Okay so you have around twenty years teaching English experience, you are confident in your skills. You make sure that you are well-prepared for your class. You have some excellent recommendation letters, and your students love you.
Problem: when being interviewed for a new job, you come unstuck when it comes to explaining some rules of grammar. "Sorry", says the person interviewing you, who probably does not even have half of your experience! "I'm afraid your grammar knowledge was not what we were expecting it to be."
Native speakers generally are not so 'keyed-in' on matters pertaining to grammar. They speak the language perfectly most of the time, and 'may' be the ideal model for students to follow, but this 'little thing' kind of gets in the way.
Hold on!! I thought we were into communicative teaching nowadays? Even though teaching is not exactly black-and-white, how many of us will prepare a grammar exercise before going into class.Most teachers are creative. With regards to grammar, I for one will read-up and 'brush-up' on my knowledge; take a look at the examples in the book, and see if I can come up with some supplementary material too.
If you are not sure what an auxiliary is, you can always quickly look it up! How many of us have that feeling of "Oh yes, now I remember!"
As a recruitment filtering process, and in the early part of the 21st century, should grammar really be the cause for rejecting applicants? May be we should be focussing on their passion and professionalism instead?
Problem: when being interviewed for a new job, you come unstuck when it comes to explaining some rules of grammar. "Sorry", says the person interviewing you, who probably does not even have half of your experience! "I'm afraid your grammar knowledge was not what we were expecting it to be."
Native speakers generally are not so 'keyed-in' on matters pertaining to grammar. They speak the language perfectly most of the time, and 'may' be the ideal model for students to follow, but this 'little thing' kind of gets in the way.
Hold on!! I thought we were into communicative teaching nowadays? Even though teaching is not exactly black-and-white, how many of us will prepare a grammar exercise before going into class.Most teachers are creative. With regards to grammar, I for one will read-up and 'brush-up' on my knowledge; take a look at the examples in the book, and see if I can come up with some supplementary material too.
If you are not sure what an auxiliary is, you can always quickly look it up! How many of us have that feeling of "Oh yes, now I remember!"
As a recruitment filtering process, and in the early part of the 21st century, should grammar really be the cause for rejecting applicants? May be we should be focussing on their passion and professionalism instead?
1 comment:
I have about six years of experience. I don't know that I would survive 20 years teaching English language. However, I do know that I would look rather skeptically at a teacher who could not tell me what an auxiliary verb is, yet claimed to have 20 years of experience teaching English.
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