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.

feeding off companies

It's 8.30 am, I am already in the office checking out my emails. I am in early today because at 9 am we have this presentation skills workshop for the office staff, in the company I work for. Another training session! Again! Not that I am against whatsoever, but there are so many that it's becoming ridiculous.

Working has become a very competitive area of our lives. We compete for job places we'll complain about later which take long periods of recruitment processes. We compete with ourselves and other canditates to get this or that job and mantain it and be the best at it. The constant need to be brushing up and refreshing our skills in whatever job we are doing; learning new computer programmes which in theory speed things up has becoming a very energy and time demanding aspect of our daily lives if you really want to keep up with this constantly changing job market. But is this that cost- and time- effective? Does the time and effort we "put in" in this pay and actually improve our performance? Training courses which repeat the same old theories and communication strategies make it telling and retelling and rephrasing what we have been told and repeated a number of times in the past.
In a way, this so-called on-going education is part of this capitalist system we are in and can not scape from of creating jobs places and of companies feeding off other companies and feeding other companies at the same time, keeping the dynamics of economy moving and flowing. Recruitment agencies, training providers, experts in managing whatever area and/or problem you can stumble upon in an office, communication experts, stationary and serigraphers and a long list of jobs which very much depend on one another.

Yes, I am talking about office jobs. I am pretty sure that this also applies to a wide range of jobs from plumbers with new more ecofriendly central heatings and how to instal them and hairdressers and new techniques to dye or cut our hair and shop assistants to learn how to deal with difficult customers to managers and directors to learn how to cope with stress and all the new IT systems, the latest way to negociate and overcome culture clashes when dealing with say, foreing investors, etc.
That applied to teaching is basically down to the so-called teacher development courses to get new ideas, to welcome and embrace the use of technology, to learn from others' experiences, to overcome fears ...nothing new really, but now, lots of money flow with this.
We are all constantly learning how to operate new tools, items of technology from a simple DVD player to the latest more time efficient way of carrying out our tasks at work. It is the world we live in, constant taking in and some cashing in on it too.