Student False Beliefs Generic Speaking

Speaking is perfectible

I can speak my own language outside class

All native speakers speak perfect English

Native speakers understand the rules of their language

The first myth many adult learners have regarding speaking is that speaking is perfectible. I have never met a single adult learner who has perfected his or her speaking skills in English up to native speaker standard.

This doesn’t deter the new arrival that they will be able to master not just the productive and receptive skills of listening but all the prosodic features of language and even accent.

The only solution here is to let the learner down again gently. Being too blunt can result in demotivation. But ultimately the student has to realize that their expectations are usually unrealistic with regard to speaking.

Most adult learners believe that speaking their own language outside of class won’t affect their ability to improve their speaking inside class.  I don’t agree. The more they speak their own language the less their English speaking will improve. A small number of students have the self-discipline to speak English outside class –but they are few in number. Most simply relapse in to their native tongue the moment they leave the classroom. The result is their speaking is the skill which improves least during the course. There is little the teacher can do except exhort and be an example.

I always describe my own experience in Mexico when I arrived there as an adult with minimal Spanish. I was living in a Spanish speaking household where no-one spoke a word of English. In fact t in the pueblo where I lived not a single person spoke English. This was ideal for me because I was effectively in a total immersion environment. I know that if there had been one single person who spoke English I would have sought them out and made myself their friend –such was the urge to relax and speak in my own language.

Learners believe that all native speakers speak ‘perfect’ English. ‘Perfect’ means they speak English like it is written in the text books they have used to learn. The teacher knows that this is not true and that native speakers speak with grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, repetitions, and ‘umms’ and  ‘ehs’ and other fillers. Teachers know that this is how the language is spoken. Learners don’t. They take a long time to accept this as ‘good language’ and even longer to appreciate this fact –most learners never appreciate it. Most native speakers aren’t even aware of it!

Finally, learners think that native speakers understand the rules of their language. Of course the teachers know that they don’t. Most native speakers are clueless with regard to understanding their own language.

 A formal course of training and instruction is needed for native speakers to understand how their own language works. Learners don’t understand this and neither do native speakers. I had been a science teacher for 15 years before I retrained as an English teacher. It was only doting this course that I realized how my language was constructed. Even after many years of teaching English I still get questions bout language to which I am unable to give an adequate answer.

This is why untrained language teachers are of limited use-even if they are native speakers. In my experience the trained teacher who is not a native speaker can be a very effective teacher–especially at the beginner and intermediate level.