After completing the majority of my teacher training in 2019, I still needed to obtain a minor degree to fulfill the requirements of my course. Opting for the path of least resistance, I made the decision to pursue a minor in Spanish, believing that my prior years of studying second language acquisition would facilitate a smooth journey. However, what I encountered was the stark reality of delving into a new language that I had no prior familiarity with. This forced me to return to the drawing board and reevaluate my teaching style, which ended up being much more valuable than the actual language I was learning.
What I had been studying for – teaching English in the Netherlands – isn’t the most difficult job out there. Most students have had a massive amount of exposure even before getting to secondary school, and the two languages don’t differ immensely. Having said that, there’s always a good number of students who still struggle with learning English, and it’s often a straightforward suggestion to guide them toward the approach their peers take – immersing themselves in the language.
The first couple of Spanish classes weren’t too difficult. I was still convinced I had taken the easy road up until that point. The teacher was basically doing what I had been doing for a couple of years now, so surely I knew all of the tricks to bluff my way through this.
As my Spanish teacher delved into her second grammar lesson entirely in Spanish, it dawned on me that I was actually going to have to learn Spanish to pass this course (who would have guessed). Not only could I not follow most of what was being said, but I also saw most of my classmates participating much more successfully as they had simply prepared themselves for the lesson. For the first time in a while, I found myself in the position of my weaker students, completely oblivious to what was going on without a simple fix to catch up with the lesson.
I thought back to some of the classes that I had deemed successful throughout my teacher training, using the target language as much as I could to make sure my students would get all the exposure they needed. It’s not difficult to draw the same conclusion that I did at that point.
It wasn’t too hard to determine what I needed to escape this situation, and so I decided to catch up with the work I hadn’t been doing. The teacher had drafted a list with the 150 most common words in Spanish and some basic phrases that would be helpful to follow what was going on in the classes. It took me a few days to master the majority of it, but it was worth it. I could follow most of what was happening in the subsequent classes, and not only did everything become much easier from there, but I also found myself actually enjoying the process of learning this new language that I hadn’t been very interested in before.
Obviously, I wouldn’t expect my students to do the same. Besides the fact that they have 10 other subjects to study for, I simply can’t expect them to figure out how to recover from a situation they might not even realize they’re in. Moreover, I realized even more that it was my job to do this for them and provide them with the tools they needed to take the next step. Differentiation is a keyword here. Luckily, I found a school with an English department way ahead of this idea.
The bottom line is that by putting myself in the situation of my students, I had gained more insight into their problems than I could have amassed in over 3 years of teacher training. I never quit learning new languages and still to this day discover things that help me understand and help my students even better.
As every language teacher would, I’d recommend anyone to start learning a new language. Besides being incredibly useful, it’s also fun and helps keep your brain young. For all the teachers out there, I’d recommend it to a point of urgency. No book, anecdote, or blog post will give you more insight than an authentic look through the eyes of your students.
About Convamigo
Founded in 2020 by a passionate language teacher with a mission to provide high-quality and affordable language lessons to learners around the world, Convamigo has been growing and expanding, adding more languages and courses and reaching more students worldwide.
We are committed to providing our students with the best possible language education experience. We believe that learning a new language should be accessible, enjoyable, and affordable, which is why we have developed a dynamic and interactive approach to language education that is tailored to the needs of our students.
We are proud to have built a community of language learners who have experienced the quality of our lessons and the dedication of our teachers. We can’t wait for more people to join us and discover for themselves how good our language education is.
