Discuss

In the interview, the teacher said that a teacher was a person who helped students study well. To what extent do you agree with this? Why?

Audio script

Interviewer: What was different about teaching a student in the USA, compared with China?

Teacher #1: I think that’s quite different because the teacher give more chance to the student to take part in some activities. That means the students in USA or British is more independent than the student in China. I think that China, because there are some traditional ideas in China, so the student is just listen. I think the old traditional method or approach just is that teacher attend the class and talk, talk, talk always, talk something to the student, give the student, not get some information back from the students. But I think that language is practice. I want to learn some advanced approach from abroad, so I usually give more chance to the student to practise their English. I think that’s good for them to improve their English, even in China.

Interviewer: How long did it take for you to qualify as an English teacher? How many years did you study in Chengdu?

Teacher #1: Chengdu, four years. Before I studied there, go to that Normal Educational University, I studied some college. I studied three years and then I go to that university in Chengdu and study English four years.

Interviewer:  So, seven years, five years altogether.

Teacher #1: I think that study is very important but that teaching in high school is more important for me because you know how to teach English to the student. I think that’s a skill. It’s very important for me to be a good teacher. It’s not easy to become a good teacher. I think you should learn more during your teaching English at school. Some day there’s a sentence in the textbook; the sentence says, “The teacher is a person who teaches at school’. So I just change the sentence to another: ‘The teacher is a person who helps the students study well at school’. Teacher is a helper, okay? That’s a pleasure for me to be a helper for the students.

Interviewer: Do you feel that you learn things from your students? As well as you’re a teacher, we also learn things from our students. What do you find that you learn from your students?

Teacher #1: That’s a lot. In traditional idea, teacher just teach something to the students. But I think modern teacher is a student too. So we usually talk to the students, and I think we are just friends, okay? Not teacher and students, because we can learn from each other. For example, if I [don’t] know something about a computer, how to operate the computer, so they will teach me something about a computer. Or they will teach me some modern usage of some English. We are friends.