Vocabulary problems

Yesterday, one of my students asked me to look over some materials she had prepared for a presentation she was going to give last night about using ‘How much and how many.’ She had asked one of the teachers at our city uni for some help with the English vocabulary part of her presentation and the teacher had supplied the necessary vocabulary, or so my student thought. I always advise my students to come ask me or another teacher at the school whenever they have doubts, the uni teachers are terrible. Apparently, they had a discussion over what the English word for ‘coach’ was, and the uni teacher has told her that the correct word for ‘coach’ in English was ‘technical team.’ Seeing as she was worried, my student decided to check on this and when I told her the correct word was then worried that her uni teacher would penalize her points for not using the word she had provided for her. I had to calm her down by telling her that if her teacher did that, I would go there with another native teacher to put her uni teacher straight. This kind of story is normal and heard quite often in my city, the local public uni tend to hire people with very limited language skills to give classes for the Letras course. I’ve heard my students complaining almost every day since we moved to this city. It is a problem when students ask their uni teacher to clarify as the normal response top this request is usually something like this:

1. If I’ve never heard of the word, it doesn’t exist
2. I’ve read many books in English and you cannot question my knowledge of English vocabulary
3. Okay, the class is finished for today, go outside and don’t let anyone see you or they won’t pay me
4. Today, we are going to study the verb ‘be’ in silence. Open your book and copy….
5. The reason you’re not understanding is because you learning to speak American English and I’m teaching you in British English

The list is endless, of course, for students taking Letras who didn’t bother taking the time to actually study English, knowing that they will get the same diploma as their English speaking classmates, this isn’t a problem. Well not until they try to actually get a teaching gig. It is quite sad though, to see the look on my students faces when they realize that all that excitement they felt when they found out they had passed to study in a public uni, disappears when they realize that their teachers aren’t all that good and that that their teacher isn’t really going to try to teach anything to them but just go through the motions to get their salary. Most complaints that I hear are about the lack of teacher knowledge, lack of preparation by the teacher for the upcoming class, the teacher taking leaves of absence by calling one of the students saying things like ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m going to be drunk this afternoon.’ Yeah, the second one was a real excuse a uni teacher gave to his students last week. Its terrible that my students have to come to me to solve doubts for them, simply because their uni teacher isn’t up to the task. I don’t mind helping them out, I usually have plenty of free time between classes to give them pointers, correct mistakes and help them to get their presentations in order, etc. Its just sad that their own teachers, already receiving a government salary, can’t muster up a bit of the same enthusiasm

Teacher standards

My wife was telling me last night about some students from the uni complaining about their English teacher. To be honest this complaining about teachers at the uni in our city is a common neverending situation caused mainly by the uni administrators hiring teachers that will work for the lowest possible salary which results in some pretty abysmal teachers working there. There doesn’t seem to be any really checking up on the quality of the teachers, the really bad ones usually just give 100 in all tests just to keep the students from complaining. They had a teacher last year that couldn’t give class at all, she would just arrive without saying anything to the students, give them a cheap and nasty ‘verb to be’ photocopy to do and after 20 minutes dismiss them from class to hide around the uni till their next class started with the instructions not to let any coordinator see them so she would get paid. She was so bad that students refused to have class with her any more   This latest complaint is about the teacher who gives class to the languages students who speak no second language (yes, it is possible to enter the uni here in Brazil with no knowledge of English and get a degree in English languages). Apparently she cannot speak properly and keeps telling the students wrongly how to pronounce words and gives wrong definitions for words too. This is on top of the teacher two weeks ago who told her students that she had read a thousand books and that if she didn’t know an English word then it didn’t exist (she was talking about the expression ‘mother tongue). A lot of my students tell me that when they first found out that they had passed in the uni entrance exam they were so happy that all their studying English and Spanish had paid off, but now they were so sad that they had these terrible low quality teachers who knew less than they did. Some of them tell me that they actually feel depressed knowing they have to go there every night, so sad   There was a change of admin this year and I know a lot of people had hoped this would change things around but since the start of the year the students tell me they have had three or four different English teachers in varying degrees of lower and lower levels of English. The sad thing is that some of these Letras students were telling me that they hope to become good teachers in the future but that they see their dream slowly slipping further and further away as UEG fails them semester after semester. Such a sad situation

CTG

Yesterday evening I didn’t have class in the evening so I went to a so-called academic week of presentations (if you can call them that) at CTG in our city. I usually go every year but not to see the presentations as they are terrible. It is usually to catch up with friends I haven’t seen for a long time who study in UEG, the local public university. I have no idea who the guy was giving last night’s presentation but it was bad. On a scale of 1 to 10 with ten being the worst possible it ranked at about a 20. Don’t take my word for it, most people who were there went to watch a soccer match in the room next door instead of listening to this guy waffling on about who knows what. There was a data show available and a decent sound system too, I have no idea why he didn’t try to use it in the presentation instead of just using it to show translations of stuff that he didn’t really understand himself. I would love to have this kind of stuff in my classroom. One good reason for going to these yearly things is that I am always reminded to make sure that my classes never get as bad or boring as this.

As you can see from the photo above, I bumped into a lot of old friends and ex-students too. In the photo with me are Ariel and Larissa, my old MEC students. They are so cute and funny They study Letras at the same uni as Roberta, but a year ahead. We didn’t see anything of the presentation but spent time catching up with other old friends and students of ours