Classroom and Online English Teaching, English Conversation w/ Gabby and Shayna | Go Natural English

Hey everybody, I'm Shayna from EspressoEnglish.net and I'm here

with Gabby from GoNaturalEnglish.com and

we are recording the second video of our conversational English

series. So today we're going to talk a little bit about

our experience teaching English in the classroom. I think you'll find

a lot of interesting stuff, maybe some stories we have to share.

Gabby, tell me how long you've been teaching English. I've been

teaching English since about 2002.

That was my first, you know when I was

five years old, no joking, that was my first

time teaching conversational English,

tutoring, and I continued with it because I loved

it from that day. I've been teaching online now

since about 2011. Before that

were you teaching in a classroom? Yeah, so from about

2005 to 2011 I was teaching

in a classroom and I was teaching adults. Actually I taught in

Japan for a while and I was teaching in 2011. I was teaching

in a company. It was in-company training

for adult, business professionals. Small

classes. It was different. I've also taught

in a lot of different settings, in a university, in different

private language schools, a lot of different places. Got it.

Lots a lot of experience, way more than me! Well, tell me

about you. How long have you been teaching online? and English?

Well I was, I guess my teaching started when I was in college.

I was a writing tutor and so I would help people with their papers, basically.

I'd get a lot of international students and they would need some help with the English, too.

I really liked helping people. I think

that was just, I loved seeing people have that light bulb moment where they're

like, "Ahh, I understand it now. Now I can do it better." Yeah, so rewarding.

"I feel like I can communicate better." And so I started actually

teaching English in the classroom in Brazil in 2010.

Nice. I moved there to be with my husband and

thought, "What can I do?" I can teach English! That's perfect!

And then Espresso English started around what year?

2012. Oh ok. Yeah! That's awesome! I love that, you know,

we started around the same time and now you're here and

yeah it's very cool. What was your

teaching like, I mean what was your classroom like in Brazil?

I was teaching adults and also small classes, small group classes,

usually maybe 4 to 8 students. They

would usually put me with the intermediate to advanced learners.

Normally they would use a native English speaker for the higher levels.

I really loved working with the students because they were

fun, they participated a lot in the class,

which I love, right. I think we get a lot of energy from that give and take.

of teacher and student. That's my favorite too. So did you

ever have a favorite student?

Can I ask that? I know we're supposed to love all students

equally, but did you ever have a favorite?

I did have one student who I greatly admired because

he came to me, he was high beginner, and

really had a lot of problems with English. In fact in his

native languages of Portuguese he had a speech problem. Oh wow.

Pronouncing English words was even worse. Yeah. But he worked

really hard. He overcame that lack of natural talent

just by, he did his homework every day. He would study

extra. He would go far beyond, you know,

the minimum. I think the funniest thing that

ever happened with him was, he was far-sighted. That means that

he could see the chalk board or the white board, but

he couldn't see a text. Oh wow. If he didn't have

his glasses. Right, ok. Well, sometimes he would forget his glasses. Then of course

I couldn't use any of my worksheets. Oh no! So, one day, I was

not very, or I had prepared a really great class. He came in and said, "Teacher, I

forgot my glasses." And I thought, "Oh great, well it's just going to have to be

conversation." Well, sometimes conversation is difficult when

you're pre-intermediate. So we talked and I asked him about his weekend and

about his work and everything I could think of and we were

half an hour into the conversation and I was thinking I don't have anything else to talk about!

What am I going to do? And I look at him and I see he has a pocket

and in his pocket... I said, "Are those your glasses?"

Oh my goodness! And he said, "Look! It's my glasses!" He put them on.

We finished the class with some worksheets. It was

funny. But he made a ton of progress. He was a solid intermediate by the time

we finished. That's amazing! Did you have any students who particularly inspired

you? Yeah, you know, I learned a lot from

some of my students. I was thinking of one in particular in Japan, one

of the adults in the company where I was teaching. Through talking

with him I found out that in his personal life his hobby was to

play drums. This is important because in the English

class, one thing that he was having a lot of trouble with was

stress and intonation and

the musicality of English. And so he actually thought of

this. He taught me that playing drums actually

helped him to understand the musicality of English and where to put

the stress. Because one day I think we were talking about how in English it's so

important to put stress on a certain syllable or a certain word in the sentence

and he was like, "Oh, it's like playing the drums." It's da-da

da-DAH! Or "Da-DA-da-da-da. And I was like, "Yes!"

Exactly, yes! And that was just kind of an interesting moment,

just to see him apply something he was really passionate about to

learning English and that helped a lot. And he was just such a sweet student.

He was really shy but he would speak up

in, when he had something to say it was amazing, when he spoke up.

It was, "Wow!" You just taught me something new.

Yeah, that was, that's a student I'll remember maybe forever.

That's a nice breakthrough! I think one of the cool things about teaching in a classroom

is you see a lot of different learning styles.

You know, some students learn better with a lot of interaction. Some students learn better if

they have the time to kind of quietly study by themselves.

But you have to teach everyone in the classroom, right. Yeah.

Now how about, has there ever been a moment when things

didn't go as planned or maybe you made a mistake or something?

I don't know. Let's go there!

We can't just talk about the good stuff! That's true. There have been classes

I've been extremely unprepared for and I've had to just improvise things

off the top of my head and I don't like that because I like to feel like I'm

prepared. I think there's a parallel to English learners, actually.

A lot of English learners, they want to feel like they know everything

and they're ready to say the right things in a conversation. But

sometimes you have to do it on the fly and have that ability to improvise.

I always felt really insecure about those classes

when I hadn't prepared anything or the printer didn't work

to print the worksheets or whatever it was. But if I could

just keep a positive attitude, they actually ended up being really good classes. I bet! That's

what I was going to ask. They probably turned out really well. Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah, I think, I hate it when

a student would ask me a question in class that I didn't really

know the answer to, I didn't really feel confident about it.

I think that's difficult because I want to

be able to answer anything. But I'm a human, I don't know everything.

I'll admit it. Sometimes you just have to say

I'll get back to you, I need to check. I know sometimes

students didn't like that and I felt bad about it but you know

then you check it and you get back to them and it's ok! Or I would say, "Hey, why don't you

look that up and you can report back to us!"

Yeah are the moments I just felt like, "Oh, sorry!"

They're kind of rough. So what's your favorite part about teaching online?

I love that you know, in a classroom, I would have

maximum 15 students, in the US and in

Japan the class sizes were quite small at least where

I taught. But I love that online I can reach so many people.

My videos and website lessons and what not

reach a lot of people. So that's

really exciting and hearing from those people, you know, when

you guys send me an email and you're like, "Hi, I'm so-and-so

from so-and-so country..." I'm like, "Wow! I want to go

there!" That sounds interesting. And just having that connection

with people pretty much all over the world is super

exciting and I think that's what's different from teaching in a classroom.

Yeah I went to teach in Japan and I had that experience, but

until now I never got to meet people from all over

the world. Yes. It's super exciting. I would say exactly the same

thing. In addition to just purely being able to

talk to you and teach a lot of students that we wouldn't be able to

fit in a classroom, there's just

like you said, I get emails from all over the world, and in some of my

courses there's homework, and so when students send in their homework

I get a little insight into their culture or into their way of thinking.

That's just fascinating for me. I love travel. I know you

love travel and one of the best parts of traveling is getting exposed

to different viewpoints and learning new things. Yeah! We

love teaching online! We love teaching you guys!

Well that's wonderful. I'm glad we could talk a little bit about our classroom

experience and our online experience and I know we probably

both have a lot of stories to share but we'll continue talking and

I think we're doing another episode next week. Friday.

That's right. Not about teaching, but I think we're going to talk about

the holidays that are coming up. Yeah there's a holiday coming up in the United States.

We're going to chat about some of our favorite holidays and traditions.

Yeah, that'll be fun! Awesome! Alright, see you guys then! Bye! Bye!