AndyKK wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 7:30 pm

Barang chgout wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 12:26 pm

AndyKK wrote:Just one simple question to all English teachers here. Do you speak fluent Khmer?

Cambridge says that speaking the indigenous language is no use when trying to teach ENGLISH.

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And please tell me how many English teachers in Cambodia have master degrees from Cambridge and Oxford?

I have never studied a language where the teacher didn't also have a good command of English.
I would expect it would be an advantage for the lower levels, but to have a foreigner that was just learning my language teaching me at intermediate or advanced levels would I think be a disadvantage. It depends on whether their teacher was good enough to make the right word associations etc.
And that's in a language like Spanish.
When it comes to Khmer, they could make lots of mistakes. So, ideally perhaps it would be better to have someone that was native in both languages, but that's never going to happen when talking about languages like Khmer.
Anyway, the question is moot really, as millions of people learn to speak, read and write other languages every year without their teachers knowing their student's native languages. Plus English is one of the easier languages to learn if you're taliking about English teachers in particular.

Knowing a bit is helpful, as you can understand the questions your students ask better, and understand the form of the mistakes they make.

mauser765 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 7:59 pm Knowing a bit is helpful, as you can understand the questions your students ask better, and understand the form of the mistakes they make.

Or maybe you just think you can. I certainly get insights into pronounciation problems from the Khmer vowel sounds though. As I said already, ideally the teacher would be native in both languages.

Yes, AP, whatever you say.

Not sure about Cambodia but one of the major markets for English teaching is conversational English. There are lots of people out there who have studied English for years, and maybe even lived in a country where it's spoken, so their ability is pretty good but they have no one to speak English with and they start to get rusty.

They don't require or want translation or grammar rules, just conversation and some corrections. If you are attractive and have a winning personality so much the better.

Beginners and those at lower levels should study with a local teacher.

Indeed, prescriptive out, functional/communicative in.

People don't learn English by studying grammar. It's completely unnatural.

And to help your students better, put yourself in their position.

mauser765 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 8:36 pm Indeed, prescriptive out, functional/communicative in.

People don't learn English by studying grammar. It's completely unnatural.

And to help your students better, put yourself in their position.

To put yourself in their position you need to speak Khmer, because they don't understand English.

sigmoid wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 8:33 pm Not sure about Cambodia but one of the major markets for English teaching is conversational English. There are lots of people out there who have studied English for years, and maybe even lived in a country where it's spoken, so their ability is pretty good but they have no one to speak English with and they start to get rusty.

They don't require or want translation or grammar rules, just conversation and some corrections. If you are attractive and have a winning personality so much the better.

Beginners and those at beginner levels should study with a local teacher.

NO, please god no! I spend at least a quarter of the time teaching, over at least a year and a half, trying to recondition their very bad pronunciation habits. And their use of verbs, sentence structure and cadence.

Those Khmer English teachers are a perfect example of how only knowing a little of the language can really fuck your studemts up.

Otherwise, interesting post.

AndyKK wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 8:58 pm

mauser765 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 8:36 pm Indeed, prescriptive out, functional/communicative in.

People don't learn English by studying grammar. It's completely unnatural.

And to help your students better, put yourself in their position.

To put yourself in their position you need to speak Khmer, because they don't understand English.

I've taught complete begginers, who only speak Vietnamese, English. There are ways to do it.

sigmoid wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2017 8:33 pmBeginners and those at lower levels should study with a local teacher.

For adults, I agree.

For children, never. Ever. NS is best.

Most NS adults, as children, learned English from their parents, who spoke fluent/near-fluent English.

It's a proven fact that children acquire language form their environment very quickly.

Between the ages of 11-13, the area of the brain associated with linguistic development, Wernicke's area, diminishes rapidly in size and importance.

This is why kids learn languages, even Chinese, really easily, whereas adults battle.