Author: Xiaoya (Shang Shang)
Since I entered the field of parent-child English and English enlightenment in 2014, there is one principle that has always remained the same, that is: English must be learned from native speakers.
Today's article will tell you in detail how to identify whether a (1) foreign teacher, (2) blogger, and (3) author is a native English speaker.
1. Identify foreign teachers
When signing up for early education classes, kindergartens, international schools, and English extracurricular classes, we will encounter the problem of choosing foreign teachers. The admissions teacher will tell you which country the foreign teachers are from, but the nationality, the color of the skin, and the description of the admissions teacher are not enough for you to make a judgment, and the best way is to talk to the foreign teacher.
Native English speakers are people who were born and raised in English-speaking countries. So, you have to be prepared for these two questions.
(1) Where were you born?
Where were you born?
(2) Where did you grow up?
Where did you grow up?
The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are the six English-speaking countries we are more familiar with, but it should be noted that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom also use other languages in addition to English as an official language; The official language of Canada's Quebec District is French; South Africa has many languages, etc. So, when the foreign teacher names the country where they were born and raised, you can ask again:
(3) Which state in the US?
Which state in the United States?
Where in the UK?
Where is the UK?
(4) What languages do you speak?
What languages do you speak?
Do you speak better French or English?
Which is better in French or English?
What is your first language?
What is your native language?
In fact, the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs has clearly stipulated that foreign Chinese language teaching personnel should, in principle, engage in teaching in the mother tongue of their native language country, and give in the answer to the question:
What countries and regions speak English as their mother tongue or first language?
Ascension, Australia, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, Canada, Falkland Islands (i.e. Malvinas), Gibraltar, British Isle of Guernsey, Guyana (formerly known as British Guiana), Ireland, Isle of Man (British Irish Maritime Territory), Jersey, New Zealand, Pitcairn Islands, Singapore, South Africa, British Territory of Cyprus and Dekelia, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha Islands, United Kingdom, United States, United States Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, British Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands.
Theoretically, a foreign teacher who can obtain a domestic work visa and teaches in English must be a native English speaker, but in fact, some foreign teachers do not apply for visas as foreign Chinese language teaching staff, so we still have to rely on ourselves to talk to the foreign teacher to make a judgment.
When conversing, in addition to obtaining some information, you can also make judgments by his English voice intonation, fluency, sentence structure, vocabulary use, cultural background, etc. Foreign teachers come to China thousands of miles and are not familiar with life, in fact, they are willing to talk to parents, so don't be afraid of delaying people's time, and don't be afraid that they are not good at English and dare not speak, because for the same tuition, if you can choose a native English teacher, it will be more worthwhile.
Second, identify bloggers
Two days ago I swiped a video, a blonde blogger, wanted to express let his daughter endure, used Endure! I felt a little wrong when I heard it, although endure has the meaning of tolerance and patience, but can it still be used as an imperative sentence? This knowledge point, our parent-child English boutique class, let the baby stick to it, you can say hang in there or just hang on. Although I heard that she had some accent and her name was also a German name, I was afraid of missing out on another authentic expression, so I sent the video to our own team's foreign teacher to verify it. Sure enough, there is no such usage.
There is so much English learning on the Internet that it is difficult to tell the authenticity. The advice I can give is:
(1) Systematic learning with the teacher you know
(2) Good short video fragments learning resources: excerpts from English film and television dramas, interviews and speeches by English-speaking celebrities, and clips of television entertainment programs in the United Kingdom and the United States.
In fact, the authentic saying of "hold on" is found in Disney's animated film Frozen "Frozen". Anna said to the portrait of Joan of Arc on the wall: Hang in there, Joan, she is actually encouraging herself, without her sister to play with her, to persevere and hold on.
3. Identify the author
When choosing a picture book for your baby, you must pay attention to which country the author is from, and if it is to learn English, you must choose a native English author. Some picture books created by French and German authors, from the perspective of art appreciation, of course, there is no shortage of good works, but if your purpose is to let children learn the English inside, because authenticity is not guaranteed, I do not recommend everyone to buy.
So, how to identify the country of the author of a picture book? Everyone remember the word: biography-biography, everyone go to the www.bing.com, select "International Version", and enter: author's full name + biography.
Take Michaela Goade, a new generation American picture book author and two-time Caldecott Award winner:
We can search for information on Wikipedia, although we do not have permission to log in to Wikipedia in China, but Bing has crawled this information. We can see her birthplace, the university where she was educated, etc. In addition to Wikipedia, there are book sites such as Amazon and Bookroo, as well as the author's own personal website, it is possible to find out where he was born and raised.
If it is sight words, phonics, and various grammar books, dictionaries, etc., many times there is no author, because it may be created collectively by an editorial team of the publishing house, and it is important which country the publishing house is in at this time.
If you're not sure, you can buy some books from big publishing houses, Scholastics, Random House in the United States, Penguin (Penguin), DK, Usborne and so on in the UK.
For the publishing house you don't know, it's easy to find out which country it is, you can search for the name of this publisher on Bing, enter its official website, and then look for About Us, Contact Us these sections, in addition to the address, you can also determine which country it is by the area code of the phone, +1 is the United States, +44 is the United Kingdom.
Take Scholastics, for example:
Other Chinese companies may have an office abroad and then leave an address there, and the style of its website can tell whether it is a fake foreign company.
Some publishing houses in Singapore have published many teaching books and workbooks, such as the famous Mathematics in Singapore. If you want your child to learn pure American English and British English, you can leave it alone, because there are also publishing houses in the United Kingdom and the United States that publish similar products.
For example, the word eggplant is used in the book as brinjal.
Eggplant is called aubergine in British English, eggplant in American English, and when you look up the dictionary, it turns out to be Indian and Afrikaan English.
You can't say that the English inside is not authentic, Indian English in the iPhone, is already considered a separate option
4. Our teaching and research team
I hope the above information can help everyone. Let's talk about our own teaching and research team.
Xiaoya stood in front of the screen and was responsible for explaining it in the simplest language, in fact, behind it were many foreign teachers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Adhering to the view that "English must be learned with native speakers", we have produced [Parent-child English Course], the English sentences in the course are written by native English speakers, the knowledge points are all discussed by Chinese and foreign teams, and the pronunciation demonstrations are recorded by American teachers.
This set of courses was launched in 2019, and more than 10,000 students have graduated so far, and "authentic" is a unanimous evaluation by everyone.
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Get up, go to the toilet, eat, bathe...
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