Daily Excerpt: Working with Advanced Foreign Language Students (Shekhtman) - Some Characteristics of Advanced Students (Student-Teacher Relations)
Today's book excerpt comes from Working with Advanced Foreign Language Students by Boris Shekhtman . Some Characteristics of Advanced Langauge Learners SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVANCED STUDENTS Student-Teacher Relations Although students may be world-renown politicians, this social function of theirs is muted once they turn to a teacher in order to study a foreign language, for between student and teacher there springs up a special, unique, specific relationship that is characteristic only of the teacher-student relationship. There are several reasons for this. First, students generally believe in teachers; they trust what teachers will be doing with them. The student, for his or her part, is in the position of a person who is teaching no one, who should himself be taught, who should be listening to someone else. Second, the student has fallen under the total control of the teacher (whereas only an hour earlier, in some cases, he or she had b...