Teaching English as a Second Language.

Warning: This post may touch on some sensitive issues, so if you're the kind of person who can't take criticism, you might not want to venture beyond this line.


I suck at teaching. There. I said it. Not to say I don't like doing it. In fact, I love it. I love it when what I'm trying to teach somehow manages to get across all the barriers that seem to stand in between me and the students and enter their level of comprehension. I love that look on their faces when I say something that actually makes sense to them.

But those moments are so few and far between. Most of the time, I feel like I'm talking in a language so foreign to the hopeful (and sometimes bored) faces in front of me that they don't.get.even.a.single.word. That part of teaching makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel stupid and incompetent. And I hate that part a whole lot more than I love managing to get through to them. I hate that part a lot more than I love the thought of conveying to these people how beautiful the language really is. That's because I want to be good at what I do. My grasp of the language, even if I do say so myself, is above average.

In fact, it's at the level where people take all kinds of liberties to make fun of the fact that I speak (and definitely write) better English than I do my beloved first language, BM. But being really good in something does not mean that you'd be good at teaching it. Not at all.

HOWEVER, I do firmly believe that to be able to teach something, you DO have to be good at it. Let's look at it this way:

Someone who knits beautiful sweaters may not be able to teach someone else HOW to knit properly. She can do, but she can't teach. BUT, someone who sucks at knitting, DEFINITELY can't teach someone else how to knit. Faham tak?

The same principle applies to teaching English. Someone who is very fluent in the language doesn't necessarily make a good English teacher. But a good English teacher definitely has to be fluent in the language.

So I cringe whenever I see educators of the English language make glaring grammatical errors here and there. Sure, it's on facebook or twitter or an online forum or a blog but I believe that standards should be set. Some of these educators have proudly added their students onto their friends list, or followers list or what have you. And they unabashedly make announcements with errors that are so glaring and so basic that my 10 year old cousin could probably detect them. And that's just embarrassing.

I believe that a lot of people will actually think of me as a snob if they read this, but I'm not talking about the general public here. I'm talking about people whose sole purpose in their careers are to teach others how to use the English language. If they can't be good at the language themselves, I believe that they shouldn't be let anywhere near the front of a classroom until they rectify their own glaring shortcomings.

Yes, I know, people make mistakes. I make them ALL the time. Sometimes, I write a status on facebook and then I realise that something's wrong with it. Most of the time, I delete said status, but sometimes, I leave it there. However, I do believe that language teachers should always strive for perfection. After all, when someone becomes a teacher, he or she automatically sets an example to be followed by students.

Honestly, it's all about credibility. Trust me, papers aren't enough. The fact you can wave a piece of degree in someone's face, really doesn't mean a thing if you can't even tell the difference between you're and your, that means and that's mean, and can't even tell that "Are you agree" is not the way to ask someone if they agree with you.

So do yourself, AND your trusting students a favour and go back to those grammar books you had to slog through in school before you make statements that would only ruin your credibility outside of class.

Maybe a lot of people think that the classroom is the only place that language excellence should matter, well, I beg to differ. If you, as a teacher, can't even convince yourself that using the language properly inside and outside of class matters, then how are you supposed to convince your impressionable young students to take you seriously in class? How are you supposed to make them care enough about what you teach to be able to take it out of the classroom context and into the real world?

Think about that.