While my dad was stationed in Vietnam, one of his duties was to teach an ESL class to Vietnamese students, all without knowing a lick of Vietnamese himself. From his descriptions of how he tried to tell the class “Man is on the Moon” on that fateful July day, I rather suspect that most of his students doubted his sanity.
I don’t think that my teachers here in Spain speak any English.
My German teacher was from Russia, and although she knew a little English, she was far from fluent. From day 1 we spoke German. The only hard thing was understanding the grammar. It’s hard to understand what “habe gegangen” means if you don’t realize that it’s a past form of the verb “to go!”
I’ve been teaching EFL here in Taiwan for almost 10 years. IMO, immersion works much better when the student is placed in an environment where the target language is spoken outside of class (ie. immigrants taking classes in the US), than in their home country, but it does work. I’ve had dozens of classes of absolute, rank beginners without a word of English, including children under 4 years old and folks well past middle age. When I arrived, my Chinese was limited to “Hello”, “Sorry/Excuse me” and “How much?” I spent two months learning the local phonetic system, and picked up the rest over time. I’m certainly not fluent, and don’t read or write, but I can conduct all of my daily business and have general conversations. Some people have a gift for languages, and can learn very quickly just by living in a target-language environment.
<hijack> What are some organizations that employ native English speakers to go to foreign countries and teach total immersion classes? </hijack>
Can be good, can be bad. I had good experiences learning Chinese from non English-speaking teachers, but that was with two years of Chinese in the US under my belt. Nothing like immersion to help you get over that plateau that you can reach in classes taught in your own language. Despite occasional trouble understanding more abstract ideas, it was a really good experience.
On the other hand, I taught English to kids in Hong Kong and wasn’t supposed to even let on that I understood them. Some kids, especially in the older groups, knew enough for an immersion class to be somewhat helpful, but a lot of those kids were starting from near zero, and it felt hopeless to try to teach them in English only.
You can line up work ahead of time if you’re nervous about finding a job, but IME, just showing up in Korea or Taiwan (possibly even Japan) is the way to go. You experience the adventure of working it out on your own rather than being led around. You’re also likely to negotiate better pay and other contract terms if you’re in-country. One of the best resources for ESL/EFL teachers on the web is www.eslcafe.com
The following is a true (supposedly) story related to me by a friend also teaching English here. He spoke no Korean, and decided it would be a good idea to learn some, so he registered for a class.
(Scene: First day of Korean class… enter my friend; he sits. The teacher enters the room, writes a syllable in Korean on the board, and points to my friend.)
Teacher: You! Read this!
Friend: Err…
Teacher: Come on! You can do it.
Friend: Err… No, I can’t…
Teacher: Yes you can! You must try[sup]*[/sup]!
Friend: I don’t know the alphabet.
Teacher: You must TRY!
Friend: Fish? Book? Desk? (a few other guesses)
Teacher: You are not TRYING!
My friend didn’t bother going to class the next day…
[sup]*[/sup] A little explanation may be in order: The Korean alphabet was first invented by King Se-Jeong, who drew what he felt were shapes representing the position of the tongue and throat when making each of the sounds in the Korean language… some Korean teachers apparently feel that he did SUCH a good job that anyone can look at a Korean letter and instinctively understand what sound that is supposed to represent… trust me, you can’t!
After posting that, I feel I must hasten to add that all of the Korean teachers I have had were excellent (and some quite HOT as well, but I digress)… my friend had just run across a particularly bad teacher!
No Korean teachers were harmed in the making of this post…
Well, i learned English for like 5 year before, i was rlly sux at it. then my dad got transfered to HK so i go to International school, a bad one cuz i can’t speak eng lish good. After 1 1/2 year i moved to one of the best international school in HK cuz i improved a lot in English, so i guess if u keep using 1 language, u’ll learn better & faster.
Daoloth, try this address:
http://www.tefl.com/
I taught ESL for almost 15 years.
When you have a class with students from Germany, Turkey, France, Italy and Spain…well, there is no way you can “cheat” and translate a new word.
It worked just fine.