Teaching English

Thanks Amanda McDonald for these awesome phrasal verb handouts.

I didn't know what a "phrasal verb" was 9 months ago (a verb that carries a preposition/adverb, often has an idiomatic meaning). I didn't know that some phrasal verbs can be separated with another word (turn the radio down!) and some phrasal verbs cannot be separated (everyone needs to simmer down!). I didn't know how to explain the difference between "in" and "at," or what a schwa is and how it haunts the pronunciation lives of native Spanish-speakers.

meet schwa, the neutral vowel sound  from hell.

Now that my Fulbright year is nearly over, it occurs to me that I've become moderately bearable at teaching English as a foreign language. Maybe one day I'll take a course or read an actual book about how it is supposed to be done. In the meantime, I've been mostly learning through embarrassing moments, deafening silences, and notes in my agenda that say "NEVER AGAIN." I bring my computer to office hours so I can google my student's grammar questions as they ask them. At the university, people are generally horrified to find out that I only have a vague idea of the "communicative method of language teaching" and don't know basic things like the phonetic alphabet (except schwa-- got that one).

Junior English majors at the Social Sciences/Education open house

In any educational setting, new teachers are asked to position themselves among a pre-established community of  students and faculty. Even though faculty at the same university (and especially within the same department) like to think of themselves as completely unique, the reality is that they tend to share similar teaching styles, classroom cultures, and agree on things like evaluation. Students become accustomed to these norms. New teachers must decide-- often with little guidance-- when they'll adopt common practices and when they'll challenge them, all while being held to a higher standard (proving themselves worthy) and not stepping on too many toes (hey adjunct faculty!).

Maria presents research + policy proposal on secondary school sex education

During my two semesters at the UTA, these questions of position and precedent have been extremely confusing. In addition to my kind-of-faculty role, teaching kind-of-classes, and being kind-of-qualified... I'm a 22 female living alone in South America. And yes, this last item is a teaching issue-- I can't even put my contact information on the syllabus because I get drunken confessions of love at 3 am on Saturday. I have a magical authority as the only native speaker in the department, but also no authority at all, since I don't know the basic underpinnings of the system (apparently the grading scale is 1-10?). Despite these oddities, I think I've established somewhat of a philosophy for doing my job. You probably don't care what that philosophy is, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

I speak almost entirely in English within University walls, even with beginner-level classes. Students complain, and they don't understand everything. Luckily, I don't care. I make sure most people understand most things, and proceed with the lesson. I don't want to meet them halfway-- I'd rather drag them kicking and screaming to my level. This is especially crucial because I am the only native accent most of my students will hear on a regular basis (Fulbright doesn't place us in Quito because students there already have access to native speakers in their universities). I also don't feel compelled to adapt my teaching style to match my coworkers or the Ecuadorian education system as a whole. English language teaching in Ecuador is overwhelmingly focused on grammar, giving very little attention to the fact that language actually occurs in a cultural/historical context. The focus is accuracy, not fluency; exams, not essays; pretty writing, not good ideas.

So there are about 25 faculty members in my department who can spell a word in English phonetically, and 1 who cannot. I'm OK with being that 1. For technical grammar questions, I'll keep using google and referring students to teachers who are more qualified to answer. I'll keep being the liberal arts black sheep in a vocationally-oriented "technical" university. Maybe my students will begin to understand that language is more than a means to financial security and social mobility-- even English, which tends to be exclusively framed in such terms. I'll keep talking about culture and exposing them to a style of learning that makes them thoroughly uncomfortable. After all, they could learn every language in the world perfectly, but it wouldn't matter if they have nothing important to say.