Native speaker teachers or non-native speaker teachers or independence

A number of people have commented to the effect that they prefer language teachers who are native speakers of their own language.  Here is one example from my blog:

"I've been living in Thailand for a year and have taken Thai lessons from native speakers for most of that time.

I couldn't write or read and could barely speak. About two weeks ago I started lessons with an american and in two weeks learned to read - something the natives couldn't teach in a year of study.

I think learning another language from someone who shares your mother language is the best way to learn a language. My new american tutor says it this way: "I can't teach English, I don't know how I learned it but I know how I learned Thai and can teach you that process."

How can you live in Thailand for one year, want to learn the language, interact with a native speaker teacher and not be able to read or speak? This is a far cry from Benny's three months to fluency. The only explanation is that the learner is dependent on the teacher. The first rule of language learning is independence.

If you spend one year in Thailand, or anywhere else, listening to the language, and slowly teaching yourself to read, while listening, and accumulating words, you cannot help but learn. The native speaker is there to speak to when you are ready. If you wait for a teacher to teach you, you are captive of whatever teaching theory he or she has. Language learning is about learning, not teaching.

Posted via email from Lingosteve's place

Comments

[Monkey]

Steve, I pretty much aggree with most of what you write on your blog. However, I think in this case you are somewhat out of touch with what it means to be a complete beginner at language learning. Once you understand the language learning game, what you say is of course true. A teacher becomes unnecessary and a learner can internalise the syntax of the language themselves by reading and listening a lot, perhaps starting with parallel texts or reading l1/l2 sentence pairs in a dictionary or textbook. It's quite easy to make the necessary connections, this is a passive sentence, this is past tense etc. And as you absorb more knowledge in the language (reading/listening), you see the patterns more clearly. The more languages you know before starting, the better because there will be less patterns and sounds that are completely alien to you and you know what to look out for.
For someone who has never gone through this process before however this ability to 'notice' the patterns in what they are hearing/reading is typically very poorly developed, and this is where a good teacher/textbook can a be an absolute godsend.You've mentioned this ability to 'notice' before in your blog and videos. The role of the teacher is not to do the 'noticing' on behalf of the student, but rather to accellerate the learner's own noticing ability, by showing them what to pay attention to at the beginner stage. The problem with native speaking teachers especially those living in the country of the target language is their own second language abilities are often very limited, so in many cases they really have no idea of how or what to teach. Or on the other end of the spectrum, you have bilinguals who have known the l1 and l2 since childhood, so even though they are completely fluent, their awareness of how they themselves learned either language is extremely low. Ideally the teacher should be someone who can speak your language and has learned the target language to a decent level as an adult. A good teacher is usually someone who is good a learning.

[chris(mandarin_student)]

Monkey makes a very relevant point. Everyone who has some experience learning a language is prone to forget. Even the speak first advocates forget that it is all very well for someone with prior language experience to dive in and speak straight away in a new language but their experience is a far cry from some poor guy who has NEVER learned a language.

Having said that there are general principles of independent learning. Someone who has gained good independent learning skills in other areas may get off to a slower start but should be capable of learning a language independently by applying similar principles. With content, and material much more freely available in all areas then these independent learning skills should become the norm rather than an exception.

[Ollie]

I strongly agree with the idea of native speaker teachers being helpful in learning a new language - particularly with reference to Thai. I too have had the same experience of English L1 teachers being hugely beneficial in teaching Thai. This is because Thai teachers don't understand the challenges that speakers of other languages face in learning their language. Thai people learn by rote from an early age and teachers learn to teach in the same manner, often learning very little about their own language or the different needs of adult learners. For these reasons the insights of those English speakers who have become fluent in Thai, or have found a way of approaching it logically are very valuable - I wonder to what extent this is true in other languages? In this respect Michel Thomas comes to mind as well in terms of teaching L2 via L1...

[FluentCzech]

I do agree that you cannot be taught a language; you can only learn it. But, this doesn't mean you can only rely on self study.

A good teacher, can teach you how to think about the language and about language learning, which then makes it easier for you to study the details yourself.

This reminds of a very old TV show called "The Paper Chase" where a professor of law said to his students: "You teach yourselves the law; I train your minds".

To me, then, the role of a good teacher is to train your mind so that you can become a good language learner. And for that, it doesn't matter much to me whether the teacher is a "native speaker" or not.

[Brett]

A non-native can be extremely helpful in some cases.
3 big ones that immediately come to mind -

They can guide you around many of the mistakes they already made in the language.
They can answer questions that many native speakers can't.
They can assist you in finding suitable and interesting reading/listening materials.

[Aurora (English student)]

In my opinion, a non-native teacher may come handy for beginners. Non-native teachers may have a higher awareness level of what the student is going through, this is true especially for students who have not acquired a foreign language before. However this is only beneficial at the very beginning of the learning process. Once the student has a good basis, a native speaker is a must if you want to progress..

[Street-Smart Language Learning]

I just had a post about this same issue on my blog not too long ago.

All else equal, native is always better than non-native because you'll be hearing native speech as opposed to what is most likely accented non-native speech. However, all else is rarely equal. If the benefit of hearing a native accent is seriously outweighed by a disadvantage, like a poor teaching method, then you've either gotta take charge of the tutor and change things up or get a new one.

[Jacob]

Independent learning is certainly the best… but the problem is people don’t know that. A student who depends on their teacher 100%, whether the teacher is native or not, is still missing out on his/her language-learning potential.

Personally, if I met someone who wanted to learn another language, I’d suggest Steve’s book, a bilingual dictionary, and a variety of magazines and books and music (and tons of other things) in the target language. In other words, I think we need more language-learning teachers, and less language teachers. Once the student is motivated and clued in on what Monkey called the ‘language learning game,’ you can learn from a variety of sources.

I imagine a class where the subject isn’t a certain language, but how to learn languages independently. All the students would be learning different languages—but that’s okay because the teacher (also an experienced language learner) would be talking in their native language, instructing the students on how to find resources, how to treat new vocabulary, how much time should be spent on grammar, etc. The students would be all so motivated and ‘clued in’ on the language learning game, then next week they could compare experiences about what they’re learning. Student learning the same language could try to compare notes and have a practice conversation, someone could try to read something out loud or give a small presentation in their language—the possibilities would be endless!

[Eric Normand]

Jacob, I like your idea. We need to teach how to learn, more than we need to teach the specific subject.

The question is how do you teach someone to be independent?

I could imagine working for an entire year by myself and not learning much because I studied the wrong stuff. I don't think it's so cut and dry as dependence/independence. Sometimes the method and materials matter.

Of course, as you learn more languages, you learn more about your own learning process.

[Mark E]

It's not hard to imagine a native speaker of a language who is a terrible teacher of it and a non-native speaker of a language who is a wonderful teacher of that language. And it's also not hard to imagine the independent learner like Steve who makes the most progress on his own without a formal teacher at all. Whatever works!! That said, I personally felt a lot of satisfaction studying Spanish with a native speaker of Spanish, even in the beginning, knowing that we were speaking his native tongue and I wasn't depending on him to speak my native tongue (except when needed to clarify something or define a new word) was a real high for me. But then I was mainly an independent learner and used my teacher mainly as a conversation partner and resource to clarify things I didn't understand in the course of my studies rather than as someone I relied on to "teach" me Spanish.

[Jean-Paul Setlak]

A good teacher or a really helpful native ally (no difference in my book)is someone who pulls you into the language, encourages you, seamlessly gives you words, expressions, ways of expressing yourself when you need them. He/she allows you to feel - whatever your level is - that it is possible and fun to know this language. That you are successful now. They compensate for your lacks, they try to understand when and where you are stuck, and they maintain present moment rapport. They move you forward when you seem stuck. Their position within the interaction is to include, encourage and support you. To lower your sense of discomfort or awkwardness if you show signs of it
You don't HAVE to have one of those people helping you learn, but they are a great ally and inspirational force. I'll personally take as many of them as I can find. But yes, you primarily must work independently of them. You must autonomously learn and prepare yourself. The great teachers/helpers can be an incredible enhancement but they are not the foundation or essence of language learning.

[Mark]

I agree very much with the point that people don't know how to learn languages. I experience this all the time in Japan. People think that they need to have the language explained to them by a teacher.

I had the experience of taking a 2 hour Thai lesson when I went there on vacation. I took the class for kicks, but it wasn't very helpful. The teacher basically just told me a bunch of different words in Thai. There was no real methodology to it.

Now, if you're studying in a full-time immersion language program where you have language classes every day for multiple hours in a city where the language is spoken, then you can reasonably expect to get most of your input from the school and from daily life without doing much deliberate input-searching on your own. But doing this is very expensive (even though Thailand is cheap, you wouldn't be working, so it'd be expensive that way), and it won't teach you how to maintain your language skills, or how to learn future languages.

I've seen this with adult ESL students who get pretty good, but then they go back home and after a couple of years they can barely speak anymore. And it inevitably turns out they don't listen to or read English on their own.

Thai's a tough language. I have to admit that I gave up pretty quickly. But after thinking about it more, and listening to Steve's comments on learning Chinese, I now think that anybody who's willing to just listen for as long as it takes to get used to the language could learn Thai.

And, like Steve has said, language skills need time to develop. I recently heard some Thai being spoken and found I was recognizing some words. So that study I did before I gave up must have sunk in a bit.

[Mark]

Oh, and I also meant to say that I agree with the person who said that language teachers should primarily teach students how to learn a language, rather than trying to "teach" them the language.

It's kind of like what a music teacher does. A music teacher teaches you how to listen, and teaches you how to pracitce, and so on. Nobody expects to learn music entirely from a music teacher.

Having studied music and worked as a music teacher, and having studied languages and worked as a language teacher, I've felt for a long time that the two were very similar.

[Jean-Paul Setlak]

You really have to hang in there with distant languages like Thai, Mandarin or Vietnamese. At some point your brain starts to "get" it. You begin to hear and you begin to know how to say things. But you have to stay connected and keep getting input through time. Formal study also helps certain people (but apparently not others).

The first thing I would do to learn Thai is learn the script. One great advantage here is that Thai has an alphabet. It apparently even gives you the tones. Mandarin students would kill for a system like that. You could learn how to read pretty quickly.(couple days) That would immediately allow you to penetrate the language, whether you choose an input based, output-based approach or a combination.

Wikipedia:
Thai script (Thai: อักษรไทย, àksǒn thai), is used to write the Thai language and other minority languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants (Thai: พยัญชนะ, phayanchaná), fifteen vowel symbols (Thai: สระ, sàrà) that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks (Thai: วรรณยุกต์ or วรรณยุต, wannayúk or wannayút).

Tone marks in the script = Free ticket.

[monkey]

It is for these 'distant languages' as Jean-Paul called them in the previous post, that a good teacher is especially valuabe. Let's use Japanese as an example. For English speakers, Japanese sentences are structured in a completely different way. In english the role of a word in a sentence (subject, verb, object and indirect object) are defined by word order but in Japanese, word function is defined by paricles stuck to the end of words. This fundamental difference can take along time to understand, and that's why there are always people debating particle usage on japanese language learning forums and attempting to fit japanese into western grammar rules. The japanese themselves usually don't understand these rules well enough to their grammar explanations are often clouded by the lies they have been taught in English class. Saying teachers are useless is like saying there are no facts that can be taught or are worth teaching in language learning. I have no doubt that I could teach the core syntax (grammar) of Japanese to an english speaker in less than a week.

[Steve Kaufmann]

I learned Japanese very well without a teacher. I know many other Canadians who went to Japan and learned with their Japanese friends. I know many who attended school and did not become fluent.

You just get used to differences if you are exposed to enough of it. That has been my experience. Teachers try to impose their ideas on how to explain things and these just frustrate many learners.

I understand that others feel differently. To each his own.

[monkey]

fair enough. I actually agree with you for the most part, and have become fluent largely through self study. That said, if I could go back in time and explain a handful of things to my beginner self, it would have made certain aspects of the language much less confusing and would have sped up the process in the long term. Unless you are completely opposed to anything other than learning completely through gradual osmosis, then I think you too are in fact relying indirectly on a teacher. If you skim a grammar book at the beginner stage, then that book is your teacher. My argument is that a good teacher can replace that initial grammar text book and provide other benefits a textbook can't. For example, answers to specific questions, feedback on pronunciation, tips on how to make certain sounds etc. And I think for these purposes a good teacher who can communicate competently in your native tongue and had to learn the target language as an adult is best. I've recieved lessons from native Japanese as a beginner and in retrospect the explanations they gave were insufficient/confusing or just plain incorrect.

[Steve Kaufmann]

I agree that a book, a beginner book, is necessary, and one that is written in your ow language. On the other hand I have not found explanations by a teacher that useful. The advantage of the book is that you are in control. I think a series of short explanatory videos might help, and I am going to try to do some. Again, the learner is in control.