Obstacles to EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Learning

I'm an English Teacher in Madrid and in this video I talk about what I think are I'm an English Teacher in Madrid and in this video I talk about what I think are some of the biggest obstacles that ESL (English as a Second Language) students in Madrid have to face.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ESL
• EFL
• English
• learning
• teaching

[tigerhop]

HI,

do you think this has to do with the cultural mindset? If people really want to learn english, they won't need hand-holding at home and will work their butts off to learn. That's a pretty universal characteristic, but I wonder if the welfare state encourages this social pathology in countries like Spain.

[MadridTeacher]

@tigerhop "Cultural mindset" vs Welfare State? I guess being lazy is a pretty universal characteristic amongst a certain percentage of folks AND that the organization of the state has an awful lot to do with how things work here. "Social pathology"? I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think Spaniards in general like the "good" life. Who wants to work too much? In my U though, they want to work on the core subjects, not English, not as much. They don't take it seriously enough in comparison.

[SecondLifeEnglish]

regarding lack of time for study...completely agree...have experienced the same...perhaps aim should be to facilitate a kind of learning lifestyle...things which can be easily done at home, minus much effort...on-line and off-line...some random exs: provide vocab stickers for object identification around home, provide useful portable study guides and/or exercise stuff, provide or suggest games which may be left out on the kitchen table...this sort of stuff...just some random ideas...

[MadridTeacher]

I think mixing the information with entertainment seems to be the most promising. There's nothing like "play" to get people to "work." I'll have to check out your videos a little more closely over the holidays. Loved the second life health care one . . . by the way, I teach 10 hours a week to nurses in a University among other things.

[SecondLifeEnglish]

agree...seems there is a lot of potential in on-line and/or off-line games...and many games have yet to be developed which might be good motivators and easy to pull out and use...i'm quite involved in e-learning but from experience have seen that many of the students i've taught had zero interest in being in front of a PC due to the fact that they have to work in front of one all day : /...thus the need for more off-line possibilities...easy to play games/activities, etc.

[MadridTeacher]

Same experience here. I can't get most of my students online (even in the University where their grades depend on it), not to mention get them to do much of anything at all outside of class. I'm thinking that a site like Second Life might well come along, but for students of languages. There are companies developing things for some schools' systems in the States. We'll just have to wait and see.

[WitantoCom]

I have difficulties in speaking & listening

[powerdriller10]

English is a very difficult language. Its pronunciation is very alien to Mediterranean people. Its irregular phonology, phonetics and spelling is very intimidating, Mediterraneans get the impression that they will never make it. Those are reasons among many more, for the World to adopt an auxiliary language like Esperanto. Cutting the learning time from a decade to six months would be quite beneficial for acquiring a second language.

[jeffrey19621]

High quality programs such as Rosetta Stone do far more for the motivated student that are few and far between. They teach you to be the Robin Williams of ESL and I often wonder if this is why our kids are imbiciles. I was just an adjunct professor at univercity but still was reqiured to Take the Tefl ( Absolutely Worthless training) be advised of two other certifiing bodies you may attend . I live in Thailand with my Thai girlfriend .Thai commitment to english is poor you end up babysiting

[jeffrey19621]

If you attend these scam english shools you will find it far more about entertaining the students than teaching anything .

[tigerhop]

Thank you for your response. By social pathology, I mean cultural mindset. I can understand that English might not be top priority for them,and when the economy is bad, it puts pressure on people. Hopefully it will improve. What about starting your own business? When people are paying for some service, they often put more care and time into learning and benefiting from it.

[truckerfromreno]

This fella speaks a lot of sense.  I like him he's a bright lad.

[FreeEnglishVideos]

I think maybe if you can get the students to understand that repetition is key then they will be more inclined to do it. I know it personally made a big difference for me. I would hate doing repetition exercises but understanding the use makes it a little less difficult.