Episode 13 - How to choose a teacher

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, we are the 3 English Experts. I'm Rebecca. I'm Dave. I'm Birgit. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hi everybody, welcome back and welcome to this episode. Today we're going to talk about how to find the right trainer. So if you're looking to learn English and you're looking for a trainer, of course, you could work with me or Dave, right? Or Birgit, because we're all fantastic trainers. But we're just going to talk about how do you choose the right trainer for you? Because it is a very individual topic. And we brainstormed together sort of 10 questions that you could ask a trainer or if you had a short conversation with that person before you decide, do I want to work with this person or not? And then we've chosen our top three questions that we would like to ask a trainer. And we're going to use Birgit as our guinea pig today. I think in German, it's not guinea pig, isn't it? It's a rabbit. Yeah, it's a rabbit. I don't know why we have guinea pigs and you test the rabbits, but we shouldn't be testing on anybody. But yes, Birgit is going to be our guinea pig. And we're going to ask her our questions about her training and how she teaches. So shall we jump right in, Dave? Do you want to dive right in with question one for Birgit? Yes. Hello, everybody. Well, I will do so. Are you ready, Birgit? Yes, I am. Okay. Question numero uno. What is your teaching approach? There we go. Easy. Easy start. Okay. My approach, I would say, is to focus on whatever a person needs. At that point, he or she comes to me and is asking this question. Can I work with you? Can you teach me any English? What I mean with this is I would have a short conversation if possible in English, of course. And very soon I will hear what is missing in the grammar. I have a focus on the where there is difficulty, and that's mostly native German speakers. Have they understood to use present perfect tense? Can they incorporate well in the past, in the future? And this is where I would start. Yes. And that would be my feedback after a short conversation with this person. And I would tell him or her, look, I think you have a fair command of English, or you are on a lower level, or you are very experienced. But I think we could work on this and that issue. And I would like to work with your subjects. Most of the time, those are people who need it for business. So they have a profession. We can work on whatever they usually talk about at their work. Yeah, that makes sense. I think the other good point is, I like the fact you said I would have a short conversation with them to assess their needs. And I would say if anybody's choosing a trainer, that trainer should always offer a free, no cost conversation for at least 15, 20 minutes. I think if a trainer is not willing to do that, if you've got to pay for that, I think that's always a bad sign. I would always offer clients a free consultation. Right, Dave? Absolutely. Just to find out, not necessarily in a way to sort of look at their English. I mean, that is a benefit. Absolutely. And that would be advantageous as well. But at least to talk through the needs of the person. So you go to the person and tell them your needs. And if then on top, there's a conversation in the target language, or in this case, in English as well, even better, because then the trainer can say, OK, you say you think you need these things. This is all well and good. But we also could look at these things as well, based on what I hear from what you're saying. So, yeah, totally agree. And I think it's also this chance to see like, do we click as well? Because if you're going to meet someone on a regular basis, I think that's really important. If you just don't click or you just feel like, oh, I'm not sure if we like each other even, you know, that to me is important. So, you know, do I like this person? Do they make me feel motivated? Do I understand them? I think that's really important. And that's only something you can do by, yeah, having a chat. Yeah, definitely. If someone wanted to charge me for that, that would put me off. I think that's not a good sign, in my opinion. But yeah, no. OK, question number two. So how do you see you said you would talk about their subjects, for example, if they're in business. So do you incorporate, for example, their materials if they come to you with, I don't know, emails or presentations? Do you or do you have a sort of strict curriculum that you would follow or would you adapt that to their needs? No, absolutely. I mean, I'm so happy when somebody brings their own stuff into the lessons, which not always happens. I mean, I ask for that, but people forget about it or they don't think of that. And I know I don't have a very clear curriculum. I mean, I do have a clear idea about what I want to teach and where we need to go because I see the need. This is, I think, what I'm looking at. Where is the need? What does this person cannot use very well at the moment? Of course, it's always vocabulary. And I'm I mean, I come from a journalistic background. I always take notes during my lessons and provide those as an extra after the lesson, which I find and people probably find very helpful. They don't have to take notes to remember all the vocabulary because they will be provided with that list later on. And yes, I really want to work on their language. And this is what I always have felt. There is not such the business English, but it's everybody's English they need to talk about at work. So that's different to everybody. So yes, very much incorporate what people need at their workplace. Yeah. But I think this is really cool because I'm pretty sure that not everybody really does that from a trainer's perspective. I think a lot of people, a lot of trainers would be scared of saying, well, I'm sorry, but I know nothing about this topic area. I'm not sure if I can teach it. In actual fact, it's not the teaching of the topic area that the people should know their own topic area and maybe vocabulary linked to that topic area. But it's about the context, isn't it? And how and wrapping the language into their working day and their working life and their working vocabulary and how everything comes together. But the other thing is, I think often, unfortunately, people don't bring their stuff in. And then that's, you know, you ask them, you say, if you ever get anything, just bring it. And then when you get it, you think like, yes, thank you very much. And then the next week they don't bring anything or whatever. And it's just, you know, it is quite frustrating then from the trainer's perspective, because you really want to help them to help them at work and everything else. And then they don't bring this stuff. And that's a shame because also as trainers, we can learn so much about the different spheres of business, the different areas of business, which helps us to be in a way, keep motivated because you're finding you're learning new stuff as well as a trainer. I always say that I learned from my clients. I've learned so much about all types of businesses that normally I would not know anything about. You know, I've learned from everything from ice cream production to lift shafts to insurance policies. You know, it's crazy the amount of things I've learned from my clients, but that's a good thing. Yes. And I think when you say it's a shame if they don't bring things in, I think I really feel this is helping me because from my journalistic background, I'm always asking, I can always think of a question to ask that's down to what they deal with at that moment. So I think this helps to find a subject, even if they don't bring any stuff. So there will never be a lack of any questions. Yeah, because I've always got a question. That's perfect. Actually, I can totally see that working really well. It's just, yeah, I love asking questions because I'm a coach and coaches, we always ask, we have like a million questions. So, you know, there will be no silence. I can always find a question to ask you. That's true. Yeah. Okay. Question three. Okay. So how do you assess students' progress and how do you provide feedback? Feedback, yes, and progress. Of course, that's a question the students or the learners have more towards the beginning than towards the end, I have discovered. Of course, they want to know how fast can I progress? How fast can I come on to a certain level? When they have started a training, I think what they realized then is that they are making progress. They can feel the progress usually. Whenever you start using English more than you've done ever before, there will be a difference. I mean, I'm noticing now with my Dutch learning, if you look at vocabulary, you talk 60 minutes every week on a regular basis, this is doing something to your, it's changing to your language competence. So towards the end, it's less of this question, but of course, I keep this at the back of my mind and I do give feedback. Whenever I see something that a learner hasn't been able to use before, I will comment on that. So I say, look, now I've noticed this is coming to your head. You don't have to think about that now. So I will give constant feedback, maybe not every lesson, but let's say every third lesson or every four. So of course, my task is and my job is to keep people motivated. I would honestly also say if a learner didn't do anything, just came into the lesson without motivation and I would feel we're not getting anywhere here and he's just spending money on for something we're not making headway or anything. I think I will bring that up because my job is really to help people. If there's no progress for what people pay me for, I mean, we have to talk. So Birgit, as Rebecca said at the beginning, we'd also as, let's say, native speakers be fascinated and interested to know what you want, what you would say when somebody says it as a non-native English teacher. So, you know, how does it work? What do people say? How do people react? All these good stuff. Tell us about that situation. Okay. I don't think I think too much about it because I started off giving Nachhilfestunden for pupils. That's how I started off. Obviously, I had a different profession before. I was a journalist and then I lived in Austria where writing is not the same language, German and Austrian. So that became an option, translating. And then I worked with adults who obviously had decided that it was easier for them to be able to talk German to their teachers as well. I mean, you also speak German. I know that. But it is, I thought that was very interesting what you said earlier, Dave, that some teachers might be scared about teaching certain subjects context. So they wouldn't touch on that. And that's why they stick so much to a curriculum. I have always felt like this about some language schools I was in contact with. They have their curriculum and they stick to it and they sell native speakers, no matter what background those native speakers have. They might be students. They might never have worked in business. And I know this from clients who paid a lot of money and then were taught by youngish people and they didn't have any background experience on professional matters or issues. So I then became more confident feeling, well, you see my background knowledge of economics and business issues matters a lot plus the language experience. And this is a very interesting subject. I know there are more non-native teachers out there, but it's still the one thing that could be a KO criteria for a lot of people, which is okay. It's okay because when I now learn Dutch, I obviously looked for somebody who was a native Dutch speaker. But at some point and with English, I believe it's different because a lot of people have a background from school and they come to a point where they need to ask difficult questions. And maybe that's sometimes tricky with a native and they might feel scared because they don't feel so confident to talk to natives. I think one of the benefits I have always thought about in this context is you've obviously been through the road of learning English like your client. And so sometimes people ask me the darndest of questions on grammar or whatever it might be. And I just have to scratch my head because it's something I've never actually thought about in the whole of my life. And I think, how do I answer that? I have absolutely no idea. I'll look it up. I'll try and find it out for you or I'll Google it right now and we'll figure it out some way or form. But I don't know. So I think you have a certain amount of empathy with the student because you've been there, done that, bought the T-shirt in the sense that you've learnt English as well. And then maybe you've also built yourself a little trick how to remember something in the English language that maybe a native would not have, let's say. That's absolutely true. I've been through that activity, walking the same path. But because I have written three books on English grammar, I have been back and forth through the English grammar, obviously. So you can be sure everything I wrote in my book, I have double checked. I mean, as a journalist, I need to double check. And I know so much more about English grammar. I mean, I started 10 years ago. So ask me a question and I will be able to come up with an answer. Because I've asked all these questions myself before, relative clauses. So I couldn't explain, possibly explain that in German, no idea. And I believe, I truly believe that I might know a lot more about grammar, English grammar than a lot of natives do. For sure. Yeah. And I think this is the mistake that for such a long time, it was always like, oh, you know, you've got to learn from a native speaker. But a native speaker is not necessarily a good trainer. You know, and I know I worked when I first started, I worked for a few language schools and there were some terrible trainers and they were native speakers, but they couldn't explain things. They had no answers for anything. And they just weren't very good teachers, you know. And so being a native does not equate being a good trainer. I think that's the point. It's about so many other skills. And like you say, I think bigger, if you're a non-native, you do double check everything. It's like, I know if I'm doing something in German, I would double check everything because I just think, oh, I'm not 100% sure I think it's right. But and so maybe as a non-native, you're just even extra careful about knowing your stuff, knowing what you're saying, be sure you're saying the right thing. So I think that's definitely a benefit. I was also in a language school in my younger days. And yeah, you're absolutely right, Birgit, there were young people trying to teach people out of business companies. And, you know, the kids are way out of their depth when it comes to knowing about business usually or whatever, unless, of course, they happen to have done some kind of business courses at school or business courses at university. And in that case, usually they're in the wrong places in these language schools anyway. But yeah, I think that's absolutely true. It's far better to go with more professional people, people a bit older, been through life, experienced things, experienced business. And that's the problem with sometimes these language schools who employ young kids have just left school, university and, you know, don't really have any background in anything else except for school. Yes. And I feel that you said you said that before, but some people might be scared of touching ground they are not firm on. If anybody who wants to teach you or offer something to you is not able to admit that he or she can't do certain areas. I mean, I'd be careful. Yeah. Even I say, OK, look, if you're looking for this and that, I might be the wrong person. If you're not happy to learn with a non-native, I might not be the right person. People need to be able to admit. And that's what I was lacking. I mean, they pretend. They pretend language skill is the one argument to sell a course. And that's what really making me mad. Yeah. I think the only thing I would say about non-native teachers, they should admit that they're non-native because I've come across people who are not non-native and they lie. They go, well, you know, and I think, no, be authentic. If you're authentic, big, it's completely authentic. She says exactly who she is and what she offers and what she does. And that's why it works so well, I think, because people know before they even, you know, if you just read her website, you know who she is, you know her background. And so she's authentic. But you do get these people who hide their background. And I think that's never a good thing if you're not willing to stand up for who you are and why you're doing what you're doing. I think that's not good. Right. Yeah. And that's bringing us, I think, maybe onto the next episode or one of the next we're talking about, because I had never listened to myself talking English because I wasn't recording anything of my lesson. And I think I have a strong accent, a German accent. That's OK. And that's another point. People, as you say, they try to pretend they were native speakers. What you want to do is to be able to communicate well in English, no matter maybe what accent you have. A strong Irish accent may be just as disturbing as a strong German accent. Yeah. And so, yeah, this is what we're going to talk about next time. We're going to talk about pronunciation generally, things that are difficult. People find certain things really difficult to pronounce. Germans have specific issues, for example. And we're going to talk about accents. And do you need to sound like a Brit? Do you need to sound like an American? No. Well, maybe some people think, yes, they do. I think we're going to discuss that in the next episode. And there's a lot to talk about. Authenticity, dialects, local accents and just generally pronunciation. How important is it? Good idea. Yeah. See you then. See you next time. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website, 3englishexperts.com. Have a great day and see you next time.