Cost All TESOL

Foreign language experience“Parlez vous Anglaise?” Do you speak english? It was the first sentence I mastered when learning french. The second was, “Je ne parlez pas le Francaise.” I don’t speak french. I had the wrong approach. Instead of asking people to speak to me in english, I should have been trying to speak to them in french. I first studied french at high school. We used a translation method. We also used tapes and repeated french phrases which useful for pronunciation. We studied verb conjugation and vocabulary, always translating english into french. We were taught by a native english speaker who had studied french. Although I studied french for three years I could speak very little. When I started travelling in Europe, I studied french again. This time I had a native speaking french teacher, but she still taught in english. We still translated from english to french and back again. There was little emphasis on pronunciation, and little student-to-student conversation in french, and a lot of student-to-student conversation in english. I progressed little, and when I travelled to France I felt that I had gained little by studying french. Later again I took part in some french conversation evenings with native french speakers, and native english speakers who spoke french as a second language (many not very well). I understood quite a bit of what was said by the native english speakers, perhaps because of the australian accents, but didn’t initially understand much of what was said by the native french speakers. Over the weeks I did start to understand and hear french sounds and words. And I began to understand more and more, although I spoke little in those sessions. Finally I studied french, in France. I completed a two-week immersion program in beginners french, with the Alliance Francaise, and lived in home-stay accommodation with a french woman and another student who was italian. Most conversation at home was in french. The classes were conducted in french. The class was made up of native speakers of japanese, Korean, thai, Russian, German and one english speaker, me. Most of the students were university french students who had good grammar knowledge but little experience with speaking the language. The teacher spoke fluent english, but refused, except in rare circumstances, to speak to me in english. I was envious of the japanese girls because they helped each other in japanese. For the first couple of days I hardly understood a word that was said. I didn’t even understand how to complete most of the exercises. By the end of the first week I understood enough of what was being said to begin to feel I could participate in the class. By the end of two weeks I could understand quite a lot of what was said not only in the classes but also in the supermarket and on the street. I completed all of the exercises, and the homework, without too much trouble. It was very difficult, but it worked. I think it could have been done better. I think the teacher should have explained the exercises more clearly, by showing examples on the board. She was enormously creative in her explanations, hand gestures, movement, charades and imitations - something that I will take with me into my teaching. I have used the same principle teaching english in Spain - native english speakers and Spaniards lived together for a week. We spoke only english from breakfast through all meals with a variety of activities in between. The students english improved dramatically. As a result of my own language experience I have an understanding of different methods of teaching and an understanding, from both a student’s and teacher’s perspective, of the difficulties of learning a language. I feel this will help me to relate to students, and to be a sympathetic and caring teacher.