Comments on Teaching ESL to Adults: "Speak Like the Natives"

After reading all your comments, I have my head fu...

2011-01-13T22:46:13.313-08:00

After reading all your comments, I have my head full of all sorts of thoughts.

Acquiring and being able to produce a good level of language is a really subjective topic and quite complicated.

As some of you have said; speaking, understanding, writting and reading WELL, will depend on what you NEED to read, write and who you need to speak to. What I'm trying to say is that speaking the "Queen's English" will be no good for a foreigner trying to work or even order at a fast food restaurant. The same case scenario works for a person that is trying to get promoted as a high-level manager being a great and fluent native speaker. He can be as native as he wants but if he only is able to speak street english, it will be very hard for him to achieve his or her promotion, in a proper english world.

Having experienced trying to "get" and apply english in a proper environment, as well as a social one; while being a foreigner, was actually quite complicated.

At one point a friend of mine from university told me that if I kept myself on the track of using all phrases and vocabulary I read in my text books, by the time I would finish my major, I wouldn't be able to have a conversation with a janitor, construction worker or any other dude! Not only that, it was actually harder to keep a conversation flowing at a party than debating in a class.

But after trying to master social english I felt even more frustraded because speaking my newly acquired "social english" during my classes made me feel completely out of context.

My conclusion to all of this mambo jambo is that before you even consider teaching english, you need to understand the need of your student. E.i. If he or she is a person going to live abroad as some executive's spouse, the first thing she or he will need is to be able to communicate to store clerks, real state agents, school teachers, bank clerks and doctors. Understanding the need will draw a start as well as an the objective.
Which will be very different from a person trying to get through difficult university texts as well as complicated teen/young adult slang, etc, etc.

I hope that my "foreigner english" will not be to hard to understand.

Best Regards,

Wendy Avalos

After reading all your comments, I have my head fu...

2011-01-13T22:43:50.011-08:00

After reading all your comments, I have my head fu...

2011-01-13T22:43:01.938-08:00

Greetings, I agree with you that regardless of th...

2010-12-12T11:45:34.396-08:00

Greetings,

I agree with you that regardless of the level of proficiency of their standard English, adult non-native English speakers may experience difficulties understanding and producing native -like English. To improve their listening and speaking skills, adult-ELLs need to devote time to engage in various and extended native verbal situations relevant to their needs. Adult-ELLs also need to use their language-rich context in an English speaking country to improve all their English language skills,: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Furthermore, adult-ELLs need to be open-minded, welcoming, accepting, and asking for correction by educated native speakers.

Thank you.

Abdelmone Saad Ahmed

Greetings, I agree with you that regardless of th...

2010-10-31T16:30:35.735-07:00

i thinks there's nothing wrong with the idea t...

2009-07-26T20:05:44.394-07:00

i thinks there's nothing wrong with the idea that Asian learners should speak like the natives. That's indeed a good idea - teaching both the formal and the informal way of the spoken english in states. There's no point of arguing and proving who's better in English. The point is we should be a model to others (students) both in spoken and writtten english. That's all that matters.
"Arguments are for fools; while, Discussions are for wise.

"i agree with you that learners should speak ...

2009-07-26T19:59:00.412-07:00

"i agree with you that learners should speak like the natives". The questions is, "How can they (learners) adapt the proper way of speaking [like the nativew]? Someboday should show them the proper way of speaking like a native. Teaching standard English is also good but let's remember that spoken english and written english is quite different.

It sounds like you're a descriptivist, and I would...

2009-05-26T22:21:16.629-07:00

It sounds like you're a descriptivist, and I would agree with you in general. I've met people who believe that words like "impact" are only nouns and should never be used as verbs, as in, "it would impact the situation." It's much like the French Academy, which tries so hard to come up with French words for things like "CD-ROM" and the population gleefully ignores them. These are the people who say we must remember never to place an adverb between an auxiliary and a main verb, thereby rendering impossible the expression "I will always love you." It's a bunch of bull invented by insecure writers.