5 things traditional language teachers don't want you to know.

Trigger warning: this may be offensive to people with very traditional views on language eduction.

I really hate how many people go through life feeling stupid because their teachers taught them to care about the wrong things.⁠

So here are 5 truths that traditional language teachers rarely speak about.

Especially in language classrooms, students are afraid of making mistakes and learn that following the rules is more important than expressing your thoughts and connecting with others in your own way. I see it with so many of my clients: smart, impressive people with interesting careers who feel bad when they make tiny mistakes in English.⁠

Learning should empower you. It should help you feel better, make you grow, let you do things. ⁠

So here are 5 things your language teacher probably didn’t tell you:

1. They teach grammar because it's easy to teach, not because it's the best way to learn.

Did you know that most of the teachers who work at language schools learned to teach English in a 1-month course? It's called the CELTA and does one thing really well: show you how to teach the tenses.

That is because the tenses (Present Simple vs. Continuous, etc.) are easy to teach. They are easy to explain, there are hundreds of course books based on the tense system, and the exercises are easy to check, even for someone with limited teaching experience.

2. Vocabulary is more important than grammar.

If you use the Past Simple instead of the Present Perfect somewhere, it might not be pretty. But 99% percent of the time it will not actually lead to a misunderstanding, thanks to context. (see number 5)

However, if you don't have enough vocabulary for the things you want to say, you will waste a lot of time trying to describe what you mean, and very often you won't be happy because you can't describe the things you care about precisely enough.

3. Vocabulary is f***ing messy.

It's easy to give you a list of ten words with translations and so this is what teachers do.

But vocabulary is more than individual words. Often, you need to learn phrases, or even full sentences. The constructions may be complicated and a 1:1 translation won't make any sense. All of this makes it more difficult for your teacher to teach advanced vocabulary constructions and so many don't.

Growing your vocabulary is the only way you can express yourself more fluently in a foreign language. And like any learning experience, it has to be a little difficult to be effective.

4. Learning is not linear.

Traditional teachers follow the "PPP"-approach:

Presentation: they show you new language.

Practice: you do some exercises.

Production: you use the new language.

Simple, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well because you don't learn things just by practicing them once! Anything you learn has to be repeated often and in meaningful ways or you can't remember it. So if you don't remember the grammar topic your teacher explained last week, it's not your fault. You need to hear it again with a different example!

5. Context is everything.

A word can mean 100 different things depending on who says it when, where, how, to whom, etc. and which variety of English they are speaking!

Linguists and experienced language teachers know: meaning always depends on the context.

This is why language should never be taught without a meaningful context, though it often is.

Teachers like to say "right" and "wrong" and feel insecure saying "That depends" or "Let me check", even when they should!

So if your teacher said things to you that are still holding you back, maybe it's time to let them go. ⁠

Share with someone who you think might find this helpful. ☻⁠