Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 212 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing great and that your English learning is going well, and that you're ready to practice your listening comprehension with another episode.
And today I want to talk about why I like teaching English.
I did a video some time ago.
I uploaded a YouTube video talking about teaching and the positives and negatives.
I think I focused more on the negatives in that video because there were some interesting concepts and ideas that I wanted to address.
In today's episode, I want to talk about the positives.
I want to talk about Why I like teaching English.
And I mentioned in several episodes that I opened up availability for people to take conversation classes with me just for speaking practice.
I'm still doing that at the time of recording this.
And I've mentioned again and again that I don't know how much longer I'll continue to do this.
But at least for right now, I'm going to continue.
And so I'm going to put the link to my teacher profile down below in the episode description below, just in case any of you want to check that out and possibly take a conversation class with me.
If, at some point in the future, you click on the link and I no longer have availability, It's probably because I stopped doing this and I'm just focusing on creating all the content for you guys.
So as of right now, you can still sign up for a conversation class if you want.
So that link is down below.
And remember to check out my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak at normal speed.
I speak fast.
So that link is down below.
And you can also check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to native speakers from all around the country.
It's really interesting and it's great practice for your listening.
Eventually, you'll need to be able to understand other people talking, other people's conversations.
So this is great practice for you.
That link is also down below.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
OK, let me talk about a handful of different reasons why I like teaching.
I think I have five main topics here that I want to talk about.
So the first reason why I like giving English classes is that I like giving students an ideal context for practicing their speaking.
Speaking is the skill that is the hardest when it comes to learning a language, and one of the reasons why it can feel harder is that the context itself is more difficult.
It's more.
Nerve-wracking actually causes you stress and anxiety and it makes you feel nervous because you are kind of performing right.
And so my job as an English teacher is to provide the student with the ideal context, the optimal context that will kind of pacify their nerves, meaning make them feel less nervous.
That's what I do.
And so I manage the conversation, so that the student doesn't have to worry about managing the conversation themselves.
Sometimes when I take classes as a language student, I take classes with a tutor.
I have to manage the conversation.
And I don't like that because I don't think it should be the student's responsibility to do that.
They should just worry about speaking and speaking as well as they can.
And they shouldn't need to worry about other things like managing the conversation and guiding the conversation, asking all the questions.
But I've had to do that many times as the student.
So, as the teacher, I try to manage the conversation and guide it to the best of my ability and And I try to minimize the amount of awkward silences, for example, because you know, when you have those awkward silences it feels strange.
You feel uncomfortable depending on who you're talking to.
And it just takes you out of the comfortable conversation that you're having.
So I try to minimize those awkward silences.
I try to create an environment where the student feels okay with making mistakes because they This is one of the worst things for people when it comes to speaking.
They don't like making mistakes in front of other people.
But obviously, if they're unwilling to do this, then they'll never get the practice that they need.
They'll never actually speak and just go for it and try to do it.
So it's necessary to to be able to make mistakes.
So I try to create an environment where they don't feel negative.
They don't feel negatively about making mistakes.
And I always give feedback and At the end of the conversation, in the form of a little report where I show them some of their key errors and the corrections to those errors, whether they be a grammatical errors or pronunciation errors.
So this feedback is ideal for this type of speaking practice, because it draws their attention to what they said wrong and how to correct it and it helps them actually practice on their own, study this on their own.
So i think that's part of the ideal speaking practice context as well.
And of course, as the teacher, I modify my speech.
I speak in a way that's more suitable for the student depending on their level.
So I'm not speaking at a level that's too low or too high.
All of this kind of goes into this idea of having an ideal environment for speaking.
And I know that if I can provide this, I'm providing something useful for a student.
I know that this is necessary.
It's something that we need as language learners.
And so I know that if I can provide this, I'm providing a quote unquote necessary service.
So I like that aspect of teaching.
I like being useful in this way.
Another reason why I like teaching is because it's fun talking to students.
It can be pretty entertaining and fun, amusing.
It sometimes just feels like you're talking to a friend or whatever.
I like the cultural exchange that comes from teaching English.
I'm someone who is actually very interested in learning about the world and other cultures outside my own.
And so that's definitely an added benefit here.
I get to become more knowledgeable of the world.
I love learning about countries and even just the geography of different countries.
If you just compare me to the average American, I probably know world geography significantly better than other people.
Not because I'm smart or because I've studied this, but instead because I've had tons of students from all over the world and I've learned about different things.
Regions and cities and cultures and different issues, political issues or whatever in these different areas.
It's really interesting for me.
So I really like that element.
And then just the students themselves are often pretty interesting people.
And, like I said, sometimes it can just feel like talking to a friend, because we end up having a lot of classes together and then after a while it's just like talking to a friend just in a different context, in a language learning context, and so, if you like socializing, this can be a big positive, a big advantage of this type of job.
And so just talking to interesting people, learning about their countries, almost becoming friends with these people, or actually kind of feeling like friends after a while socializing, you know, just communicating.
This is overall a positive thing.
I like this.
Another element that I really enjoy is learning about different types of careers and jobs, because students have all kinds of different interesting jobs.
Not everyone has a super cool career or whatever, but...
If you do this for any length of time, if you teach English online especially, you'll come across all kinds of people with all kinds of jobs.
So just to name a few, like I used to really enjoy when I had students that were pilots and flight attendants people that work on planes.
It was always really interesting for me to learn more of what goes on behind the scenes, as we say, like what happens that the passengers don't really know about.
I like learning about the difficulties of piloting, of landing a plane, and talking to flight attendants is interesting because they'll tell you things that you You might not know as the passenger.
So I always enjoyed talking to those types of people in the past.
I haven't had students like that recently, but in the past I had a handful of pilots and flight attendants.
Business owners.
I often have students that own their own business, and this is really interesting for me because I'm kind of entrepreneurial in a way, and so it's always a very enlightening experience to talk to business owners who have had more success than me or who are further in their career than I am, or even if they're just starting.
I also really enjoy talking to them to see their process, their plans, their methods, their ideas.
That's always super interesting for me.
And I remember one student who was in law enforcement and And I've had students in law enforcement before, but I had this one student who was a very high level person in some type of kind of government agency or law enforcement agency in their country.
And I remember him talking about this really important case that they were working on and they were like spying on this top criminal in their country.
And he was revealing some pretty classified stuff, I think, to me.
Like he was trusting that I wasn't going to somehow find this criminal and tell him oh hey, the police planted a camera on your property and are watching you, because he would tell me about what they were doing and how they were spying on him or whatever.
And I always thought that He probably shouldn't be telling me this as some stranger, but he trusted me.
So I thought that that was pretty interesting.
So I've had students who are musicians.
I remember having one student who was a pretty successful musician, to be honest, and I think, Actually I had a couple that were successful musicians now that I think about it, who were able to make a very good living, meaning earn a lot of money, from their music, and their music videos had a lot of views.
And that was cool.
And then I've also just had students who are minor celebrities I would call them like they're somewhat famous people in their country, probably not in the US, but in their country.
So, for example, I've had a student who was a famous actress in her country, and I've had famous reporters, a somewhat famous sports coach, a couple filmmakers.
So sometimes I get to talk to semi-famous people.
I never know who they are because they're famous in other countries, but once i look them up afterwards i see that people in their country know who they are, so that's pretty cool, okay.
Another thing that i like about teaching english is that it makes me think critically.
It helps me to be a more critical thinker overall.
I get asked questions about English or just.
These are grammar-related questions or pronunciation-related questions, vocabulary-related questions, a lot of technical questions that I have to think really hard about.
These aren't questions that have an obvious answer that every native speaker knows.
Sometimes I have to think critically about About why something is the way it is in English.
Or I have to think critically about a rule.
Like I can't even really tell the person what the rule is because I don't know the rule.
I have to go learn the rule and realize why. why a certain sentence is correct or isn't correct.
And so I have to really think about my own language, which is not something that most native speakers ever do.
If someone is not a teacher of their native language, they virtually never have to think critically about their language, the structure, the words, the grammar.
They don't really have to think critically about that.
And that's perfectly fine.
But I actually enjoy thinking critically about language, about my own language.
It's fun for me.
Many times we native speakers know what is correct and what's not correct, but we don't know the rule behind that sentence.
Like we can't tell someone how to analyze that sentence by understanding a specific rule that can be applied to other sentences.
So that's always interesting for me to discover how.
And I remember when I got my first job in this type of field as an English tutor.
I remember that I learned so much just on the job.
Like I didn't know these rules beforehand and then I had to start thinking critically and investigating and coming to conclusions based on students' questions and mistakes that I was correcting.
It was actually fascinating for me and I continued on with that career because it was fun for me to do all this to think about language, learn about the rules and all of that.
And another thing about this is that when you teach a concept, like in this case, when you teach a certain linguistic concept, a certain pronunciation element or whatever, it helps you understand it better.
And this goes for most things.
When you teach it, you develop a better understanding of it.
This is why people will often tell you that if you want to remember some information and learn it better, one of the best ways to do so is by teaching someone else this information.
So if you watch a video and you want to learn the information that you heard in that video, then you should go tell someone else, talk to them about that information and teach it to them so that you yourself understand it better and remember it better.
So this is what happens to me as an English teacher.
When I teach certain concepts, it helps me understand them better.
It helps me actually really get the grammar or I really understand grammar this particular vocabulary word now.
I'm using it more intentionally now because I've taught this word or this phrase to people.
So I think that all of that is really beneficial and I like that element of my job.
All right.
One other thing that I really like about being an English teacher is that it has helped me, and it continues to help me, become a better conversationalist and it helps me manage social situations better.
When you talk to people that are from other countries, from other backgrounds and who speak other languages, you really have to develop the skill to manage conversations, manage differences in, let's say, culture or personality.
You have to really understand where people are coming from, meaning understand their attitude, their perspective.
You really have to develop these skills if you want to succeed in this profession.
And so, as you develop these skills, they help you in your personal life, when you're managing conversations, when you're in social situations among people from your own country.
I've noticed this.
I've noticed that throughout the years as an English teacher, I've developed these skills and I've been able to apply these skills to other social situations in my life outside of teaching.
Sometimes when I'm with English speakers, I'm in social situations, I still kind of feel a little bit like I have a teacher personality.
Hopefully not in a negative way, like I'm not trying to teach them things, but I'm kind of managing the situation, the context, the way that I might manage a class with a student.
And this can often be really helpful because, let's face it, most people don't have excellent conversation skills or excellent social skills in every environment.
Most people don't excel in all these different social situations.
So if you can help manage those situations, they can feel more natural and comfortable.
And I've been able to do that in different situations by kind of applying my teacher personality and skills to that social context.
I think you get my point here.
I can kind of go into teacher mode again, not teaching the person but managing the conversation better.
Asking questions that keep the conversation going and just helping reduce awkward silences, things like that.
I've just developed my conversational skills and I can hold better conversations with people outside of just my job, outside of teaching.
So I think this is one of the greatest benefits I've seen as an online English teacher.
I've been able to improve in this area of my life.
So those are all different things that I like about teaching.
And I'm glad to talk about this and give myself a greater appreciation for what I do.
Sometimes we can Thank you so much for watching.
I will probably still have classes available at the time that this episode is released.
So you can scroll down and see if I have that link there in the episode description.
I think that I'll just keep the link there even if I am not interested.
Currently teaching at that moment.
Like I'll probably just adjust my availability and maybe sometimes I have availability.
Sometimes I won't.
I don't know.
But you can always check and see by clicking on that link.
And please remember to check out my advanced podcast episodes.
This will be the next step for a lot of you.
You need to practice with normal English spoken fast.
So, if you want those, you can become a Listening Time family member that link is down below and also check out my us conversations podcast so you can practice listening to my conversations that i have with other people from around the country.
It's a lot of fun, it's really educational and this is an essential skill that you'll need to develop.
You have to be able to understand when more than one person is talking.
I made the mistake of not practicing with that when I was learning Spanish.
And then later on, I had to kind of catch up once I moved to Mexico.
It was really hard at the beginning to understand people in group settings.
So I encourage you to practice with that now and start to get comfortable, or a little bit more comfortable, little by little, with that type of environment.
And so you can check out that podcast to train that skill.
So that link is also down below.
And as always, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can.
All right.
Thank you all so much for listening.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
