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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  2791 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Help request: spoken English

I feel bad for not offering to help directly since I'm in an ESL program but I'm just starting. There's so much stuff we do as native speakers that we don't notice or couldn't explain, I really wonder how I'm gonna teach it when I get there.



Devac  ·  2791 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I feel bad for not offering to help directly since I'm in an ESL program but I'm just starting.

Honestly, I'm surprised so many people even felt like responding at all. It was a request and each response went above my expectations. It's the intent that counts anyway :).

    I really wonder how I'm gonna teach it when I get there.

This comes mainly from my experience in tutoring: it's weird and awkward at first, it's fairly quick to get used to it even if the feeling will not subside. Most of the time I was feeling like a dumbass who could use a tutor himself. But you get used to it, pupils often have the same questions despite age and education differences. What helped me the most was to write questions and then attempt to explain them to either:

- No-one, just recording myself and listening to it back to see how it went.

- Someone who I know but is a layman on that topic.

Another trick I'm using boils down to "try to write an explanation without using any complex words or syntax". Pretty much Simple English Wikipedia level of writing.

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