IWTYAL 341: My teachers just don’t get it…

Phil asks a really tricky question:

“I am feeling extremely frustrated with the Chinese teachers I've found on there. They don't seem to understand that I want to practice speaking. They all seem to insist on trying to go over grammar rules, shovel loads of new vocabulary on me, etc when all I want to do is practice some of the things I've already learned.

When I try to tell the this, then they just randomly talk about whether I like spicy food or have kids. No structure. I've suggested a course book that we just use as a framework for speaking for each half hour based on the topic/vocab, but that hasn't worked either. I've literally tried 15 teachers.

So my question is: what am I doing wrong? Do you understand what I want? If so, how could I go about getting that from a teacher. I am at an elementary/low intermediate level by the way.”

In This Episode:

Olly speaks to Jan van der Aa from Language Boost about this challenge.

Start Speaking Today:

I’d like to thank italki for supporting the show. To claim your free lesson and start speaking today, visit: https://storylearning.com//italkishownotes

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Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.