What Makes a GOOD English Teacher?

55,876 views ・ 2019-08-22

Accent's Way English with Hadar


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Hey there, it's Hadar and this is the Accent's Way and this is the place for
0
500
4620
00:05
you if you are a non-native speaker of English who is looking to feel confident,
1
5120
4200
00:09
clear and proud when speaking English.
2
9330
3150
00:12
Now have you ever taken private lessons
3
12480
2880
00:15
with a tutor or an English teacher or even group classes and you weren't sure
4
15360
4679
00:20
if this is the right teacher for you?
5
20040
2840
00:22
Have you ever wondered whether or not
6
22880
2020
00:24
you're just wasting your time or actually seeing progress...
7
24900
4223
00:29
So this episode is about how to know if you are learning with the right teacher for you
8
29123
6457
00:35
and if you are getting the best out of your training.
9
35580
3180
00:39
So let's get started.
10
39300
1720
00:42
The first thing you need to ask yourself is what is the emotion that you're experiencing
11
42240
5160
00:47
once the class has ended.
12
47400
2580
00:49
Do you feel this bubbly excitement of success and improvement?
13
49980
4920
00:55
Do you feel defeated and challenged but you have clarity, you know what you need to work on?
14
55840
7060
01:02
Do you feel tired but happy?
15
62900
3360
01:07
Do you feel good about yourself?
16
67280
3500
01:10
Or do you feel like a failure? Do you beat yourself up?
17
70780
2851
01:13
Do you feel like you'll never be able to get it?
18
73631
3689
01:17
Do you feel self-conscious? Are you ashamed?
19
77320
4000
01:21
A good teacher will never let you feel bad about yourself.
20
81320
4800
01:26
Because a good teacher will always empower you, make you feel great about yourself, show your strengths
21
86120
5520
01:31
but also your weaknesses with a clear strategy on how to improve that.
22
91650
4770
01:36
They will not keep you confused or stuck or feeling self-conscious and feeling like a failure.
23
96420
9280
01:45
You know I was once talking to a teacher that used to teach at this
24
105700
2720
01:48
really big language school and he said that the management had asked them to
25
108420
5070
01:53
understand what the biggest struggles of their students are and then to
26
113490
4559
01:58
accentuate them, make them a big deal instead of helping them resolve it.
27
118049
5151
02:03
Why? Because it was their marketing strategy. It kept them in the school, it kept them taking more and more
28
123200
6160
02:09
and more classes.
29
129360
960
02:10
But it's a horrible strategy if you ask me.
30
130320
3460
02:13
But unfortunately, people do that. So you as an English learner, you need to understand
31
133780
5660
02:19
what it is that you're experiencing and if the these are
32
139440
2770
02:22
negative feelings then something is wrong. Because this is not how it's supposed to be.
33
142210
6430
02:28
Another thing you need to ask yourself is who does most of the talking?
34
148640
4040
02:33
If you find yourself just sitting there
35
153300
3720
02:37
and listening to the teacher talk about English and about things and about rules
36
157020
3280
02:40
and explaining all of these things to you and you find yourself not speaking
37
160300
6090
02:46
as much it's a problem. Because you need to do most of the speaking with feedback,
38
166390
5670
02:52
with guidance, with direction but you need to do most of the speaking. So if
39
172060
5130
02:57
you find yourself mostly listening and reading or writing then you might be
40
177190
7530
03:04
missing out on a better opportunity to practice because if you're learning just
41
184720
5220
03:09
passively constantly it's just like watching a YouTube video you want to put
42
189940
4860
03:14
it to practice right away and as much as possible. So this is something by the way
43
194800
4410
03:19
that you can tell your teacher that you want to do you can say: "Hey, I feel like
44
199210
3950
03:23
I'm not speaking enough. Let's try a session where we just talk about things
45
203170
5790
03:28
that bother me, a few subjects, maybe read an article and then talk about it but I
46
208960
6150
03:35
want to do most of the talking and you just give me feedback." Now of course when
47
215110
5550
03:40
you go into a lesson it's easier to just sit down and listen and be less active
48
220660
5150
03:45
but you got to catch yourself because if that's a situation you're wasting your
49
225810
4660
03:50
time and money, right. So although it's easier and more convenient you got to
50
230470
5310
03:55
step out of your comfort zone, you got to feel uncomfortable, you got to push
51
235780
3180
03:58
yourself and you got to stand your ground and say what you need and
52
238960
4190
04:03
communicate it clearly to your teacher.
53
243150
2389
04:05
The third thing you need to ask yourself
54
245539
2451
04:07
is are you both aligned with what is the best way for you to learn? What is the
55
247990
5550
04:13
best content to discuss? What is the best way for you to get feedback? Some people
56
253540
5730
04:19
prefer to get feedback right away every time they
57
259270
3410
04:22
mistake on every single thing, others prefer to get feedback only on the
58
262680
5489
04:28
important things and some may prefer to get feedback only at the end so they
59
268169
5611
04:33
don't lose their train of thought as they're trying to speak. You need to
60
273780
4560
04:38
understand what works best for you and you need to communicate that to your teacher.
61
278340
5240
04:43
Because some teachers are sometimes teaching because that's what
62
283580
4000
04:47
they think is best and if someone tells you: "No-no, I know what's best for you. You
63
287580
4619
04:52
listen to me." That person is not empathetic or is sensitive to your needs.
64
292199
5371
04:57
Same thing with content if your teacher teaches you things that are not
65
297570
5250
05:02
interesting to you or you feel you'll never use then you need to say: "hey, this
66
302820
6000
05:08
doesn't work for me. Let's say something else. I want to talk about this and I
67
308820
4319
05:13
need to talk about that and this is my world of content, this is where I come from.
68
313140
4980
05:18
I want to discuss technology and negotiations and practice small talk and
69
318120
5340
05:23
I don't want so much to talk about hypothetical situations of Martha and Arthur at the zoo.
70
323460
7380
05:30
Understand that even if you are with the same teacher there
71
330840
3060
05:33
isn't just one method of teaching English and you need to see if
72
333900
4199
05:38
something's working for you, is it getting your results,
73
338099
2701
05:40
do you understand it, do you pick it up quickly. If not there is a problem with a
74
340800
4739
05:45
method, not with you, okay. It's not you that is the problem, maybe it's the
75
345539
5431
05:50
method, maybe it's the energy maybe it's how you feel because when you feel
76
350970
5310
05:56
self-conscious the brain shuts down and you don't learn anything new. But when
77
356280
4800
06:01
you feel empowered and open and challenged in a good way then you are
78
361080
5040
06:06
open to change. In order for you to learn something deeply in order for it to
79
366120
5609
06:11
stick you need to associate good emotion as you're learning and if the feeling is
80
371729
6271
06:18
of frustration and fear then it's not gonna stick, okay.
81
378000
7520
06:25
So you need to be aware of that and change whatever need to change in order for you to create the
82
385520
5920
06:31
best circumstances for yourself.
83
391440
2217
06:33
The fourth thing is do you know your 20 percent?
84
393657
4103
06:37
According to the Pareto principle, 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes.
85
397760
6860
06:44
So if we look at the business world for example then we can say that
86
404620
5840
06:50
20% of the products lead to 80% of the revenue or 20% of the clients are
87
410460
5830
06:56
responsible for 80% of the income.
88
416290
2630
06:58
So in English it's very much the same thing.
89
418920
4690
07:03
If you work on the areas where you struggle with okay whether it's specific grammar
90
423610
5610
07:09
rules or specific sounds or an element of fluency, if you work on that and just
91
429220
6479
07:15
on that it will get you 80% of the result of where you want to be.
92
435699
4721
07:20
So you need to know what are the things that will get you the best results and your
93
440420
5360
07:25
teacher needs to recognize those things and tell you, communicate to you what they are.
94
445780
6880
07:32
So whether or not you need to work on your present tense because
95
452660
3050
07:35
everything else is great but you always get stuck when you try to speak in the present tense
96
455710
5110
07:40
and what do you need to do in order to improve that.
97
460920
2860
07:43
Or let's say that in terms of clarity you have all these things in your speech
98
463780
6720
07:50
but you don't need to work on all the sounds. It's enough that you
99
470500
3000
07:53
work on the R and on your rhythm and it will give you a huge boost to your clarity.
100
473500
5900
07:59
So your job is to know what your 20% is, what are the things that you
101
479400
4840
08:04
still struggle with but if you resolve them it will kind of like open up the
102
484240
3870
08:08
gates to fluency and you will feel a lot more fluent, you'll get stuck less and
103
488110
5460
08:13
you'll be a lot clearer and focus just on that and you two need to do that
104
493570
4560
08:18
together. So if that hasn't been communicated to you just yet then you
105
498130
5190
08:23
need to ask your teacher to tell you what those things are and ask your
106
503320
3810
08:27
teacher to focus on those things as you're learning. But if they don't know
107
507130
4560
08:31
and they start giving you all of these things and every time they give you
108
511690
3210
08:34
feedback they give you a lot of notes about everything and you feel
109
514900
2910
08:37
overwhelmed and confused then there's a problem even when you get feedback the
110
517810
4890
08:42
feedback should be the 20% the things that will get you the best results
111
522700
4320
08:47
because you don't need to start correcting every single thing
112
527020
4120
08:51
it will be super inhibiting and almost impossible to grow from there.
113
531140
5740
08:56
The last thing is do you feel intellectually challenged?
114
536880
3300
09:00
Do you feel that your teacher sees you as a peer, as a person who can conduct a conversation,
115
540180
6240
09:06
an intelligent conversation with this language barrier, yes
116
546430
4290
09:10
with less vocabulary but still the content is engaging and interesting.
117
550720
6100
09:16
If you feel that they're speaking to you like a little kid it will make you feel like a little kid.
118
556940
5500
09:22
So you need to feel that your intelligence is not compromised.
119
562440
4100
09:26
You need to be able to talk about deep things even if it's not perfect,
120
566540
4280
09:30
even if you make mistakes and even if you're lacking the vocabulary.
121
570820
4660
09:35
Your teacher is there to help you, right.
122
575480
3440
09:38
But you don't need to feel like you are
123
578920
2160
09:41
only talking about stupid things just because it's an English class.
124
581080
4320
09:45
No, that's the wrong direction.
125
585400
2440
09:47
And of course, you can tell your teacher that and change that.
126
587840
3840
09:51
Take charge of your training, okay?
127
591680
2740
09:54
So to conclude, you have to be responsible for the time that you're investing.
128
594420
5600
10:00
Don't leave all responsibility to the teacher.
129
600020
2840
10:02
Sometimes they don't know what they're doing, sometimes they think
130
602860
2720
10:05
that they're doing the best thing for you when in fact it's not and you it's
131
605589
4381
10:09
like in a relationship right if you're not gonna speak up nothing will change
132
609970
3510
10:13
and then at the end, you will quit and everyone loses, okay.
133
613480
3295
10:16
You lose time and money and they lose an opportunity to really help someone, okay.
134
616780
5420
10:22
So communicate your needs, understand your needs, understand what is not working for you
135
622200
5120
10:27
and then change it.
136
627320
2360
10:30
So to conclude, I want you to take action and answer these two questions in the comments below:
137
630180
3780
10:33
The first thing is tell us about one really
138
633960
3160
10:37
good experience with a teacher and one not so good experience with a teacher
139
637220
5400
10:42
and why that happened and what did you do about it?
140
642620
2759
10:45
The second thing is what to your opinion makes a good teacher? Right.
141
645380
5280
10:50
What are you looking for in a good teacher.
142
650660
3080
10:53
So I named my five things. I'm really curious to hear what are the
143
653740
3659
10:57
things that you are looking for in a good teacher.
144
657399
2941
11:00
So just so you know you don't really have to take private lessons or group classes
145
660340
4706
11:05
in order to improve your English.
146
665046
1894
11:06
You can do that on your own and if you want to do
147
666940
2530
11:09
it watching YouTube videos and using online resources I'd be happy to help you.
148
669470
5710
11:15
So don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications and you
149
675180
3860
11:19
can also visit my website to get a lot of free stuff, free courses and
150
679040
6900
11:25
really feel the improvement.
151
685940
1940
11:27
Improve significantly.
152
687880
1463
11:29
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next week in the next video.
153
689343
4157
11:33
Bye
154
693500
3020
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7