Thoughts on thoughts on teaching :) #1

As part of a professional development class on language teaching every week I have to reflect on one common idea or belief about the language acquisition process. Here are some of the discussion prompts and my personal take on them:

"ANYONE WHO SPEAKS A LANGUAGE CAN TEACH IT"

Can anyone who speaks a language teach said language? I’m gonna put my sophist hat on and answer: YES, In theory anyone CAN. But the most revealing questions are: “are they going to do it well?” and “Is their teaching going to produce student’s learning” and in most cases the answer to both questions is: NO.
I firmly believe that to teach a language well and effectively so that the act of teaching will translate into students’ learning, the teacher must:

1. possess a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the language - which most users of the language completely lack - just ask the average English speaker how the relative pronouns work… even the ones who use them correctly will often stumble and fall trying to explain exactly how to choose from “WHO” and “WHOM”. 
   
2. possess the pedagogical techniques that will allow the teacher to effectively transfer his knowledge to his students and promote students’ discoveries. The famous “presentation matters!” principle. I’ve seen incredibly knowledgeable PhD holders lose their students’ attention and interest after 5 minutes of class. 
   

I also believe that it is worth mentioning that both principles apply to all subjects but the first one becomes specifically important for language teachers, as languages are one of the few subjects that we acquire mostly naturally and subconsciously during childhood and therefore we need additional studies to turn our unconscious fluency into conscious knowledge and be then able to transfer that knowledge to our students.