Hey Naturals! How are you? Welcome to a Go Natural
English lesson with me, your English teacher, Gabby.
I'm happy that you're here today because we're going to talk
about how to find your best English
teacher. Now you know that I encourage you to learn independently
and to be an active, self
starter, to practice on your own because
you're not always going to have a teacher with you and I don't think
that you only can learn from a teacher. I think that we can teach
ourselves a lot. However, when you want
to push to the next level, it's very
good to have a teacher to guide you, to show you how you can
improve and where to go next. So, I want
to talk to you in today's lesson about what to look for
in the ideal teacher, maybe if you're taking
an English class in a group or if
you're looking for a tutor to work with you 1-on-1.
I also would like to recommend Live Lingua because
they help you find your perfect English teacher
for you. So I've partnered with them and you can find
out how to sign up for your first
lesson at LiveLingua and GoNaturalEnglish.com/LiveLingua
GoNaturalEnglish.com/LiveLingua so they will match you
with the best teacher for you and it takes a lot of the work
and the thinking out of it so you don't have to spend a long time
searching for the perfect teacher or interviewing
teachers and spending a lot of time trying to find the right one.
But let's talk about what you need to look for
in order to find that perfect match. We think about
matching in terms of finding a partner
or maybe a job or your friends, but
I think it's also very important when you match with your teacher.
You know, thinking about the language teachers that I've had
I always felt like I learned more when I got
along with the teacher. I remember
my French teacher who would allow me to
write songs in French and she would give me feedback
on them. I could talk with her about French movies
and I really like that she
appreciated the arts and we could talk about that together. Or, one
of my Spanish teachers who also loved theater
and she allowed us to create our own plays
in Spanish. I really loved that. Those are some fun
memories I have of my language teachers and I
hope that you'll have great memories of your language teachers
who you match well with too. So let's
start with you. I made this beautiful venn diagram
two circles representing you and your best teacher
and things that I want you to have in common, too.
You: it's not just about your teacher, after all.
You have to be ready to be a motivated
student and to be ready to learn. You need to know
your goals for language learning. What is it you want to accomplish
through your lessons? What exactly
is your goal? Why are you learning English? What's your motivation?
Are you motivated by something that English can help you
get? Maybe a better job? Maybe a
new friend? Maybe networking? Maybe travel?
What is it that motivates you? Preparation.
This goes along with being an independent, self
starter. Don't depend on your teacher to
give you everything. Don't show up to your lessons
without preparing. How do you prepare?
I think that in our education systems around the world
we've become too dependent
on the teacher to give us everything and we've lost that ability
to prepare and to lead the way for our
lessons, but that's not a good thing. We shouldn't rely on
the teacher for everything. I think that you should come to your lessons
with an idea of what you want to learn with questions
So this is another point that, if you start to study
on your own, then you will have doubts, you will have questions.
It's a really good idea to bring those to your lessons. Now
let's go over here to your best teacher. I think
these things will be pretty clear
because of course you want an experienced teacher. You want someone who
knows how to communicate lessons
in a clear way and sometimes experience gives the teacher
a better ability to do that. Qualifications
are also really important. If your teacher has a degree
in teaching, or certificate, that can show you that
they have the ability to be a good teacher. Now qualifications
aren't the only important thing, but as you can see, I have several points
here, so let's talk about modeling, being a model.
No, I don't mean a supermodel. I don't mean your teacher needs to be good-looking.
I mean that they, he or she, needs to be a model of
what you want to learn. So if you want to learn English
with an American accent. I would recommend that you look for an American
teacher and not a British teacher or an Australian teacher.
But if you want to learn a South African accent, then look for a South
African teacher, or whatever it is that you want to learn, look for
someone who can model that. And of course,
your best teacher will really love teaching.
There's nothing worse than a teacher who is not
enjoying being a teacher, so look for someone who is really
passionate and knows why they want to be a teacher, just like you know
why you want to be a learner!
Ok, here are some things that I think you should have in common
with your teacher, ideally. Career. So, I'm not saying
that you should be a teacher, or that your teacher should have the
exact same career as you, but, let's say you're a
pharmacist and your English teacher enjoyed Biology
class in high school, that would be helpful.
Or maybe you could find, if you're a business person, you could find
a teacher who has experience in business
and that will really help you when you're discussing
advanced English to help you in your career.
Speaking of interests, it will be so much more fun if you have
some interests in common with your teacher. When you're practicing
advanced, free-flowing conversation. If you
have some similar hobbies or passions or
interests that you can discuss, it'll be so
much better because your teacher will be familiar with the vocabulary
that you need to discuss that topic when you want to discuss
outside of your lessons, maybe if you're at a dinner party or you're
networking, you'll be ready to go in-depth
on those topics. Character. So your
teacher's character, whether they're more Type A or
Type B. Type A, we say someone is
more organized and a bit rigid
sometimes, maybe strict. Type B is a little
more easy-going, free-flowing.
These are two different main personality types and you may
prefer one or the other depending on your personality or your
character. Now character also means something else. It also means
the values or the behaviors that we have and of course
you want a teacher who will be punctual and honest
and things like that. Schedule.
Whatever your schedule is, you need to find a teacher who can
match that so that your schedules fit. I think this is quite clear.
It's helpful when you can meet your teacher at the same
time each week or several times a week instead
of trying to find a time that works that's always
different for you each week. It can be a bit complicated and take a lot of time.
Learning style or teaching style. Do you want a teacher
who is going to tell you "Do this, this
and this." Or do you prefer a teacher who is going to ask you questions
and explore the language with you? There's different teaching styles
and you might want to think about what you prefer and find a teacher
who is willing and comfortable with teaching you in that way.
Age and gender. Now of course,
working with any teacher will help you but I do think that it's
valuable, at least once, to try working with a teacher who is in a
similar age range and the same gender as you because
we learn to copy our teachers and so if you
want to express yourself in a way that is
most appropriate, or how you want to appear in
the world, then you want to work with a teacher who is
the kind of person who you are or who you want to be.
If you, for example, you want to learn more slang or
vocabulary that someone in your age range or
gender and your kind of person, maybe
someone in your career or with your
interests uses a different set of vocabulary than someone
who wants to appear in another way. These are slight differences
but I think it's interesting to work with someone who
is similar to you, but also work with teachers who are different
from you. It's important to try learning
from different people because in the real world you're
going to have to interact with all different kinds of people,
genders, different ages, different backgrounds cultures,
different interests, and so when you meet people who are not
like you, you're going to feel much more comfortable speaking with
them on a variety of topics if you work with a teacher who is different
than you, too. So I'm saying try out different teachers.
Now if this sounds like a lot of work to find the perfect
teacher for you, it can be. It can be fun but it can take a lot of
time, a lot of trial and error. So I would recommend
to try LiveLingua because the awesome thing about
their online live lessons with qualified, native
English teachers, English-speaker teachers,
is they're going to match you with the teacher who they think is
best for you, the best fit for you.
Take the time and effort out of searching for your perfect teacher and
try them out. Learn more at GoNaturalEnglish.com/LiveLingua
GoNaturalEnglish.com/LiveLingua So I hope you'll try that out. I hope you enjoyed
this lesson, this tip for your English
lessons and I will talk to you again soon. Have a wonderful day.
Bye for now!