How NOT to teach a language – 5 pieces of advice to make language learning more enjoyable

As language teachers, it’s important for us to know how to teach a language – but it’s equally important to understand how NOT to teach a language. I’m going to share my experience with you in the hopes of being helpful.

I’ve been learning Polish in preparation for a trip to Poland this fall/winter. My husband was born there and speaks fluent Polish, and we plan to spend at least a month (probably more) there. One thing that REALLY makes me nervous is being in a country where I can’t communicate at least on a basic level. So…it’s time to get serious about learning Polish.

It’s not an entirely new thing for me. I have a BA in Russian, which is at least a little bit helpful as some of the vocabulary and grammar overlap – at least theoretically. I started learning Polish a bit back in 1994 so I could be prepared for our honeymoon in Gdansk, and I joked that it was largely for “self-defense” since my in-laws speak Polish at home. Life sort of got in the way, and after teaching French for 30 years my Polish was really rusty.

Last summer, I refreshed my studies by doing the Duolingo course. It doesn’t help with grammar at all, but it did bring back a lot of the vocabulary that I had forgotten. I realized that if I really wanted to be able to speak Polish to the level I wanted, I would need to do more. So I found an online textbook and started working my way through it. I don’t want to name the specific textbook, because from what I can tell most of them suffer from the same issues.

The one thing that this book did teach me was how NOT to teach a language. And if nothing else, I can share that knowledge with you!

How not to teach a language part 1: make everything accessible and easy to find

The first few units of the book were fine. I breezed through them. They were very basic vocabulary and contexts, things that I had already learned and weren’t really challenging. But around unit 5 I started having trouble. The textbook didn’t really explain much of anything – it just gave a chart of a noun declension or verb conjugation but little in the way of the why/how for any exceptions. And there were no actual vocabulary lists in the textbook at all – it just started using words with no meaning since I had no idea what was happening.

I went online thinking that surely I was missing something. I’m one of the 2% students – the ones who soak up grammar and vocabulary like a sponge. But I was having trouble because while I was getting lots of input, almost none of it was comprehensible. I looked around the website for a while and finally found it – a set of vocabulary lists with translations into English! I downloaded those pdfs and printed them out, thinking that my problems were solved.

How not to teach a language part 2: Don’t try to do too much

They weren’t. The lists were woefully incomplete. There were too many words. One unit had 4 full pages (of two columns each) of vocabulary – 400 different words. And only half to two thirds of the words actually had the English translations next to them. The rest listed the Polish word, but not the English equivalent. I had my husband help me with the missing translations. I also found some Quizlet sets with the vocabulary and tried using that.

Now, some of these vocabulary terms are ridiculous. Things that I never use in English and I can’t imagine ever needing in Polish. Do I need to know how to say “to drill, to bore” or Fahrgast? What exactly is a Fahrgast? I have no idea but I do know the Polish word for it! (To be fair, I think this is an error – they didn’t change the German translation to the English. But who knows?)

This helped a tiny bit. At least I had a chance to figure out what the vocabulary was for the chapter. But the grammar activities were still beyond me. I found that the textbook had an accompanying online workbook, which I hadn’t purchased. I bought it and started back at unit 1. The workbook was much better at asking concrete things, practicing vocabulary and basic grammar points, at least in the first 15 or so units.

How not to teach a language part 3: Make sure you’re practicing what you taught

When I reached unit 16 of the level 1 book, the problems started multiplying. Well, it was really the same problem over and over. The grammar and vocabulary activities had the same issue: it wasn’t clear what I was supposed to do, and even when it was somewhat clear, the activities required multiple things to be done correctly. Using the self-checking function told me which ones I got wrong – but not which parts were wrong.

I asked my husband for help on these activities. Sometimes he was able to help, but often he couldn’t get the answer correct – and he’s a native speaker! Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s assume that the unit is about food items and how to form the plurals. The book would ask me to complete the sentence with the missing word(s). But there would be no guidance as to which words to use, or what the context of the sentence might be.

So…imagine if you were doing an activity where there is an image of an apple and you see the sentence “Please, I would like one ______________________.” What goes next? One apple? One pound of apples? One bag of apples? One kilo of apples? One red apple? I would try ALL of these things and keep getting it wrong. What was wrong? The spelling? Should it be apple or apple? Was it a different noun case I needed?

Finally, after giving up, I would check the answer. The correct answer was “Please, I would like one kilo of green apples.” Problem – there was nothing to show that it was a kilo, or green. And we hadn’t learned how to change the word green to match apples yet. So how could I possibly be successful?

I don’t like to give up, so I worked through level 1 and like a glutton for punishment, I bought the level 2 book and workbook. The exchange rate made it $20 or so, so even if I don’t finish I’m not out all that much. I am learning something, because I’m to the point where my husband thinks that my Polish is better than his French. He may be a bit delusional on that one…but he is probably pretty smart as far as living by “Happy wife, happy life” goes.

How NOT to teach a language in a nutshell

So here’s the important part – if you want to know how NOT to teach a language, it can be very helpful to try learning from both good and bad teachers and good and bad methods.

Vocabulary: Be judicious in the vocabulary that you use. Is it necessary for students to learn the name of every single sport and activity or piece of equipment in a unit about sports? Nope. Teach the main sports because these are the ones everyone should know. But I prefer to let students choose what’s important to them. A student who plays basketball should know how to say football, soccer and baseball – but they don’t need to know the names for “catcher’s mitt” of “shin guards.”

And for the love of all that is holy, keep the list reasonable! Words should be useful AND limited. 50 words in a unit if few are cognates is pushing it…100 or more is just a recipe for frustration. If you truly want them to be able to use the language, consider using Zipf’s law to choose what you teach.

Grammar: Be sure to explain things clearly. Some students will want the WHY, but many will just want to know how to do the thing. Polish has cases. Do I care WHY certain verbs take the genitive instead of the prepositional? Probably not. What I do want is a clear list of “these verbs take the genitive” and then a nice explanation of how to form the genitive.

Exercises: Unless you are dealing with very advanced students, your practice exercises should have only one goal and it should be very clear what it is. If you’ve been practicing how to form the plural of nouns, then the exercise should do just that. Fill in the blank with the plural of the noun. Apple : __________. Don’t mix in adjectives. Don’t add verbs. Don’t have complete sentences that the students must guess at. Let them just do the thing a bunch, until doing the thing gets boring and too easy. Then add a second thing.

How not to teach a language part 4 – and how I am surviving

So I have been lucky enough to have my husband available to help me, and that’s very useful. Unfortunately, he’s not always super patient and he gets frustrated as well. I mentioned that he has decided that my Polish is better than his French. This is largely due to him trying to help me with something and then I argue with him that NO, it has to be this ending because it’s the accusative case – and then I get it right. It turns out the incorrect part was something else.

My other secret weapon has been Chat-GPT. I think I may do an entire post on this, actually. I’ve mentioned using Chat-GPT/AI to teach before, but it’s also very helpful for learners when used properly.

So when I have an exercise that I’m struggling with, I can ask Chat-GPT to read my answer and tell me what I’m doing wrong. Note that I am always using it after I’ve done the work, never to get the answer in the first place. Generally, I will submit my answers and then look again at anything that was marked incorrect. If I think I can fix it myself, I try. If that is still wrong, I’ll put my response in Chat-GPT and ask it to explain why it’s wrong.

This is super helpful. It doesn’t just tell me “the correct answer is ______.” It tells me “you have the nominative form, but you need the genitive form after the numbers 2, 3 and 4.” It will tell me the correct form and then give several other examples. So I probably won’t make the same mistake again, because I know WHY I got it wrong. It’s an amazing tool for this.

How not to teach a language part 5 – teach your students to use AI for good, not evil

So there you have it…as language teachers we have to recognize that our students WILL use AI. Some will use it to be lazy and to cheat. Those are usually easy to figure out, and when it’s time to actually perform on their own, they will fail miserably.

I think that smart language teachers will leverage these new tools and spend a little time teaching students how to use them as learning tools. Just as I have trouble with Polish, some of your students will have trouble with verb conjugations or understanding why “une pomme rouge” is OK but “une pomme verte” isn’t.