Elizabeth's English Lectures (CEO, A-listers Academy/ALA)

Photo credit: freepik  This is a conversation between me and the ten-year-old boy in my class. Boy:  Teacher, you... very pretty. Forever, you want to be singular? Me:    You're asking me if I want to be single forever? Boy:  Yes... you, no get married? Me:    I want to get married also, but all the men I met were not good men. Someday, if or when I find a good man, I will get married. Boy:   (Hitting his chest with his right hand) Me, I'm a good man... Me:    You're a good baby.   Now, show me your homework...

Photo credit: freepik  I talked to an evaluator of one language school. She's the one who interviews applicants and after the applicant's demo class, she decides whether that applicant shoul be hired or not. The evaluator rejected an applicant with 14 years of experience in the ESL industry, and the applicant was herself a trainer in the very first man to man language school for Japanese professionals in the Philippines. I asked her why she rejected the applicant. She said that the applicant corrected the student's pronunciation. According to the evaluator, it seemed that the applicant could not stand the wrong pronunciation of the student that's why she, the applicant, kept on asking the student to produce the right sound. I asked the evaluator why it was wrong for the applicant to correct the student's pronunciation. She said that it's innate for Japanese students to talk that way. Instead, the applicant should just have let the student

Photo credit: freepik  Yes, sadly, many students get frustrated learning ESL. The good news is that, they just get frustrated sometimes, but they never give up. This, I think, is connected somehow to the culture. The Philippines was a colony of the United States for 50 years. For us, English  is not just a foreign languge; it's a second language. And because it's a second language, we don't scrutinize its structure, we don't dissect the functions of each word in a sentence. We hear it, we speak it,  we feel it, we absorb it, we accept it, we use it. I think the difference lies in here. For other learners of English, English is a language whose structure they need to dissect. Unless they dissect the functions of each part of speech in the sentence, they won't understand what a sentence means. This brings me to my point that: When learning a language, just dive into it.  Don't mind the structure just yet; understanding the grammatical rul

Photo credit: freepik  I admit...sometimes I also get frustrated teaching ESL. Why? Whenever I correct a student's bad habit in learning ESL, often, I get this reply: "But Teacher, this is how we learn English in our country." I often tell my students that English is not a very difficult language to learn. These students, who first had their  English lessons in their own countries, just make learning ESL very difficult by memorizing all grammar rules there are in their books, and by memozing all the definitions of words. Well... they were trained that way. I guess the number one hindrance that these students have to overcome is their unwillingness to try another method of learning English. They often insist on practicing the method they learned back home. I often use this logic:  Do you really expect to make another hole if you keep on digging the same hole? Do you really expect to produce a different result if you keep on doing the same method? If you