Teach English in Hebeitun Zhen - Tianjin

Problems for learners in ItalyAs EFL classes are taught in english, learning it in a country like Italy, where english is neither the native nor the official second language, results to be a big issue. Consequently, learning english in Italy makes relevant a series of problems because when the students have finished their lesson, they come back to a non-english speaking context. Even if this situation is inescapable, an EFL teacher does not have to let him/herself be brought down but rather hatch effective teaching strategies so as to keep running his/her classes in english. Hence, such students will have to cope with two types of general problems: A) to make the effort to grasp any language item presented directly in english B) spontaneous attitude to translate both from italian into english when it is his/her turn to speak and when the teacher turns to him/her. Didactically, if the teacher were teaching vocabulary he/she could not avoid using english by speaking slowly and support his/her explanation with an extensive use of visuals; if teaching language points, he/she can use the board together with example sentences from which the students infer the grammar. Thus, using english is rather more possible than we can ever think. Regarding the avoidance of the translation from and to the student?s native language, first of all he/she should politely discourage to carry on learning the language in that way. On this hand, one could argue it would be necessary that the teacher knew the native language of their students so as to prevent such an attitude since he/she expect how and that it happens. Instead, to tackle successfully the translation hurdles, the teacher should have rather been gone through EFL classes before the students. In fact, only if we have learnt a second language in the same way the student is learning it, it becomes possible to foresee how the student?s mind works while dealing with the language we have learnt first. Such predictions are useful to dislodge the following (sometimes fossilized) potential mistakes. 1. Transitive english verbs are very often turned into intransitive, or vice versa. Therefore, a preposition before the object is needed. E.g. ?I tell you? ? ?I tell to you? ? E.g. ?I say to you? ? ?I say you?. ?Say? and ?tell? are often used inappropriately, if not wrongly, as in italian the corresponding ones are not different but according to specific contexts. 2. Part of the speech ? very often english words part of the speech does not match with the italian commonly translated word. E.g. english sentence SORRY IF I Am LATE Interjection conjunction subject verb adjective The crucial point for an italian learner is based on how ?LATE? is currently translated, that is by a noun introduced by a preposition, simply because in standard italian the above english sentence is hardly told but in that way. Actually, the point here is not whether the translation is well done or not, but for the fact that the learner?s knowledge of the english ?LATE? is wrong because it is associated to a word which would push him/her to produce the following different, wrong english sentence: SORRY IF I AM IN LATE Shortly, a good translation should filter not only the meaning from one language to the other, but also take into high consideration what the part of the speech the word in question is. 3. False friends ? Let?s focus on the word ?PRETEND?. It is currently known that ?PRETEND? is a verb which means ?to feign? or ?to give a false appearance of something or somebody?. Although a highly educated english man knows that the meaning mentioned above is not the only one, an italian learner of english will hardly use ?PRETEND? in such a sense. It is very interesting to notice that in this particular case, what in english is not the first meaning according to a usage frequency rate, from an italian point of view ?PRETEND? in such a sense would be considered a false friend. Conversely, if we mean ?PRETEND? in its synonym ?ARROGATE? or ?CLAIM? which actually mean ?put forward a claim and assert right or possession of? as in the example sentence "The braver commander can pretend the title of King", it would be easily understood, and then used, by an italian. In conclusion, in order to overcome such problems, an EFL teacher should be able to develop strategies which clear up the doubts mentioned above beforehand. To do so, a teacher should either know the native language of their students or having learnt english as a second language and mastered it so well that he/she could prevent and then drive off those troubles by contrasting the two languages. The key to successfully achieve such a goal does not consist in translating but in comparing the italian and the english context of use in english. This would be possible and workable at an ideal level of effectiveness if the teacher were bicultural rather than bilingual; if not a high proficiency in both how languages work would also produce really good results.