[etni] [FWD: Re: Example Please!]
- From: ask@xxxxxxxx
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:39:53 -0700
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [etni] [FWD: Re: Example Please!
From: "adi" <austen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Once again, the arrogance over this topic is overwhelming: one does not
have
to "put up" with a NNS.
Lev has made some excellent points, but the most important one is: who
gives
a damn???
A teacher should be judges on his/her merits: no more, no less.
Adi
Esther wrote:
> While reading the correspondence with interest, I was definitely put
> off by Lev's generlisations. But perhaps he was joking and I was taking him
> seriously. You can't generalise about teachers any more than you can
> generalize about students.
> Many NS students are uncomfortable with NNS teachers. In life we have
> to put up with all sorts of situations. So may be our NS students who have NNS
> teachers will overcome their discomfort as people very often do in
> other circumstances. I happen to believe that if one can employ NS teachers
> to teach NS or near NS students, all concerned will feel comfortable. We
> can't always have what we want.
> Lev wrote:
> > 1. the teacher in question ("pedaling to the metal") is definitely NOT
> > an excellent English teacher - her command of English is lacking in at
> > least two fields (namely, knowledge of idioms/slang and in the ability to
> > correctly use newly acquired vocabulary).
> > All things considered, the ideal teacher for a "NS" class would be a NS
> > teacher with a perfect command of Hebrew and solid didactic training.
> > Look around, and you'll find that there are many who fall into a different
> > category: "a NS who happens to be teaching English," rather than "a
> > professional teacher who happens to be a NS." But...
> > 2. the so-called "NS" Israeli pupils' grammar is horrendous. You may of
> > course disagree, but NNS teachers can teach grammar better than NS
> > teachers:
> > the latter "acquired" the language (often with fairly limited explicit
> > grammar study), while the former learned it through systematic
> > instruction (probably closer to adulthood, when their L1 grammar was
> > sufficiently well-developed).
> > 3. NS teachers have certain ostensible advantages: for example, they
> > know not only the language but also the culture inherent in this language.
> > I strongly doubt, though, that this aspect is so important for Israeli
> > pupils.
> > At home they will speak a code-switching variety of English littered
> > with too many Hebrew words (which is understandable: English has not yet
> > developed many notions required to express local realia); they watch
> > Israeli cable, listen to Israeli radio and talk Hebrew most of the time;
> their
> > values and cultural preferences are Israeli, not American nor British.
> > As regards the rest of the Commonwealth, they can hardly tell Australia
> > from Austria.
> > 4. Another advantage of NS teachers as perceived by employers is their
> > accent. May I tell you something: clarity of speech has nothing to do
> > with accent. "Hebrish," offensive as it may sound to your ear, reflects
> > spelling in a much better way than the speech of many NS teachers who
> often
> > disregard the decoding difficulties experienced by many of their pupils.
> And
> > besides, what career are you preparing your pupils for if accent is so
> important?
> > Spies?!
> > 5. Talking of accents: for 25% of speakers of English it is their L1
> > (native tongue); another quarter (about 400M) speak it as L2; finally,
> about a
> > half (800,000,000 people) speak English as a foreign language. So the
> ability
> > to decode utterances of another NNS is probably more valuable than the
> > ability to speak with a "native accent" (which one?). Read David Crystal
> for
> > more on that.
> > Finally (and don't take this personally): you have just made a spelling
> > mistake: "definAtely" instead of "definitely" (typical "phonetic
> spelling").
> > So what's the point in being a native speaker? We all make mistakes;
> > no-one speaks or writes impeccably.
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