as:

  • How does language proficiency affect teacher proficiency?  As he says most TEFL teachers around the world are not natives. They have their problems, and natives have their own.
    What a teacher can say about a student’s work is related to the teachers’ proficiency.
  • What do you have to know about the subject in order to teach English?
  • What are the essential teaching skills a teacher has to master in order to teach? What happens after some time, with experience. Do teachers keep using those core skills? Do expert teachers use others skills?
  • What are you principles when teaching?
  • What motivates you?
  • And many more…

It’s a short video, but very interesting for those who are interested in understanding this difficult but thrilling profession. Very interesting for me as I see the difference between new comers and expert teachers, those with different motivations etc.

He has a lot of useful videos on his website about various areas of English teaching: Vocabulary, Comprehension, Lesson Plans… Go on there and take a look.

I will be posting various resources for teachers’ trainning, and maybe even organise some talks from expert teachers. Just maybe… as we’ve tried to do so before without much interest from the teaching community.

We do this in order to emphasize the need of becoming better as teachers, not only by  just doing hour after hour of teaching, but by trainning and listening to experts on the subject.

Lets be proud of this profession (something I think is lacking now) and show there is a difference between a teacher and an amateur. But for that, teachers should not only complain about prices  and rights (they should do that too)…but respect the job.

Quality teaching instead of cheap teaching. From all involved.

 

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