Interview with a teacher of English
Interview Prep:
Questions:
- What is the main aspect and aim of teaching a language as a foreign language?
- What are the main aspects the students are struggling the most with learning a new language?
- How to you support the students that are struggling and do you have any observations?
- Do you have any suggestions/ recommendations?
Intro:
Explain further what my project is about, the idea and rationale behind it and its aims. Make sure to mention that any data collected will be anonymous and kept in a secure place until the end of the project when it’s going to be deleted.
I will also refer to my own experience in learning another language and how different and difficult was to understand and communicate it in reality due to different accents and colloquialisms; I will also mention how I learned to speak the language and communicate experientially while trying to understand cultural references and difference in phrases and expressions.
After interview observations:
This was a really interesting interview and a good starting point for my research. The participant gave me completely different perspective on how students learn a language but then how they learn how to use it.
The main key take away from the interview was that experiential learning is important to understand language and its use.
Drawing from my own experience of learning English, expressing myself in a foreign language was always really difficult. I couldn’t figure out which words to use but also how to use them and how to put them in a sentence that makes sense. I could understand when I was reading English, I could understand grammar and syntax even though sometimes it was confusing, but expressing my thoughts and perspective it was a big struggle. It wasn’t until I moved to England to study in a foreign language that everything that I learn in the past made sense because I could put it in a perspective through experiential learning.
The questions that I chose to use a part of this interview where open ended and they really allowed to open up the conversation. I was able to dig deeper into the subject but also to understand why students that English is not their first language struggling to communicate but mainly to express themselves.
One of the main points that we talked about in the interview was that students learn a language like they learn maths for example as the interviewee mentions. They will learn vocabulary, grammar and syntax so they can communicate in a really specific way in order to pass the language tests or in this case, IELTS.
The participant mentioned how important is to learn more about phrasal verbs and colloquialisms which makes me thing that learning a language is not only about the how but understanding and learning the culture as well.
They interviewee also mentions that they ask their students to read more but also watch movies or even play games in the language that are learning. They also mention how they change their approach in teaching English to support the students and the learning journey by understanding more about cultural references but also how to use the language day-to-day basis thus making it relevant to them.
Could it be that maybe the language is not the problem when communicating with students but accessibility?