Some people think that a teacher “has it easy”, that we don’t really have to work a lot to teach, especially English, mostly because here in Brazil, teaching the language has become some kind of hobby – if you can speak the language, you can teach English. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. A teacher’s life is a eternal dedication to studying, improving, and catching up with the changes of an ever-evolving organism – Language. What we speak changes immensely throughout the years, and just like medicine or advocacy, we need to continually update ourselves.
And the job doesn’t come without its faults and shortcomings – not that we’re complaining, because we definitely love what we do, and do what we love - but did you know that there is even a phobia associated with teaching? Yes, it is called advancedophobia. David Baker looks at the challenges of teaching general English to adults at an advanced level. It is often daunting for teachers, and in his article, he approaches the phobia that certain teachers experience because, for instance, the difficulty of defining who general advanced learners are, and then defining their evolution, one the distinction between C1 and C2 is quite blurred, and all advanced-level learners tend to be lumped together. There are times when they are lumped together in classes as well, which presents us with an additional challenge. Perhaps this blurring of C1 and C2 happens because, for most teaching institutions, advanced-level learners still represent a minority, and in Brazil that would mean less than 1% of the population
. As teachers of advanced classes, we can't find easy solutions to these problems of defining what 'advanced means, but we should at least have some awareness of the potential range of levels that might be present among the learners and classes that we are working with. Many teaching institutions offer an Advanced General English course. The prospect of teaching these classes is often extremely daunting for teachers, sometimes to the extent of inspiring real fear. There are a number of reasons for this General Advancedophobia but underpinning them all is the sheer difficulty of determining these learners motivation for studying and their actual needs and then applying this knowledge to what and how we teach them. For some advanced-level learners, studying the language can often be an end in itself, where using and improving their English is for them a special interest or hobby in its own right. At Brisk, we have encountered teachers with this phobia, and as David Baker realized, we needed to clarify the definitions between general and advanced.
After many years of teaching over 5000 students (teachers combined), we came to understand that, for most of us, C2-level learners are definitely a minority within a minority. Their needs and expectations- at least insofar as they are defined within the CEFR -are closely tied in with 'native-speaker’ norms and assume a range of competencies that would, in reality, be impossible for many native speakers. But these are exactly the students who ask for native speakers’ teachers, to practice their speaking. However, they come to find that this is almost an impossible task, because native speakers themselves are not C2-leveled speakers. Almost contradictory right? That’s why we understand that after a completely reaches fluency, which would make them and advanced student, there is still a formality, a higher level of knowledge in the language that can be achieved by these students, and that is mainly their goal – they want to become proficient. They would like to study abroad, live abroad, have no problem at an immigration check point and feel they can be treated equally when they speak an English that is not “broken”.
That is why we have adopted the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), which defines three broad levels of language competence, of which the highest level, Level C (proficient users) might be taken to correspond to the advanced learners discussed in this article. The biggest problem we find in our country is that there is a number of taught courses and some published materials, that use the label 'advanced’, where the content is actually below a Cl-level, according to the CEFR descriptors.
There are several possible reasons for this. Partly it reflects an attempt on the part of the course providers to match the aspirations of learners and their teachers, but the CEFR subdivision of C-level in two, makes a key differentiation between C1 (Effective Operational Proficiency) and C2 (Mastery). One way of addressing this is trying to define the different contexts in which our learners are using, or wish to use, the language they are studying, which is exactly the reason we came up with customized classes, according to our student’s goals and interests.
So, dear students, next time you see your teacher, give them a hug (even if a virtual one) because sometimes we think “they have it easy” but a teacher’s life is a life of dedication to their students – YOU!
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