Buondì.
Wednesday’s article elicited this, from club member Richard:
“Your contempt for your students is evident in every paragraph. If they sense it—as I’m sure they do—you are doing them more harm than good. They deserve a teacher who genuinely loves the job.”
Which seemed a bit strong, but at least provided a topic for today.
The students themselves seemed happy enough and, Tuesday evening’s lesson (briefly described in Wednesday’s article) being the last in the ‘module’, they cheerily agreed to pay for another five weeks of being treated contemptuously.
Perhaps a quick coda is in order?
Teaching kids a foreign language means building knowledge and skills over a number of years, until puberty kicks in. At which point they’re unteachable for a while, but after which they become nice young people, and start to chat away happily in their second language, using their new found self-confidence and everything they’ve learnt from teachers since the age of three. Or whenever they began. It’s very predictable – just a matter of time and biology.
Teaching adult learners, however, and that might be any age from college students to retired people, and any professional level (last night’s class featured a factory electrician, a teacher, and a woman who is in charge of the building code for a region with millions of inhabitants), invariably means doing the opposite.
If you are an American, learning Italian for the first time, Richard, I can see how you might want clear, unambiguous rules.
You’ll waste vast amounts of time on that, before realising that you’re on the wrong track. But each to his own.
Ignore my advice to read, listen and speak as much as possible, and to not worry overmuch about acquiring a complete understanding of the grammar system (much of which is never used, or is used differently, in speech.)
Your bad.
But I’m getting paid to teach Italian adults, almost all of whom have been failing to learn English for most of their lives. When they reach me, they are demotivated, confused by the previous teaching which didn’t help, and above all, want to speak and understand English NOW!
Reteaching the grammar system would take multiple years of evening classes and, even for a non-contemptuous teacher, offers no guarantee that it would be any more effective than the teaching that came before it, which left students looking for some other solution.
With adults, the trick, I’ve found, is to shortcut the whole process, by only bothering with the things that cause the greatest friction between the corpus of (Italian) grammar in the students’ heads, and the corpus of grammar in the heads of native speaker users of the language the students are paying to learn.
The students typically assume they’ll need to learn everything, from the beginning, and the prospect rightly depresses them.
Of course, I could teach them everything, in the same way their high school teacher tried to. But as it didn’t work previously, why might it work this time?
More’s to the point, they were legally-obliged to sit through high school language lessons, whereas now, as adult learners, if they don’t feel they’re making progress and getting value for money, they’re off!
The areas to teach are the things that everyone gets wrong (where Italian and English are different) but which CAN ACTUALLY BE LEARNT BY A TYPICAL PERSON IN THE TIME AVAILABLE. Cioè, not everything. Choices need to be made.
And the way to teach it is with as much interaction, speaking and dare I say it, respect, as possible.
I aim to treat people like the intelligent adults (and paying customers) that they are. Kids too, because Italian kids are spoilt rotten, and if they tell their moms they don’t want to go to English class any longer, that’s the end of that.
Areas of grammar that I’m well aware, after 23 years teaching exclusively Italian students, are effectively unlearnable by a typical adult, still do need to be touched on. But that can be done in ways (feedback on errors, answering questions, brief explanations) which don’t take too much time away from focusing on what’s achievable.
In short, THIS teacher tries to add value by reflecting on all the things he’s done ineffectively with his students over so many years, and hopefully finding other, better ways to do things.
So far, I’ve discovered no magic wand. But I have established some guidelines:
- reassurance is important
- building self-confidence is important
- giving everyone lots of time to speak and interact is important
- banging people’s heads against brick walls (or boring them to death) is unhelpful
One guy from Tuesday evening’s class was with me online during the pandemic lockdown last academic year. Then he was A2 (pre-intermediate), now he’s B1 (intermediate).
Over the summer, he told me, he went to a wedding (in Italy) where he was introduced to some other guests, from the USA, none of whom spoke a word of Italian.
But it wasn’t a problem, he found, as he was able to understand what they said. And reply! They had quite a chat, apparently. He was very pleased.
Job done.
Ebook offer, last reminder…
If you haven’t bought a copy of our new Italian ‘easy reader’ ebook, Il calendario di Laura, you have until Sunday night to do that.
From Monday the price will be the usual £7.99, rather than the discounted £5.99.
It’s not a vast difference, and the ebook is worth the money anyway. But still, no one likes missing a discount, right?
Buy Il calendario di Laura, just £5.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Catalog
N.b. There’ll be another new ebook next week, and the two week’s after that (pandemic stockpile!)
A lunedì, allora.
Lorna McEwan says
Ciao Daniel,
I was absolutely horrified that someone would accuse you of contempt towards your students. I just wish I had had a teacher like you when I was learning French at school (many, many years ago!). Your article on Wednesday was , as usual, really interesting and informative and I have kept it for future reference. Can you block ingrates like Richard from accessing all the amazing material on your site? That’s what I would do!
Keep up the good work!
Lorna
markus says
Hi Daniel,
My two cents. You are the only honest teacher, maybe because you are fed up with the classic crap and really want to tell or can afford to tell the truth.
In fact, I am German, and when I was truly horrible in French as a child, I was put through the mangler of the original Berlitz immersive method, speaking and listening only to French speakers, no explanations given, I made progress in weeks, and recaptured years of school in one summer, three fore hour lessons a week for six weeks. Only at the end of the torture one older French teacher told me, I would be good to go but gave me one hour of explanation of passé simple, which is for me similar to passato remoto in Italian, only used in literary texts. I never had use for it. I never had to do anything in French anymore till the end of school.
As an adult I advanced my English for professional reasons from B1 to C1/c2 through months of consuming the language, watching hundreds of English movies, listening to dozens of audiobooks and reading an immense amount of novels with Amazon Kindle. Not once did I buy a grammar book or even tried to learn grammar, I stopped looking up words, that I did not know at the time, It is just not worth the effort, it seldom pays off. I regularly had to talk with native speakers, and they were happy with me. Actually, they were astonished about the realm of my vocabulary. I only learned words sporadically.
A while ago I started Italian with software (Rosetta Stone and Busuu), then choose an expensive teacher for some months who filled me up with grammar rules and homework, just to realize that It didn’t work for me, No real progress, but high insecurity and a lame speak frequency, crappy understanding of any TV show, not able to follow the news at all. It is just a way to keep a teachers’ income stable, which I understand completely. He told me he had pupils who came to him for years, and he was very proud of that. I understand and respect that, he has to make a living, life is hard, and for some language learning is a lifelong hobby, not something they see as a real challenge. They want to stay in their comfort zone. That is ok, I am lazy and fearful too. But enough time wasted.
I changed route completely. Now I watch two hours of movies in Italian or sports events every day. My browser, smartphone and computer’s first language is Italian now. I read Italian news in google, Italian on Quora. Now I am making slow but steady progress. The same way you tell people to immerse into a language, but even more completely.
I know that it feels alien to do this, and it is somehow uncomfortable, but every real change is, isn’t it?
Your mileage may vary, but for me, that is the route to go for now.
In bocca al lupo! For all your learners!
Kind regards
Markus
Sharon Dias says
Ciap Damiel
All I can say is bravo. Rude, and unfounded. Love your advise and newsletters. Kudos to you and your team.
Sharon
Colleen says
Why is Richard on this site?
I am so grateful for the work you do, Daniel. The book club cheered me through lockdowns. I am so pleased to be able to read Italian books, watch Italian movies- occasionally with ITALIAN subtitles, and listen to Italian songs and at least some podcasts and radio when I am somewhat familiar with the subject matter. I began with cooking and gardening shows on radio and Youtube and now I can listen to psychology, health and well being and some philosophy (areas in which I am well educated).
THANK YOU for your emails 3x a week and for all of the tools you provide for us on this platform!
Lynne F says
Daniel, I have just read Wednesday’s article along with today’s. Like Lorna, I would probably have benefitted from a teacher like you. instead of being told “You have no aptitude for languages” Something I believed until forty-odd years later when I decided to try Italian. Thankfully it seems I do have ‘an aptitude” after all,! Your students paying for the lessons would soon vote with their feet if they didn’t like what you are doing.
Those dreaded prepositions, well they are used differently from how we use them in English. There are so many rules and it seems even more exceptions to those rules. Following the advice, you are always giving I read listen and speak as much as possible. Seeing and hearing them in context really consolidates the rules. In spoken language I still make mistakes, sometimes due to carelessness, a case of my mouth working faster than my brain. There are some errors that I am aware I keep making and at this point I get my notebook out and do some grammar study to try to eliminate the error.
Keep up the good work Daniel and hope your recovery continues.
Thanks Lynne
María says
¡Hola!
I know you told us that we can comment in Spanish but I believe, for the sake of everyone using this amazing site, that writing in English will make things easier for all of us. That said, my English is getting rusty, so forgive me if I make some mistakes.
I must confess I had a hearty laugh reading this email. Your sarcastic remarks made my evening. I would be amazed at the fact that someone would make all the way here just to post that stupid comment, but I work with people so I know for a fact that people can really be that ingrate. Honestly, as you said, grammar is not for every learner. I love it and it really helps me because I studied linguistics, as well as Latin and Classic Greek (both of them are pure grammar and nothing else), and I get grammar easier than people without that kind of training (just like a football player would score a goal easier than me because he’s been training for years). However, if I just use the grammar I end up talking like a book and not, well, a human being. Your teaching method is extremely useful because it focuses on “real” English, as seen in the example your provided of your student casually talking to Americans.
So yeah, don’t pay any mind to people like that Richard, he’s not welcome here anyway and after this roast I’m pretty sure he won’t comment anything similar again, haha!
¡Ánimo y buena suerte con el castellano!