A Personal Experience

Mandana Arfa Kaboodvand, Iran

Mandana Arfa Kaboodvand has been teaching English as a foreign language for more than 22 years. From almost the beginning she fell in love with the job and decided that it was just what she wanted to pursue for the rest of her life. So far she has never regretted her decision.
E-mail: m_arfa@yahoo.com

I began and continued my work as a teacher for 11 years at a small language institute in Iran specialized in teaching young and teenage learners. Many of the students had their first experience in learning English in our institute and were aged between the ages six and nine and many continued studying with us until they were 17 which meant that we teachers had the opportunity to teach and see most of them throughout those years and witnessed their transformation both language and personality wise. We tended to get very close to them and be involved in many aspects of their lives. Thus even after they had left the institute a great number of them kept in touch. After so many years, I am still in touch with a number of them (not necessarily through facebook, but face to face and via email and telephone.)

At that time, most of us teachers, knew a lot about the learners’ families, friends, wishes, hobbies, happy and sad moments, about the presents they had received for their birthdays, what had made them angry, their future plans, … When they were angry we listened attentively and tried to sympathize and when they were happy, we shared the happy moment with them and being emotionally involved meant that the happiness we felt for their happiness was most often genuine. Sometimes even we shared a little gossip or our not so hidden secrets. Most of the teachers of the institute were very young, but there was this lovely and at the same time strict and serious principal who along with some of the more experienced staff members observed every step we and the students took and gave us feedback, support and help, and loved the learners even more than we did. We teachers learned a lot from her and counted on her advice.

Some of those students continued to attend my private group classes of three to seven people, which I held at home after they turned 17 and now have advanced knowledge of English. More importantly, quite a few have chosen to become language teachers. Some are teaching besides their main jobs as medical doctors, engineers, managers, etc and some have made teaching their main careers. The good thing is some volunteered to pass teacher training courses and a few are doing a master’s or a PhD in language teaching.

What I would like to infer from all this is that in most cases you cannot teach language communicatively without engaging in the aspects of the lives of the students they wish to share with you. It does not deprive them of their opportunity to learn the language; it creates new horizons. Through the new language, they can gain confidence to speak their minds. Obviously, you cannot always help them with their problems or emotional dilemmas, but that does not mean that you should not listen to them. Trying to make themselves heard and understood will give the learners of any age another reason to learn the language. The new language sometimes gives them that courage they might not necessarily have had before, to say things they feel they really need to share with someone and otherwise left unsaid.

This is obviously a very big burden on the language teachers. We do have a lot of responsibilities in the classes and loads of works to be completed concerning language teaching itself. In addition and maybe more importantly, we are not psychotherapists or counselors and particularly when dealing with a learner from a culture we are not familiar with, we may not know the right path that can really help him/her in that situation. Therefore, it may happen that we do not give the right piece of advice or support. But at the same time, can we really set boundaries and neglect the wish of the learners to talk to us? Can I ask my students to talk about their good moments and not the bad ones?! I guess not! So what can be done?

In many cases being a good listener is all it takes. The learners should know that we really care about them. However, apparently there are situations that being a good listener is not enough. Then I believe the solution is for all language teachers to receive some kind of training on how to direct and help the students to seek help from the experts if and when required, the if and when being determined by the training being given. Many of us learn to do so by trial and error and based on our intuition, which is of course not the best possible way and makes our job much more difficult.

All in all, we language teachers help our learners by opening new doors for our learners by giving them knowledge of the new language and by caring and sharing and that is what makes our job so special.

Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.