Does your English teacher measure up?
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"Mr. Extreme," the odd student will ask, "I wrote in my composition ‘John had no possibility to attend the meeting' and Svetlana Anatoliyevna marked it wrong - but I think she is wrong! Who is correct, please? Wait, come back here! Grab his other arm, Fedka!"
OK, these questioners haven't actually reached Nashi-level aggressiveness yet (thank heavens), but sometimes I really do get a feeling of being trapped and pressured - less by the English-related questions themselves, which I can handle, than by the Svetlana Anatoliyevna side of it, which I can't.
Russian students, like students everywhere these days, seem newly interested in quality-control aspects of the learning process, no doubt because the cost of education, and specialized tutoring in particular, has taken a distinctly northward turn of late. So the question of whether some public or private Svetlana Anatoliyevna is right or wrong on a point is not personal - it's business.
And pretty big business, too, if your Sveta is pulling down $50 to $100 an hour for private English sessions. But whether she's worth it is not for me to judge (although in the case above, she's right: an individual cannot "have no possibility" - you need a construction with "chance" or "opportunity" here. And it's Professor Extreme, by the way). That said, I can offer some broad guidelines for effective English instruction - as I see it, anyway - to help you decide.
1. Who makes better English teachers - native or non-native speakers?
This is a classic "false dichotomy": people born into a language and those who have acquired it can both bring uniquely valuable assets to bear, though often different ones. As a rough rule of thumb, I'd say a native English speaker probably has more to offer at the advanced levels - but that advantage still does not automatically trump the skills and experience certain non-natives and "near-natives" offer. So: judge the individual, not the nativeness.
2. How much difference does the textbook make?
There are no perfect textbooks, of course, and the higher the level, the more imperfect they tend to be: look, advanced English is complicated, just like advanced anything. Of the currently popular (and easily downloadable) texts, perhaps "Английский для наших" has the most to recommend it. But NB: if you read The Moscow News regularly and find the Extreme English column worthwhile, your English instructor should not be following any single textbook too religiously. Your texts should be the materials of everyday life - articles, videos, tapes and so on, occasionally glossed or adapted for instructional purposes and geared toward your own particular interests and needs.
3. Should instructors "teach to the test" or use a more broad-based approach?
Another false choice. Unless you are taking a class aimed at some specific subject-area test (or have hired a quicky "TOEFL tutor," perhaps), your instructor should devote time to both fronts. Any course in standard English should include a topic-subset on standardized test-taking, a function likely to arise more than once in students' English-using life. No American escapes the Educational Testing Service, and you won't either. Sorry.
4. Does the "personal touch" matter?
The most knowledgeable teacher I had as an exchange student in Leningrad was the least successful at imparting language skills: she paid attention only to the material under study, and never to her students as people. This made for classes of such relentless tedium that she was dubbed "Plokhaya Plokhayevna" by our group.
Most students learn better when they're addressed "in the round." Does your instructor show any interest in you (platonically) beyond your progress in English? How often do your individual circumstances - personal preferences, career plans, hobbies, health and so on - figure into your English assignments? Have you ever gotten a text message reading "Watch ‘Bad Santa' on STS at 21:00 tonight for examples of colloquial humor based on rude language"? Or something along those lines, anyway...
There, now grade your Svetlana - or Viktor or Bob or Nancy - on the Extreme English Bang-for-Buck Scale. Oh, and do your own homework corrections on the Metro, please, especially if I'm grading papers.
Extreme Extra Credit:
Congrats to Tim Doyle of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, for the first correct identification of the Shakespearean hero done in "by slanderous tongue": Hero, from "Much Ado About Nothing". As for today: award yourself one point if you've already Googled "NB" (nota bene) - and two if you didn't have to.
http://mnweekly.rian.ru/columnists/20091019/55390431.html
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posted by Rui English© at 6:00 AM
