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Mon 3 Sep, 2007 02:09 am
In my last thread I came up with an issue I would like to ask clearly in this thread. How should a professional teacher deal with students
testing his or her knowledge? It doesn't matter if you are a Math teacher or EFL teacher, students may sooner or later come with nitpicking questions. I know that there are teachers who know almost every detail you can imagine about their subject. For example I have a colleague who teaches history and she probably knows almost everything, you can ask her about any kind of detail, history of any country in the world and she will talk about that particular place and period for hours. But that is probably an exception. Even if we have all necessary papers and certificates for teaching EFL it does not mean that we will know all details about grammar or that we will be able to translate every single foreign word into English. So what should we do when students ask questions like "How do you say this or that?" and you simply don't know?
Are there any lists of words you should know? I don't think so. I know I still don't know a lot of vocabulary in certain areas in which I am not interested, for example politics. But whenever students find out I don't know a certain word, I feel like "Now, should I be embarrassed?"
stach- I think that the best way to go is by being honest. If a student is asking a sincere question, admit, without being defensive, that you do not know the answer to his question. Offer to research it, and tell him that you will come back with the answer.
In my experience, there are some teachers who never want to admit to their students that they don't know something. They are afraid of "losing face" in front of their students. Good grief! No one knows everything about everything!!! I think that you will get more respect from your students if you relate to them as a REAL person, and not someone sitting on Mount Olympus making pronouncements.
Just say "That's a great question! You've stumped me. Let's see who can find the answer first." Then you research it and she researches it, and whomever finds the answer first tells the other.
you are right about that - when teachers are asked about something complicated, turn it into homework or something, but
i meant something more primitive, they sometimes ask me just to translate words
how do you say "sluka" in Enblish? How do you say "hrot" in English... etc
I will tell you examples of words that I don't know in English - I am looking them up in an online dictionary now -
hrot - tip, point, edge - typical, i know all those words passively
chudy - stilts - never came across the word in ENglish
svicen - candlestick (i thought it was a candle stand)
provizorni - provisional, makeshift - I knew the words passively
etc . you may tell me hundreds of Czech words that I won't be able to translate into English
but as a professional interpreter, I am trained to prepare vocabulary related to the topic I am supposed to interpret and then I improvise
when I get in trouble
but with students they suddenly shoot a word at you
I have heard that a good idea is to tell them Look it up in a dictionary. Because I am not teaching translation, but English.
Research = look it up in the dictionary. Same idea.
Main point is not to get defensive or try to get "points" out of the encounter. Just be good-humored about it and find the answer one way or another (whether you or the student figure it out first).
sozobe wrote:Research = look it up in the dictionary. Same idea.
Main point is not to get defensive or try to get "points" out of the encounter. Just be good-humored about it and find the answer one way or another (whether you or the student figure it out first).
OK, so I should not care what they think about my vocabulary skills
Always remember that you can learn something from your students as well.
Coolwhip wrote:Always remember that you can learn something from your students as well.
well i kept telling them that last school term but few seemed to appreciate that - i think they are a bit rigid in terms of expecting teachers to be flawless
and all responsible for how much the students learn while i keep telling them
that both sides have a job which is trying to work hard on something
My daughter (now entering 3rd grade) last year wrote a report about dolphins. She asked the teacher if it was o-k to interview a marine biologist to get her information - the teacher said it was alright as long as she used her owns words in the report. In the report my daughter wrote that dolphins live in the ocean and in rivers (which is true there are river dolphins). The teacher said that dolphins living in rivers were incorrect and she made my daughter take that statement out of her final report (this was all after I saw the final report).
My daughter of course knew she was right - my answer to her was that her teacher knows a lot of things, but cannot possibly know everything. Her teacher is not an expert on dolphins and most people unless they are dolphin experts even know that dolphins live in rivers.
I think the best approach is to be honest - you are human - you cannot possibly know everything about a subject (even if you were a so-called expert in the subject) and you can also make mistakes. If a student were to ask something about what you do not know, I would suggest telling them, but that you will help them find out and show them how they could research it.
In my experience, if you set yourself up as the The Expert, then not only will it be much harder to deal with this situation, but students will try to challenge you more.
Not only can you have the attitude that you can learn something from your students, you can also promote the idea that the smartest person is not the one who knows the most -- s/he's the one who keeps learning.
Good way of putting it, jkunrein, I like it.
The best tip I ever got from a teacher was when I was teaching computer classes. She suggested I "turn the tables" on the students to head off any of this sort of stuff. Instead of waiting for them to try and throw iout "gotcha" questions you invite stundet to play "Stump the teacher" (Or "instructor" in my case.)
You challange then to find questions that you CAN'T answer. That takes the wind out of the smarta$$es and the students end up looking up lots of obscure stuff and they learn from that too.
I used to give out baseball cards to anyone that could stump me. It cost me about $1 a week and turned out to be a lot of fun. I learned a lot from it too!
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