What Makes a GOOD English Teacher?

55,834 views ・ 2019-08-22

Accent's Way English with Hadar


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

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Hey there, it's Hadar and this is the Accent's Way and this is the place for
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you if you are a non-native speaker of English who is looking to feel confident,
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clear and proud when speaking English.
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Now have you ever taken private lessons
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with a tutor or an English teacher or even group classes and you weren't sure
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if this is the right teacher for you?
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Have you ever wondered whether or not
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you're just wasting your time or actually seeing progress...
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So this episode is about how to know if you are learning with the right teacher for you
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and if you are getting the best out of your training.
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So let's get started.
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The first thing you need to ask yourself is what is the emotion that you're experiencing
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once the class has ended.
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Do you feel this bubbly excitement of success and improvement?
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Do you feel defeated and challenged but you have clarity, you know what you need to work on?
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Do you feel tired but happy?
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Do you feel good about yourself?
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Or do you feel like a failure? Do you beat yourself up?
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Do you feel like you'll never be able to get it?
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Do you feel self-conscious? Are you ashamed?
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A good teacher will never let you feel bad about yourself.
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Because a good teacher will always empower you, make you feel great about yourself, show your strengths
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but also your weaknesses with a clear strategy on how to improve that.
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They will not keep you confused or stuck or feeling self-conscious and feeling like a failure.
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You know I was once talking to a teacher that used to teach at this
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really big language school and he said that the management had asked them to
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understand what the biggest struggles of their students are and then to
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accentuate them, make them a big deal instead of helping them resolve it.
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Why? Because it was their marketing strategy. It kept them in the school, it kept them taking more and more
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and more classes.
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But it's a horrible strategy if you ask me.
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But unfortunately, people do that. So you as an English learner, you need to understand
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what it is that you're experiencing and if the these are
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negative feelings then something is wrong. Because this is not how it's supposed to be.
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Another thing you need to ask yourself is who does most of the talking?
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If you find yourself just sitting there
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and listening to the teacher talk about English and about things and about rules
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and explaining all of these things to you and you find yourself not speaking
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as much it's a problem. Because you need to do most of the speaking with feedback,
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with guidance, with direction but you need to do most of the speaking. So if
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you find yourself mostly listening and reading or writing then you might be
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missing out on a better opportunity to practice because if you're learning just
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passively constantly it's just like watching a YouTube video you want to put
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it to practice right away and as much as possible. So this is something by the way
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that you can tell your teacher that you want to do you can say: "Hey, I feel like
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I'm not speaking enough. Let's try a session where we just talk about things
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that bother me, a few subjects, maybe read an article and then talk about it but I
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want to do most of the talking and you just give me feedback." Now of course when
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you go into a lesson it's easier to just sit down and listen and be less active
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but you got to catch yourself because if that's a situation you're wasting your
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time and money, right. So although it's easier and more convenient you got to
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step out of your comfort zone, you got to feel uncomfortable, you got to push
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yourself and you got to stand your ground and say what you need and
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communicate it clearly to your teacher.
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The third thing you need to ask yourself
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is are you both aligned with what is the best way for you to learn? What is the
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best content to discuss? What is the best way for you to get feedback? Some people
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prefer to get feedback right away every time they
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mistake on every single thing, others prefer to get feedback only on the
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important things and some may prefer to get feedback only at the end so they
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don't lose their train of thought as they're trying to speak. You need to
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understand what works best for you and you need to communicate that to your teacher.
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Because some teachers are sometimes teaching because that's what
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they think is best and if someone tells you: "No-no, I know what's best for you. You
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listen to me." That person is not empathetic or is sensitive to your needs.
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Same thing with content if your teacher teaches you things that are not
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interesting to you or you feel you'll never use then you need to say: "hey, this
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doesn't work for me. Let's say something else. I want to talk about this and I
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need to talk about that and this is my world of content, this is where I come from.
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I want to discuss technology and negotiations and practice small talk and
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I don't want so much to talk about hypothetical situations of Martha and Arthur at the zoo.
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Understand that even if you are with the same teacher there
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isn't just one method of teaching English and you need to see if
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something's working for you, is it getting your results,
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do you understand it, do you pick it up quickly. If not there is a problem with a
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method, not with you, okay. It's not you that is the problem, maybe it's the
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method, maybe it's the energy maybe it's how you feel because when you feel
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self-conscious the brain shuts down and you don't learn anything new. But when
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you feel empowered and open and challenged in a good way then you are
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open to change. In order for you to learn something deeply in order for it to
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stick you need to associate good emotion as you're learning and if the feeling is
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of frustration and fear then it's not gonna stick, okay.
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So you need to be aware of that and change whatever need to change in order for you to create the
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best circumstances for yourself.
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The fourth thing is do you know your 20 percent?
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According to the Pareto principle, 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes.
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So if we look at the business world for example then we can say that
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20% of the products lead to 80% of the revenue or 20% of the clients are
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responsible for 80% of the income.
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So in English it's very much the same thing.
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If you work on the areas where you struggle with okay whether it's specific grammar
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rules or specific sounds or an element of fluency, if you work on that and just
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on that it will get you 80% of the result of where you want to be.
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So you need to know what are the things that will get you the best results and your
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teacher needs to recognize those things and tell you, communicate to you what they are.
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So whether or not you need to work on your present tense because
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everything else is great but you always get stuck when you try to speak in the present tense
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and what do you need to do in order to improve that.
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Or let's say that in terms of clarity you have all these things in your speech
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but you don't need to work on all the sounds. It's enough that you
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work on the R and on your rhythm and it will give you a huge boost to your clarity.
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So your job is to know what your 20% is, what are the things that you
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still struggle with but if you resolve them it will kind of like open up the
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gates to fluency and you will feel a lot more fluent, you'll get stuck less and
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you'll be a lot clearer and focus just on that and you two need to do that
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together. So if that hasn't been communicated to you just yet then you
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need to ask your teacher to tell you what those things are and ask your
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teacher to focus on those things as you're learning. But if they don't know
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and they start giving you all of these things and every time they give you
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feedback they give you a lot of notes about everything and you feel
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overwhelmed and confused then there's a problem even when you get feedback the
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feedback should be the 20% the things that will get you the best results
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because you don't need to start correcting every single thing
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it will be super inhibiting and almost impossible to grow from there.
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The last thing is do you feel intellectually challenged?
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Do you feel that your teacher sees you as a peer, as a person who can conduct a conversation,
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an intelligent conversation with this language barrier, yes
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with less vocabulary but still the content is engaging and interesting.
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If you feel that they're speaking to you like a little kid it will make you feel like a little kid.
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So you need to feel that your intelligence is not compromised.
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You need to be able to talk about deep things even if it's not perfect,
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even if you make mistakes and even if you're lacking the vocabulary.
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Your teacher is there to help you, right.
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But you don't need to feel like you are
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only talking about stupid things just because it's an English class.
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No, that's the wrong direction.
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And of course, you can tell your teacher that and change that.
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Take charge of your training, okay?
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So to conclude, you have to be responsible for the time that you're investing.
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Don't leave all responsibility to the teacher.
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Sometimes they don't know what they're doing, sometimes they think
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that they're doing the best thing for you when in fact it's not and you it's
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like in a relationship right if you're not gonna speak up nothing will change
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and then at the end, you will quit and everyone loses, okay.
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You lose time and money and they lose an opportunity to really help someone, okay.
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So communicate your needs, understand your needs, understand what is not working for you
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and then change it.
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So to conclude, I want you to take action and answer these two questions in the comments below:
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The first thing is tell us about one really
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good experience with a teacher and one not so good experience with a teacher
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and why that happened and what did you do about it?
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The second thing is what to your opinion makes a good teacher? Right.
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What are you looking for in a good teacher.
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So I named my five things. I'm really curious to hear what are the
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things that you are looking for in a good teacher.
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So just so you know you don't really have to take private lessons or group classes
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in order to improve your English.
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You can do that on your own and if you want to do
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it watching YouTube videos and using online resources I'd be happy to help you.
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So don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications and you
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can also visit my website to get a lot of free stuff, free courses and
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really feel the improvement.
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Improve significantly.
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Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next week in the next video.
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Bye
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