Abigail Fulbrook: Welcome back to the Elevate blog. I’m here with Hossein Caraballo. Hossein is an English teacher. Is that right?
Hossein S. Caraballo: Yes, I am.
Abigail Fulbrook: And where are you in the world?
Hossein S. Caraballo: I’m currently living in Sharah in the United Arab Emirates and I’ve been teaching for almost a year. I’ve been handling mostly online classes for adults and for kids as well. And my students come from different backgrounds. some of them come from Iran, some of them from Japan, one of them from Kazakhstan. So I’ve got very, a mix of students also adults kids as well as I mentioned. So it’s a interesting mix.
Abigail Fulbrook: What kind of thing are your students, your learners, what do they want to achieve with their lessons?
Hossein S. Caraballo: The adults, they mostly want to improve their English and many of them. They want to practice because they say they don’t have anyone to practice English with. They have studied English in high school and even university but after graduating they haven’t had the opportunities in Iran or in Central Asia in Japan or wherever in the world this is not something that comes up in their everyday life speak something that comes up. So they want to have the opportunity to talk to someone who can guide them and they just want to be comfortable to talk to someone and to make mistakes and to be corrected. This is a main concern of theirs. And as far as the kids are concerned, of course, their parents want them to learn English and to do well in their tests, in their subjects and, to maybe become better than the parents were themselves because the parents may realize they weren’t able to learn English to the level they wanted. So they want this for their kids. So these are the two main things for kids and for adults.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yes, I find that’s the same problem with lots of people around the world. They learn English in school and even after 12 years studying they’re not really confident about actually speaking English. Is this what you find with your learners too?
Hossein S. Caraballo: Yes, this is something that is common. sometimes even those who have studied English in university in certain places, they they have trouble with even their grammar, their sentence structure. One can figure out as soon as they start speaking one or two sentences that they have studied but maybe the university instruction wasn’t good. So they have to review what they learned and they have to practice. They just have to keep on practicing. So this is what is seen among many people and what happens is obviously if one is studying only one hour a day in high school that won’t be enough at the end to keep up as they go into their professional lives. And they will find out that when they meet with international clients that okay this has not been sufficient for me. As soon as the other side starts communicating with them they find out I need practice. I need some help. Yes.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really tricky, isn’t it? Especially when maybe at school you’ve learned with American accents or British accents and then you go to the world of business and, there’s all sorts of different accents and different words you’ve got to learn and cope with. it’s really different, isn’t it? Yeah.
Hossein S. Caraballo: It is, but also sometimes even the instruction they had in American or British accent even that didn’t stick too much because they took it as another school subject and as we know when we go to school we just get the grade and then we try to forget it as soon as possible. So one finds out that this is something it’s not going to stick and they need to really put their focus to learn again one can say or to really review I mean they have to review, what they learn this is very important
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. Do you have any memorable moments with students when they’ve had a big breakthrough moment or something exciting’s happened?
Hossein S. Caraballo: I had one Japanese girl. she was answering the questions very well because most kids they may be bored or they may be not very interested but I saw that she was answering all the questions and even she was writing down everything and it was very interesting. So I said what are your goals in life? I just didn’t answer. I just wanted to ask her that. So she said that she wants to learn English. She is learning swimming. She wants to learn English so that when the Olympics come in Brisbane she can be part of the Japanese Olympic team and she can speak English to the people there in Australia. so I mean obviously they will have their professional translators there but it was very interesting that from a young age she had this idea that this is a goal that she has set in her mind and English is going to be a very important part of it. talk type of lesson with me and she just mentioned that she’s a network engineer but she finds English more difficult than this network engineering. So I thought it’s an interesting perspective because many times this English profession is seen as very easy actually but one can see from the outside people find English very challenging it’s not as simple as some people make it out to be and another thing is one has to go with what the student gives them because sometimes we may think that if we type u what are the mistakes someone can make and we use AI or chant GPT or something to try to figure out what mistakes can be made in English it gives us some suggestions but the students themselves they come up with questions and problems that no one can imagine so for example they might ask can we say this is my constantly habit no this is not right …
Hossein S. Caraballo: that this idea came to their minds that this is the way to say it, And maybe if one tries to just Google this as a mistake, maybe wouldn’t come up because this is not something that you cannot fake the mistakes means the mistakes come naturally. So this is something that we as teachers have to understand and support the students as much as possible. the thing is one gets to know people from different countries and…
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, that’s computers know a lot, but yeah, humans make all sorts of creative mistakes and creative language. So Tell me why do you keep being a teacher? What do you love about teaching?
Hossein S. Caraballo: culture one is connected to different cultures of the world and one gets to know different struggles people have also because one gets to know the pronunciation errors meaning the people who are Arabs the pronunciation mistakes they make and what they need to work on is different than say the Japanese people they have a whole other set of things one has to work on and The types of mistakes that Arab can make saying lift as lipet means this is something that is a pronunciation error common in among Arabic speakers, because of the consonants and how they are grouped together. But this is not common in the Arabic phonetics. this is one thing but then among Japanese for example they may do something else they may add a vowel after every consonant. So this is something that one has to work on in a different way. So one has to be patient for everyone in a different way and also one learns the phonetic systems are so different. For people who want to improve their grammar and their pronunciation, there have to be different methods, different ways to tackle each person and each culture, each language so that they get as close as possible to the pronunciation they want or pronunciation that is most natural or best. Let’s say whatever they want, whatever is best.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? Because it’s not necessarily sounding like an American or like a British, but to be understandable to lots of people around the world, it’s really important.
Hossein S. Caraballo: Yes, it is.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, I agree. There’s so many different kinds of challenges from different accents and different ways of making mistakes. Again, it’s really interesting.
Hossein S. Caraballo: Yeah. Yes, it is different. Yeah. So, yeah, there are some people who you can see for example people from India or from Pakistan, they may make some of the same mistakes as Persians and Arabs in the beginnings of words like They may say a student means this is a common error or common pronunciation challenge for them.
Hossein S. Caraballo: But other people from Japan and they may make some other types of pronunciation errors or there other types of challenges one has to deal with and especially when one sees as the people are older it might be a little bit more difficult but it’s still something that one has to work on in any case and another thing is that many people they may have lived in America or some other countries and they still need practice because they understand that when they have relocated back to their countries there is no one to speak with and there’s no one to practice with and they come to you as a teacher. So you have to fulfill that role and they also have to trust you obviously because they have to trust that they can make mistakes and you will help them out otherwise they won’t come to you as someone to help them. This is the most important aspect of being a teacher actually.
Abigail Fulbrook: I think so. Definitely. Yeah, and it’s really interesting, varied job as well, isn’t it?
Hossein S. Caraballo: Because one has to not only be on top of the classes, but one also has to be able to take the student as somewhat of a friend to try to help them out whenever they need they need some help. They need some guidance and also not make them feel bad about the mistakes they’re making because otherwise they will not stay as students basically.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, that’s true. It’s really important. To be approachable as a teacher. Great. thank you, Hussein. That was really interesting. and yeah we will see you in the directory.
You can connect with Hossein on the Elevate directory of English language teachers here
