1
Teaching English is a business; one whose profits may not be
best served by providing you with what you actually need. If you are studying
in a company then a conversation has happened between the sales people from the
English school and the Human Resources department of your own employer. It may
well be an ongoing conversation that is influencing directly what happens in
your lessons. The sales people know that the HR guys want some measurable
results they can show in a finance meeting sometime. They may even have taken
the contents page of an old course book and adapted it in MS word to look like
a program of study, then put their logo on it. Make no mistake, they may have
done this.
If you have been working in banking for 15 years and a 23
year old with a degree in German is teaching you “The Vocabulary of Finance”,
then...
2
Your teacher may not
be what you would recognize as a teacher? Each of them is a person who has come
to Russia to teach English, which suggests that they are not successful,
conventional professionals, with a thriving career in their home country. (But
you knew that, didn’t you).
Your teacher may be
young and inexperienced, divorced and middle aged, only here for the girls or maybe
to write a novel about the Russian soul. He may be hung-over, he may be badly
educated, or she may be bad at listening. It might be that the real teacher in
the room is Headway Intermediate, or English File, or Market Leader, none of
whom are terrible teachers.
Your teacher should ideally possess the following qualities:
If he doesn’t look for a new one.
Experience.
Punctuality.
Some understanding of Russian.
Some understanding of business.
The ability to ask good questions and listen to your
answers.
A good knowledge of the language’s grammar and vocabulary,
ideally of love of the language.
Some of these qualities can be easily proven, others will
take time. It doesn’t matter a damn whether he is British or American: Agatha
Christie died a long time ago, and she wasn’t very good anyway.
3
You may not have any
idea of what you need: perhaps you have spent 20 years studying grammar and
still can’t communicate; perhaps you think you need more grammar, perhaps
because you imagine that at important moments in your future life your fate
will be decided by your ability to complete a grammar test rather than your
ability to communicate effectively. You are mistaken, don’t blame me, I’m just
the messenger here.
You might well take your fear of speaking English into the
class room; you may also bring your tiredness, your worries about life, and
your faults such as idleness or disorganization, defensiveness or bossiness.
You may demand things from the teacher, such as structure and lots of homework,
and then fail to follow those rules that seemed like a really good idea, until
your boss asked you to take over this new project and then your child started
sleeping badly and the winter came and the traffic is a nightmare and that
bastard in marketing is making your life hell, and now this idiot of an English
teacher has asked you to write an essay on god only knows what stupid theme!
You are an adult, own those decisions.
4
The other people in the class, if there are some, should be
intelligent and good natured and willing to work together to understand and
improve their English. If you are in a group with a good dynamic you progress
will increase rapidly, if the chemistry in the class is poor it will be harder
to move forward. This is largely chance in a company, see the point about HR
departments above.
5
You are unlikely to ever reach a high level: it is almost
certain that you will never “master” English. This is a matter of simple statistics:
the vast majority of the world’s English speakers hover around pre intermediate
or intermediate level and the largest number of them live in China. Here in
Russia it is the same. You may be the exception; I would estimate that about
20% of those who apply themselves to the study of the language manage to reach
genuinely effective fluency, so it is possible, just not probable.
You are finally responsible for your progress. The model of
education you knew at school number 298764538 had many virtues and formed many
excellent minds, but it doesn’t work in an office or a private school
classroom. Your teacher does not know or trust that model, and you are now
involved in a collaborative effort rather than being a passive recipient of
knowledge. With a decent teacher, a good class, and serious enthusiasm you can
do wonders, but read that list again before you get to feeling too confident.
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