Teaching adults with

More and more I become aware of how teaching English is changing as we teachers become increasingly aware of how confusing English is for students. Ok, no news but  over the past few yearsI have found myself trying to help students gain an awareness of the fact that words in English (or any other language for that matter, i'd dare to say) don't necessarily have a one word equivalent or meaning but rather one or more translations into another language. The way I see it, looking at words as concepts or metaphors should be encouraged when possible.

It is true, however, that not all words lend themselves to this sort of interpretation but many do. Traditionally schools gave a  translation of a word, taken as its only meaning, to students and learners only to find themselves confronted to the word in another context and causing confusion. The last decade there's been an emphasis on collocations, great, that was an improvement, and a more real English as opposed to textbook English. Real English is not easy to acquire in places where English is a foreign language with no contribution from the "system" to actually learn it and use it but it's what should be taught.

I have noticed that just like i have been doing, teachers in online videos teach words and collocations and expressions. I think it's the way to go. It doesn't ensure they'll learn and remember all the translations but I hope this will contribute to a more open-minded approach to vocabulary and lexis learning little by little.
The example I often give them is the word meet translated into Spanish: quedar, encontrarse, ir a recojer, conocer (a alguien - primera vez), satisfacer, cumplir, entre otros. And the Catalan/Spanish word "deixar/dejar": leave, let, stop ing, lend, borrow.

There is also the fact that every single adult who studies English in Spain nowadays has studied English in the past, with little success in most cases. This means we don't have to go through teaching English as if they know nothing, our role is to tackle the very well-identified problem areas in their language if necessary and help them retain, activate and create new words. By creating I mean word formation, which luckily for them, just happens to be just like they do in Spanish. Adding prefixes and suffixes to roots. Most are unaware of the potential language they can understand and produce once they develop an understanding and an awareness of this fact.

Again, the example I usually provide in Spanish is acto, actuar, actuación, actor, actriz, activo/a, activamente, acción, accionar, etc. They all have the same root. We should aim at developing their intuition to learn to create adjectives, for examples with lots of input.

So let's all  teach the differences but also the similarities...their prejudices, their prior knowledge, often weak but there, force us to have to teach them a different way of looking at language, and teach them based on what they know, which makes teaching English in Spain different from teaching a new language from scratch.

words words words in our brains!

Adults, at least mine, store words in their brains as opposed to storing preffixes, suffixes, roots and then playing with them to form new words, to help them understand "new" lexical terms. Much as I encourage and help them work out the meaning of derivates, they only get there if you help them break down the word into smaller bits of meaning. With help. They don't do it autonomously.

I have noticed too that their brains take the words the know of something they are familiar with but is not a cognate. Let me give you an example:
I was doing a listening to Susana and the man said " trusting staff to..." and my student said "she says something about confidence" as in trust in Spanish is confianza, a cognate but a false friend somehow. Another example is Carmen understood strange when the listening man said strain. The word strain is not part of their active, nor passive in her case, vocabulary so their brains searched for whateve was most similar to the sound of strain that she knew. So the more active vocabulary and their very correct pronunciation or at least familiarity of how the word sounds in English is important if they want to improve their listening skills. In one word, input input input. Repeated input, revision, revising, rereading, listening, etc.