Why we language teachers need to be shocked out of our comfort zones

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff from Pexels

Dear Gerhard,

Are you aware that the title of your upcoming book (“Make Language Teaching Productive Again – the Psychology and Quality Management of Language Teaching”) might be highly offensive to many of us readers? You must know that the “Make X great again” is Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, don’t you? That racist, sexist, transphobic, fascist US president that is bringing us all down! How dare you?!

An offended reader

Well, the book itself may indeed prove highly offensive to many language instructors reading it. Not that it would contain foul language, “locker room talk”, threats that “you’re a fired”, suggestions of building walls between your “good” and “bad” students.

On the contrary. The book promotes an agenda of inclusive language education, in creating “safe spaces” for the learner (!) where he or she can experiment without harmful criticism, in giving the “good” and the “bad” as many opportunities to intermingle as possible.

But, this regards our students. Our customers. Not us the teachers. As teachers, being in a “safe space” is the most dangerous thing to our personal development. And, it is unethical towards our students, who deserve the best version of ourselves.

Unfortunately, in a typical language school setting, many of us are in a comfort zone. Yes, there are strict requirements by the school’s administration. But, in many language schools, the administration tends to let teachers alone and not interfere too much in the classroom. As long as the formal criteria of using the prescribed textbook and applying standard tests are respected. Beyond that, most language school administrators do not dare to go too far with their commentaries, because of a perceived lack of competency. They themselves may not be language teachers, but accountants, economists, lawyers or just sales persons. They are so preoccupied with keeping the school going, with responding to customers and registering participants, that they typically do not have the time to regularly assist classes, develop a quality management system with standard procedures and train themselves to be competent in discussing with you.

Students in most countries, apart from situations in which something really bad has happened or if the student is a VIP, tend to be non-confrontational. If they do not like something, why tell it openly? They can just switch the school or take online courses.

What is there to ensure our professional growth?

The school may hand out questionnaires to students after each course. If you are lucky, you might get feedback beyond a simple rating of customer satisfaction, something more than the fact that X% of students liked your teaching, or consider you a nice and “open” person. You might get something more specific, that students want more or less grammar, want to talk more or less, want you to correct them more or less. However, all this feedback is still limited in use. It depends on the way questions are phrased, and is limited by the questions that are not asked. And, many students may not know what would be really good for their success. Remember the Henry Ford quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Likewise, most students do not have the personal experience of reaching levels of excellence in a foreign language. They remember what they did not like in school, and they most certainly have opinions about how you should teach them.

They want lessons to be “interactive”, “interesting”, they want to speak more, less “grammar” (or more “grammar”).  They want you to teach them proverbs, idioms, to learn dialogues for specific situations by heart. They want you to give them easy books, to show them websites with easy videos with subtitles where people speak slowly. But, how to reach fluency, how to reach a state in which they can build their own sentences with ease, they most often do not know. Otherwise, they would not have come to you, and figured it out by themselves instead!

Your school might invite regularly fellow language teachers, of course with the necessary certificate of being a “teacher trainer” and often even “a foreigner”, to give you the occasional one-off seminar. Most often, topics are chosen according to what administration (often, not professional educators) or teachers (open to learn, but keen on preserving their comfort zone as to how they teach) consider “interesting” and distractive. As the teacher trainer wants to be invited again, we end up with lots of highly interactive, visually attractive seminars with lots of tips and tricks on everything neuro (neurolanguage teaching, NLP in the classroom), how to teach to “multiple intelligences”, how to integrate technology into the classroom, interactive games for students, etc. Not that those topics were not useful. On the contrary. Of course, there are those more “boring” ones like how to get more out of textbook XYZ, or how to prepare students for the XYZ standardized language proficiency test.

However, what is mostly avoided is anything that would challenge the status quo in the school and in the classroom, fundamental debates about whether our underlying principles and assumptions are really correct, or not.

My upcoming book (in fall 2018) intends to do just that. You are free to throw it into a corner. Well, if it is on your Kindle, you might think twice. Become as angry as you like. But, language learning is becoming radically different. Whether you want to keep your safe space or not, your customers are not obliged to stay there with you. They have increasingly cheaper and more attractive opportunities. Do not rely on the fact that your school takes care of filling up your classroom! There is many a cook taken by surprise that, despite of having a marketing department, the restaurant has closed down. Better, be prepared! Better, have something to offer that no competitor, off- or online can replace!

If you want be notified about the upcoming book or more articles and materials on the psychology and quality management of language teaching, please subscribe to my mailing list.

If you want to read more about quality management in language teaching, please check out the other articles on this blog. If you have not read it yet, I recommend those on student feedback questionnaires and on how to standardize your teaching.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.