Teaching... by Andreea Raluca Topor

Have you ever tried teaching anything? Anything at all...? Just try teaching your mother tongue...and if your mother tongue is Romanian and your trainee is English, that’s even worse. Still, don’t despair, teaching is the best way of learning something. Have you ever thought that English is easier than Romanian? If your answer is positive, you know what teaching Romanian means. There is no teaching method to help foreigners pronounce â/î in words such as pâine or mâine or to explain them why and which nouns can be “neutral”.

I do not have too much experience in training Romanian but there is no greater satisfaction for a trainer than getting the answer: “Bine, mulţumesc, dar tu?” and this is just the beginning…

I was proud when my French, German, Swiss or Dutch friends started learning Romanian and even started using the language all the time but only much later did I realize that the motivation behind their fast learning was the love affair they were involved in. They did not need a trainer, their life experience in Romania (and the respective girlfriend/ boyfriend) were enough, as it is always enough, in order to learn a language, to actually live, study or work among people who speak the respective language. As we were talking about teaching methods, that’s the most efficient.

The best example is even the author of these lines. I studied English for many years and I have been teaching it for 8, while I only took two courses of German. But, because I travel to Germany almost every year, there is a certain segment of vocabulary, such as words related to cooking, life in the city, spending your spare time that I had never thought of in English before I first used them in German.

In conclusion, I believe in two methods for learning languages:

1. inner motivation and personal needs;
2. life experience in the respective country.

To be continued