Learning a language and teaching English at the same time | General discussion | Forum

Hi,

I don't know if there are any fellow language teachers out there but I if there are I want to ask you if you have the same experience as me when it comes to learning a language when you are working as a language teacher.

I think most teachers will agree with me on the following statement. When you teach a language it is good to have a certain knowledge of what problems your learners are most likely to have (depending on their native language). May it be pronunciation of some sounds, certain grammar points or cultural difference.
If you don't know this when arriving in the country or starting to teach a certain nationality you will soon notice that certain learners makes the same mistakes, just to be clear, I'm talking about learning a language as a second language (the first language they acquire).

If you also start learning their language you will soon find out why they are making these mistakes as you will probably make the same mistakes (in reverse) in their language, too a certain extent.
Learning their language is a good way to look at the language they are learning from their point of view and you will also feel more empathy for them.

The problem for me as an English teacher is however, that I have to speak English everyday when I work, after all that's what I'm getting paid for.
Now the whole point of this post is that even if I'm teaching a language I can still learn it with "reverse engineering". Let me explain, admittedly my Chinese is not that good, yet, however I can still learn a lot from my students about the language.
How I do this is I know what mistakes they are likely to make and if they make a mistake it always tells me something about the difference between the languages.
I tend to use this mainly for the grammar, e.g. if the student says: "I like red big cars." this tells me that because the student made this mistake it is likely that the adjective word order in this language is different from mine and if several students makes the same mistake it will just give me more "evidence" for my thesis or they've just been taught the wrong order previously.

Are there any other language teachers that has any similar experience about this?

Also just as note, the above example was made up and when I teach English I don't just see it as a way for me to improve my own language learning. I don't stand around in the classroom making notes of what problems I'm likely to encounter.
However, I like to teach English and I like language exchanges, so the point I'm making is basically that by analysing the mistakes someone is making when trying to learn a language you already know you can use their mistakes to your advantage and you should of course correct them as well and help them improve their language skills.

Let me know what you think or if you have any similar experiences with teaching a language or just from languages exchanges.