What Makes a GOOD English Teacher?

Hey there, it's Hadar. And this is the accents way. And this is the place for you if you are a non native speaker of English who is looking to feel confident, clear and proud when speaking English. Now, have you ever taken private lessons with a tutor or an English teacher or even group classes and you weren't sure if this is the right teacher for you? Have you ever wondered whether or not you're just wasting your time or actually sitting seeing progress? So this episode is about how to know if you are learning with the right teacher for you and if you are getting the best out of your training. So let's get started. The first thing you need to ask yourself is what is the emotion that you're experiencing once the class has ended? Do you feel this bubbly excitement of, say, success and improvement? Do you feel defeated and challenged but you have clarity? You know what you need to work on? Do you feel tired but happy? Do you feel good about yourself or do you feel like a failure? Do you beat yourself up? Do you feel like you'll never be able to get it? Do you feel self conscious? Are you ashamed? A good teacher will never let you feel bad about yourself because a good teacher will always empower you, make you feel great about yourself, show you your strengths, but also your weaknesses with a clear strategy on how to improve that. They will not keep you confused or stuck or feeling self conscious and feeling like a failure. You know, I was once talking to a teacher that used to teach at this really big language school and he said that the management had asked them to understand what the biggest struggles of their students are and then to accentuate them, make them a big deal instead of helping them resolve it. Why? Because it was their marketing strategy. It kept them in the school, it kept them taking more and more and more classes. Now that's a horrible strategy if you ask me, but unfortunately people do that. So you, as an English learner, you need to understand what it is that you're experiencing. And if these are negative feelings, then something is wrong because this is not how it's supposed to be. Another thing you need to ask yourself is who does most of the talking? If you find yourself just sitting there and listening to the teacher talk about English and about things and about rules and explaining all of these things to you, and you find yourself not speaking, speaking as much. It's a problem because you need to do most of the speaking with feedback, with guidance, with direction, but you need to do most of the speaking. So if you find yourself mostly listening and reading or writing, then you might be missing out on a better opportunity to practice. Because if you're learning just passively, constantly, it's just like watching a YouTube video. You want to put it to practice right away and as much as possible. So this is something, by the way, that you can tell your teacher that you want to do. You can say, hey, I feel like I'm not speaking enough. Let's try a session where we just talk about things that bother me, a few subjects, maybe read an article and then talk about it. But I want to do most of the talking and you just give me feedback. Now, of course, when you go into a lesson, it's easier to just sit down and listen and be less active. But you got to catch yourself, because if that's the situation, you're wasting your time and money, right? So although it's easier and more convenient, you got to step out of your comfort zone. You got to feel uncomfortable, you got to push yourself, and you got to stand your ground and say what you need and communicate it clearly to your teacher. The third thing you need to ask yourself is, are you both aligned with what is the best way way for you to learn? What is the best content to discuss? What is the best way for you to get feedback? Some people prefer to get feedback right away every time they make a mistake on every single thing. Others prefer to get feedback only on the important things. And some may prefer to get feedback only at the end so they don't lose their train of thoughts as they're trying to speak. Speak. You need to understand what works best for you, and you need to communicate that to your teacher. Because some teachers are sometimes teaching because that's what they think is best. And if someone tells you, no, no, no, I know what's best for you, you listen to me, and that person is not empathetic or is sensitive to your needs. Same thing with content. If your teacher teaches you things that are not interesting to you or you feel you'll never use, then you need to say, hey, this doesn't work for me. Let's try something else. I want to talk about this and I need to talk about that. And this is my world of content. This is where I come from. I want to discuss technology and negotiations and practice small talk. And I don't want so much to talk about hypothetical situations of Martha and Arthur at the zoo. Understand that even if you are with the same teacher, there isn't just one method of teaching English, and you need to stay. See if something's working for you is it getting your results. Do you understand it? Do you pick it up quickly? If not, there is a problem with the method, not with you, okay? It's not you that is the problem. Maybe it's the method, maybe it's the energy, maybe it's how you feel. Because when you feel self conscious, the brain shuts down and you don't learn anything new. But when you feel empowered and open and challenged in a good way, then you are open to change. In order for you to learn something deeply, in order for it to stick, you need to associate good emotion as you're learning. And if the feeling is of frustration and fear, then it's not going to stick, okay? So you need to be aware of that and change whatever needs to change in order for you to create the best strategy circumstances for yourself. The fourth thing is do you know your 20%? According to the Pareto principle, 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. So if we look at the business world, for example, then we can say that 20% of the products lead to 80% of the revenue or 20% of the clients are responsible for 80% of the income. So in English, it's very much the same thing. If you work on the areas where you struggle with, okay, whether it's specific grammar rules or specific sounds or an element of fluency, if you work on that and just on that, it will get you 80% of the result of where you want to be. So you need to know what are the things that will get you the best results. And your teacher needs to recognize those things and tell you, communicate to you what they are. So whether or not you need to work on your present tense, because everything else is great, but you always get stuck when you're true, when you try to speak in the present tense. And what do you need to do in order to improve that? Or let's say that in terms of clarity, you have all these things in your speech, but you don't need to work on all the sounds. It's enough that you work on the R and on your rhythm and if it will give you a huge boost to your clarity. So your job is to know what your 20% is. What are the things that you still struggle with, but if you resolve them, it will kind of like open up the gates to fluency and you will feel a lot more fluent, you'll get stuck less and you'll be a lot clearer and focus just on that. And you two need to do that together. So if that hasn't been communicated to you just yet. Then you need to ask your teacher to tell you what those things are. And ask your teacher to focus on those things as you're learning. But if they don't know and they start giving you all of these things, and every time they give you feedback, they give you a lot of notes about everything and you feel overwhelmed and confused, then there's a problem. Even when you get feedback, the feedback should be the 20%, the things that will get you the best results because you don't need to start correcting every single thing. It will be super inhibiting and almost impossible to grow from there. The last thing is, do you feel intellectually challenged? Do you feel that your teacher sees you as a peer, as a person who can conduct a conversation, an intelligent conversation, with this language barrier? Yes, with less vocabulary, but still the content is engaging and interesting. If you feel that they're speaking to you like a little kid, it will make you feel like a little kid. So you need to feel that your intelligence is not compromised. You need to be able to talk about deep things, even if it's not perfect, even if you make mistakes, and even if you're lacking the vocabulary, your teacher is there to help you, right? But you don't need to feel like you are only talking about stupid things just because it's an English class. No, that's the wrong direction. And of course you can tell your teacher that and change that. Take charge of your training. Okay? So to conclude, you have to be responsible for the time that you're investing. Don't leave all responsibility to the teacher. Sometimes they don't know what they're doing. Sometimes they think that they're doing the best thing for you, when in fact it's not. And it's like in a relationship, right? If you're not going to speak up, nothing will change. And then at the end, you will quit. Quit and everyone loses, okay? You lose time and money and they lose an opportunity to really help someone. Okay? So communicate your needs. Understand your needs. Understand what is not working for you, and then change it. So to conclude, I want you to take action and answer these two questions in the comments below. The first thing is tell us about one really good experience with a teacher and one not so good experience. Experience with a teacher and why that happened and what did you do about it? The second thing is what to your opinion, makes a good teacher, right? What are you looking for in a good teacher? So I named my five things I'm really curious to hear. What are the things that you are looking for in a good teacher. So just so you know, you don't really have to take private lessons or group classes in order to improve your English. You can do that on your own. And if you want to do it watching YouTube videos and using online resources resources, I'd be happy to help you. So don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications. And you can also visit my website to get a lot of free stuff, free courses, and really feel the improvement improve significantly. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next week in the next video. Bye.