Discussion Thread II: Bots? What bots?

[Reynard-Miri]

[Yggdrago]

Whom, if not ourselves, can we trust in this day and age?

[Starfe]

In my class I actually think teaching etymology makes language more accessible to my students than grammar.

Of course the school district doesn't want me to teach either. So really anything helps.

For the past 2 weeks they've been struggling to understand what "connotation" means. Which bothered me cause they all understand "annotation" and "notation". Then I realized that half of them speak Spanish, so I just broke down the etymology of the word an circled "Con" for them, explaining that the word means a secondary meaning in addition to the primary meaning, and that it basically means "With notes". That seemed much more clear to them. Its frustrating to me that etymology and word construction is not part of the curriculum, especially with so many language learners in my class. Why should I not be allowed to leverage their understanding of a Latin language to help them understand a Germanic one? After all, a lot of our academic language is from the Latin side of things.

[Yggdrago]

You sound like the kind of English teacher I wish I had at my school. All they ever taught us was strictly what they required to teach us, and they got angry if we wanted to learn other things. Yeah, right? How dare we ask them to teach us.

[Starfe]

[Yggdrago]

I was educated in Germany, aye. I do think that sticking strictly to the curriculum in our cases was a mistake on the teacher's part, because in most cases NONE of the students gave a shit about actually learning English, as long as they knew just enough to get away with it in the next exam, which is sad. After about 5 years of English lessons, which went from "[German word] in English is 'window', you got that kids?" to "Please write a short text about this topic using 60 words", there were maybe THREE students in the entire class of 30, who were able to talk for more than a minute without going "uhm" at every third word.

If the teachers would've just said "Y'know what, screw the textbook kids, we're gonna watch a movie in English now!", or if they explained the topics to us by showing us comics, or if they just did ANYTHING to get us interested in learning the language...but nope. Here's the next chapter in our textbook, we do the 5 tasks in it. everybody writes up a short summary, and then there's the exam.

I can understand sticking to the curriculum in your case, when you're being blamed for the mistakes and failures of your students. Thankfully, here in Germany that (usually) is not the case - if your child f*cks up, it's not the teacher's fault. Not until half the class f*cks up and it's the clever kids. We have to deal with teachers who are perverts and/or idiots, but those exist anywhere in the world I believe. I do not envy you for your job, because being a teacher is probably one of the most stressful jobs you could have. But damn you sound like you're doing a pretty good job at it even though there are some problems, and that's awesome.


As you can see the bad teaching of English at our schools didn't negatively affect me. That's because I taught English to myself, via YouTube and jokes. If you see just the slightest hint of understanding in one (or more) of your students, maybe suggest some easily comprehensible comedians to them, so they can learn the language while being entertained.

[Starfe]

I will always remember the German word for 'window', not because of my many years of German class, but because of "defenestration".

Ive actually never understood why the Germans use the Latin root for 'window' (fenestra) rather than the old Norse root 'vindauga'. One of those weird language things where English kept the Middle English word while German was Latinized, instead of the other way around.

(More later)

[Yggdrago]

Huh, that's interesting. I like learning things about languages. Not really learning how to speak different languages, but just knowing how they work, or what stuff there is that's slightly weird or special. It's interesting, tiny little details like that that can motivate people to care for something they otherwise wouldn't have cared for.

[Trifkin]

Yes, things like that help me remember word meanings better and it keeps things interesting. I love languages.

I think I've already told him, but Starfe is definitely one of my heroes for what he does.

[Starfe]

[Yggdrago]

You are not the teacher they want, but you're the teacher they deserve. You're...Batteacher.

[Starfe]

[Yggdrago]

When you were young, your parents got educated by a drunk driver, and failed their driving test. Ever since then you've sworn to protect your city from idiots by becoming a teacher.

[Yggdrago]

Yeah, and instead of Starfe, it's Brad Pitt who gets all hyped up by everyone. People and priorities x_x

[Yggdrago]

Because they're the majority and they decide how the big ones want to run the place.