Miss Sherwood - English Teacher Extraordinaire

So here is the first of what I have to assume will be many posts about my job as a Business English teacher. This first post will just be a quick intro to what I do. I teach English to French business people...most of them already speak English pretty well, so it's a lot of fine tuning. Of course I do have some beginner level students, as well. Advanced level students can be difficult to teach...sometimes they speak so well, I can feel like I'm at a bit of a loss to teach them something. I start thowing out really random idiomatic expressions so it looks like I'm smart and have sooooo much wisdom to impart... "You don't know the expression, "A stitch in time saves nine"?! Well you just HAVE TO learn it! We LOVE to use that expression! Why I was just using that expression this morning with my other native English speaker friends! It was coined by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN! This one is a MUST KNOW!" Then with beginner level students it can be difficult because it's really slow going and it when you see them only once per week it's hard to make very much progress. I even have one intermediate level student who has the really bad habit of pronouncing the silent 'k' in words like knee and know. He said to me the other day, "Oh-oh! Kristina, I am impressing you with my k-nowledge, no?" We've been over it several times...but like I said, one class a week can be slow going.

Most of my students are upper intermediate level and like I said we work on a lot of fine tuning. Such as helping them say, "Call me back after 1pm." instead of "Call again to me in the hour of one." (Call a-gin to meee in ze howwwerrrr ov one.)

I'm in my fourth year as an English teacher and I spend A LOT of time listening to people make English mistakes...and the scary thing is, some of those mistakes are starting to sound RIGHT to me! Just the other day a student said, "I have to make a presentation." and I jumped right in and said, "DO a presentation." The student gave me a look and I said, "MAKE a presentation. Yes. Okay. As you were saying???" Oops.

Or like the time I mentioned in a blog from last year when I asked a student, 'Is this word a noun or a drink? Errr...I mean a noun or a VERB?" Oops.

Maybe it's just the kind of work that can make you a little crazy after a little while. My boss is definitely proof that! But more on him next time...