My new student, Yuzi, is a cute Korean girl. We’ve had good time in one on one class, she’s a senior high school student, who is about to participate in the college entrance examination next year, and can only sleep for five hours a day. So I tried my best to make the class relaxed and high-efficient.
One day she asked me about my major. I was confused, because I had told her parents about my major and my experience in detail before they decided to hire me as their daughter’s tutor. Was she questioning my teaching quality? So I told her that I’m a professional Chinese teacher with graduate diploma of teaching Chinese as a second language, and I have taught Chinese for over 6 years, more than 2000 class-hours, I began to have class when I was a junior student. If you have any problem with my class, please let me know.
“Oh, please, don’t get me wrong. “ She said, “You’re a good teacher. I was just thinking that why you can explain a grammatical phenomenon so clean and so clear.”
She told me that one of her teachers is a Chinese, who is studying Korean, and sometimes asked her about Korean grammar. She found herself can’t explain them as clear as she speak them.
That’s why she asked me about my major. Because she realized that a native speaker isn’t equal with a language teacher.
When I take taxi, I was always got laugh at my major by drivers. “What? You teach Chinese? Chinese is needed to be taught?” They can’t believe that in China, in which there are one billion three hundred million population who speak Chinese, a Chinese teacher is needed. “Can’t those students get a native speaker in the street?!” They laugh so hard that they have to handle the steering wheel tightly.
I asked them, what if a student ask you, what are the differences between “因为(because)” and “由于(due to)”? Why do we say “一个月两个月(one month, two months)”, but we never say”一个年两个年(one year, two years)”? What does “干脆(a word which is difficult to explain in Chinese)” mean?
They glared at me like I just appeared from the air. Then they stopped mocking my major.
Many of language learners have blind faith on native speakers. It is obvious that a native speaker helps learners with improving accent and so called “language sense”. It is truly helpful. That’s why learning a second language abroad is much better than in learner’s own country. But it is not enough. And it is shouldn’t be the main.
As mentioned above, a native speaker who hasn’t been trained may not be able to explain grammar phenomenon which is none other than necessary in language learning. Not only grammar phenomenon, but also pronunciation rules, word formations, and so on. Speakers just talk, they never think about why they say like that. Because they don’t have to do, it’s what a language teacher should do.
Here is my curriculum schedule in my studying at graduate level: teaching Chinese as a second language, second language acquisition, overseas Chinese classroom teaching cases, Chinese culture and communication, cross culture communication. These are our core curriculum. And we also have curriculum development: Chinese language elements teaching, error analysis, comparison of Chinese and other languages, curriculum design, modern language teaching technique, Chinese text books and teaching resources. Curriculum on Chinese culture and communication: Chinese ideological history, national and regional culture, sino-foreign cultural exchanges, etiquette and international relations. Curriculum on teaching management: second language educational psychology, primary and secondary school education abroad, teaching design and management, international promotion of Chinese. And we also have practical courses: investigation and analysis of teaching, class observation and practice, teaching test and evaluation, etc.
These are differences between us, language teachers and native speakers. We are not only teachers, we are linguists. We know well about learners’ desire and we have what learners want.
Besides, a native speaker’s accent and language habit is not typical, his words adheres to his own habit and style. A learner who learns a second language from a native speaker only is just learning this speaker’s words, not the whole language. But a well-trained teacher knows how to get rid of his personal characteristics, and give learner a “standard” language. When a learner wants to choose an appropriate word from several near-synonyms, a native speaker might tell you to choose what he likes, but a teacher would tell you to choose the most high-frequent one, or tell you what are the differences among these words, you can use which word in what kind of conditions.
It doesn’t mean that immersive learning is unnecessary. On the contrary, it’s very lucky of you to live abroad while you’re learning a second language. All of what I’m saying is that a language teacher is as important as immersive learning among native speakers, especially in the beginning. To sum up, my suggestion is to start second language learning with a language teacher, and improve it with native speakers after class.
Of course, it is impossible to put a teacher in our pocket and carry him with us in our whole life. A teacher is a teacher, whose job is to let students get the knowledge and leave. A teacher is not a drug. A good teacher knows teach methodology not only knowledge, so that students can be independent from the classroom. In one word, teacher’s job is to make students not need a teacher.
A Chinese quotation might descript it brilliantly: Giving fish can’t be better than teaching fishing.
When can we learn a language by ourselves without teachers? The day we found that we can induct and deduct and internalize a new grammar phenomenon by ourselves, we can thank our teacher and say goodbye.
