What Language Teaching Is All About

Posted on October 18, 2007 
Filed under language learning, language teaching




At the start of the week I was involved in a meeting at the University of South Australia that focussed on professional standards for language teachers and what that specifically meant for teachers of Chinese. There was a lot of important talk about what exactly teachers should aim for if they want to be considered to be an accomplished language teacher. You can read these standards here. This all of course got me to thinking what teaching languages is and is not about for me personally, and here is what I came up with.

My overall aim as a language teacher is to be knowledgeable enough to foster an interest and engagement in 2nd language learning amongst students. For me, language learning and teaching is about interacting with the language, not about teaching fluency necessarily. It’s about communicating, not explicit grammar lessons, and it’s about understanding another culture and language system, not about getting language ‘right’ all the time. Not to say that things like fluency, correct grammar and getting the language ‘right’ are things that should never be considered and aimed for, but essentially I believe the other points are more important.

In just two classes a week, it is near impossible to teach students to speak a language fluently, so getting them interested enough and giving them to skills to learn it beyond school should they choose to is what I aim for. If they enjoy coming to my classes and are willing to give things a go, then I’m happy with that.

To read about a special year for languages, check out this post: A Special Year for Languages and how all teachers can help.

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