What makes a good language teacher?

Question

As most of us are language students, I would like you to take a minute to tell me What makes a good language teacher?

William Arthur Ward said:

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

Miguel

I love your quote!!!! - Tasear, Dec 27, 2011

When the student is hungry for me. - Tasear, Dec 27, 2011

Answer 1

William Arthur Ward said: The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

I agree. The goal of any teacher of any subject should always be not self-glorification but just the opposite - guiding his students to the point of no longer needing him.

I like your sentence even better than Ward's quote! - territurtle, Dec 27, 2011

Answer 2

I love the teachers who write the lessons in a very Consistent way so when I study I find things much easier to understand, as well I love the teacher who doesn't give much useless Home work, but a few useful exercises are much better

Answer 3

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”

Kahlil Gibran

Answer 4

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. ~Lily Tomlin

Teaching you to think for yourself, to research other sources, and to practice what you've learned are all important.

Thanks for your comments. They're great! - miguel79, Dec 7, 2010

Answer 5

I think there are a lot of qualities that make a good language teacher. The most important is to not spoon feed your students. Give them the necessary resources and then give them the opportunity to practice on their own before providing them with solutions to questions.

Also, practice practice practice. For example, my Spanish teacher only allows us to speak Spanish in his class and he only speaks in Spanish to us. If he hears us speaking English he says you better be speaking in Spanish or do not speak at all, lol.

I think for most students writing and reading comprehension is easy but when time to do the listening or the speaking here is where they face a challenge. Writing and reading comprehension you can learn on your own but listening or speaking is better learnt in groups. A good language teacher can assess this and probably structure his class based on this observation. By doing this, students will get more out of their class.

Answer 6

The teacher that make you continue learning outside classroom. I wouldn't love spanish if wasn't for Professor Serpes. A teacher who took the time will walking in the hallway to assist me me for a moment in speaking spanish. He simply told us how to say hermano correctly but this left a profound impact on me. The next semester I took his spanish immersion class. This is the class that I will tell my grandchildren in the future about. His class is how spanish should be taught.