Common Misconceptions and Myths about Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Its been a little while since my last blog entry. In this edition I am going to be looking at some common myths about teaching English. The goal of this entry is to help new TEFL teachers prepare for what it is really like to teach English as a Foreign Language. Myth #1: I am a native English speaker, so teaching English will be easy! I have to admit I thought this before I headed to Korea to teach English. Even though I had taught in high schools for a couple years before going to Korea, I was definitely not prepared to teach English. Just because you can speak, listen, read and write in English, does not mean that you will be able to teach these skills effectively . Firstly, native English speakers do not learn the language like second language learners. English comes naturally to us, without every having to study complex grammatical structures like adverbial clauses or reported speech. Teaching any facet of the English language takes in-depth study of the language and a spec