Do you prefer monolingual or multilingual classrooms?

[suMMit]

Interesting thread. I was reading through this old thread, because unfortunately, my teacher of more than a year is quitting teaching to focus on her main career. She almost never spoke a word of English with me during that time, for some time she would say "measure word" then after a while taught me the Chinese equivalent. Once in a great while she would translate a single word into English. In our 15 months  3 times a week sessions, I never uttered even one single English word to her. When our schedules didn't align and I had to have a substitute, the other teachers would almost all insist on using a certain amount of English, I absolutely despise this. There was one who actually said "great!" and "oh yes, that makes sense" to my Chinese responses. All this does is throw me out of thinking in Chinese. For me, it is very motivating to have 50 minutes in which there is no English spoken. I left her a 3 out 5 star review and stated why. I  have a sneaking suspicion  that many of them use English not for tge students benefit, but rather because they want to use/practice their English - not on my Yuan.  Yes, I have a chip on y shoulder about this. I'm at Intermediate level and my listening is my strongest skill, I do not wish to hear English in my lesson. I also use many other resources like Chinese pod, Grammar Wiki etc that give plenty of English explanations and can easily look up anything that I was confused by in class. 

 

Reading through this thread, I was thinking about why some people want English in their class and some people don't. I suppose I want something different than some people. I noted down what exactly it is I want in a class.I don't want "teaching" per se and explanations to be honest. I want a safe place to practice speaking Chinese, where the teacher patiently and consistently corrects my mistakes, supplies better fitting grammar/vocab when needed, corrects pronunciation, remind me of things we've already learned, inspires me to find out more about the culture. I like to follow a book as a framework and the book explains all grammar and vocab in English, so there is no need for the teacher to do that. I also like a roughly 50/50 mix of me/teacher talking. As I now begin trying new teachers, I'm going to tell them this, in writing upfront.

 

Personally, I need my limited time with a native speaker that is there to help me to improve my Chinese, to be 100% in the target language

 

*I will say that at the very beginning, for learning pronunciation, English was useful. For example"put the tip of your tongue behind your lower teeth " etc

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12 hours ago, suMMit said:

I suppose I want something different than some people. I noted down what exactly it is I want in a class.I don't want "teaching" per se and explanations to be honest. I want a safe place to practice speaking Chinese, where the teacher patiently and consistently corrects my mistakes, supplies better fitting grammar/vocab when needed, corrects pronunciation, remind me of things we've already learned, inspires me to find out more about the culture. 

 

Well said! I took a similar approach. My instruction was face to face, not over the internet. Most of it was one-to-one. 

 

12 hours ago, suMMit said:

As I now begin trying new teachers, I'm going to tell them this, in writing upfront.

 

I did that too. It helps to be clear about what you want and to convey it to the teacher at the beginning. However I tried to not be too rigid regarding techique and encouraged the teacher to make innovative suggestions. I was blessed by having some creative teachers. 

 

One teacher wanted me to sing some dialogue, even though I have a terrible singing voice. That didn't work well, so she changed to having me recite select poetry, which was more sucessful.

 

She was trying to increase my awareness of the phrasing and placement of emphasis in native speech by using methods of communication which exaggerated them temporarily. Once I could "get it" and reproduce the targeted material, then I could "dial it back" and sound more or less native. The goal was to help me avoid monotone and mechanical spoken Chinese.  She saw that as a failing of many foreign adult learners. 

 

All my instruction was in Chinese from day one. I found it of no value to be told to put my tongue behind this or that tooth. I learned by imitation.