Quotes & Sayings About English Teaching

I'm bilingual. I speak English and I speak educationese. — Shirley Hufstedler

Teaching English literature would have seemed to us like teaching a hungry man the way to his mouth when he had a feast before him. Almost — Albert Jay Nock

Conventional English usage, including the generic use of masculine-gender words, often obscures the actions, the contributions, and sometimes the very presence of women. Turning our backs on that insight is an option, of course, but it is an option like teaching children that the world is flat. — Casey Miller

When the phonograms and rules of English are taught in a systematic manner through solid, multimodality teaching methods which develop visual muscle memory, prevent reversals, and address the needs of all types of learners, we will be on our way to solving the literacy crisis for all its current victims and preventing it in future generations. — Denise Eide

Maps. I was less clueless about the basics of English, though I didn't realise at the time that I was assuming that English grammar was the same as the Latin grammar I had been taught so well. (I remember that the first week I was there, a boy asked me during prep whether ager was second or third declension and I was able to tell him without pausing for thought that ager - a field - was second declension, so it went like annus, but that it dropped the "e," as opposed to agger - a rampart - which was third declension, and retained the "e." "My God," I thought as he walked away, "Captain Lancaster did a good job." My next thought was, "Lucky the boy didn't ask me what a rampart was. ... ") But given that I was teaching ten-year-olds, Geoffrey Tolson's advice to "stay a page ahead" seemed perfectly sound. So I had no reason to believe, as I strode purposefully into the classroom to teach Form III their first history — John Cleese

We were supposed to be an English literature class, but Miss Nesbitt used literature to teach real life. She said she didn't have time to teach us like a regular English teacher
we were too far behind. Instead, she taught us the world through literature. — Phillip M. Hoose

The literary establishment in England was stunned, shocked, and scandalized by an event of millennial significance when a major bookstore chain innocently polled English-speaking readers, asking them to choose the greatest book of the twentieth century. By a wide margin The Lord of the Rings won. Three times the poll was broadened: to a worldwide readership, into cyberspace via Amazon, and even to "the greatest book of the millennium". The same champion won each time. The critics retched and kvetched, wailed and flailed, gasped and grasped for explanations. One said that they had failed and wasted their work of "ed-u-ca-tion". "Why bother teaching them to read if they're going to read that? — Peter Kreeft

Rhys absorbed that with chagrin. "No one has ever accused me of being a romantic," he said ruefully.
"If you were, how would you propose?"
He thought for a moment. "I would begin by teaching you a Welsh word. Hiraeth There's no equivalent in English."
"Hiraeth," she repeated, trying to pronounce it with a tapped R, as he had.
"Aye. It's a longing for something that was lost, or never existed. You feel it for a person or a place, or a time in your life ... it's a sadness of the soul. Hiraeth calls to a Welshman even when he's closest to happiness, reminding him that he's incomplete."
Her brow knit with concern. "Do you feel that way?"
"Since the day I was born." He looked down into her small, lovely face. "But not when I'm with you. That's why I want to marry you. — Lisa Kleypas

I double majored in English education and theater with a musical theater minor. Teaching is the only thing that makes me as happy as performing. — Rob McClure

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English. — Michael Gove

I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA. — James Franco

With secret delight, he began teaching Bad Eye catastrophically bad English. From that day forward, when asked, "How are you?," Bad Eye would smilingly reply, "What the fuck do you care? — Laura Hillenbrand

Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble ... In no Book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant, and by teaching all the same they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith. — Fisher Ames

Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness is the perfect companion to Mindfulness in Plain English. Written with the thoroughness and the masterful simplicity so characteristic of his teaching, Bhante Gunaratana presents essential guidelines for turning the Buddha's teachings on the Eightfold Path into living wisdom. — Larry Rosenberg

Teaching English is (as professorial jobs go) unusually labor-intensive and draining. To do it well, you have to spend a lot of time coaching students individually on their writing and thinking. Strangely enough, I still had a lot of energy for this student-oriented part of the job. Rather, it was _books_ that no longer interested me, drama and fiction in particular. It was as though a priest, in midcareer, had come to doubt the reality of transubstantiation. I could still engage with poems and expository prose, but most fiction seemed the product of extremities I no longer wished to visit. So many years of Zen training had reiterated, 'Don't get lost in the drama of life,' and here I had to stand around in a classroom defending Oedipus. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries;it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology. — Pierre Trudeau

The will of God is revealed as you listen to the Spirit of God in the Word of God. The precepts and promises of the Bible teach us what to pray. They teach us what grace to ask for and for what work we need strength. On every page of the Bible there is subject matter for prayer. B. F. Westcott, a renowned nineteenth-century English Bible scholar, observed: "The petitions of true disciples are echoes (so to speak) of Christ's words. As He has spoken so they speak. Their prayer is only some fragment of His teaching transformed into a supplication, and so it will necessarily be heard."[50] One way to pray more effectively is to echo God's Word back to Him as you pray. We align our hearts with His heart as we pray His Words from our hearts. — Archie Parrish

When a new writer defends his "style," the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style - voice - arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer's character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation - an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example. — Bill Roorbach

The teacher will never be a parent. The parents are the parents. But they have to engage in some sort of active education beyond just teaching mathematics and French and English because the kids spend more time there than they do with their parents at that age. We have to accept that other adults will be part of our children's education and they will have bad teachers. That's going to happen. — Philippe Falardeau

Sure, okay, I'll pick up some cat litter. Anything else?"
"Watch your back, G." Then she hung up.
Hero paused in her sobbing to look at me quizzically. "Why does your mom want cat litter? You guys don't even have a cat."
"She uses it for ... " I searched my brain madly, but all I could come up with was "teaching."
"She uses cat litter to teach English?"
I nodded. "She's kind of unconventional in her methods."
Hero frowned. "But how does she use it?"
The girl was relentless when she fixated on something. "Um, when their papers are really bad, she gives them a little bag of cat litter. It's her way of telling them their writing is crap." I laughed. "She's kooky. — Jody Gehrman

The theory of the teacher with all these immigrant kids was that if you spoke English loudly enough they would eventually understand. — E.L. Doctorow

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic
it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor. — John Taylor Gatto

As baggage I would be taking along a number of strong opinions on why so many Americans don't learn to write and why they live in so much fear of trying. One of them has to do with English teachers. Under the American system, they are the people who teach our children to write. If they don't, nobody will. They do it with dedication, and I hope they'll be rewarded, if not here on earth, at least in heaven, for there's almost no pedagogical task harder and more tiring than teaching somebody to write. But there are all kinds of reasons why English teachers ought to get some relief. One is that they shouldn't have to assume the whole responsibility for imparting a skill that's basic to every area of life. That should be everybody's job. That's citizenship. — William Zinsser

If a little less time was devoted to the translation of letters by Julius Caesar describing Britain 2000 years ago and a little more time was spent on teaching children how to describe (in simple modern English) the method whereby ethylene was converted into polythene in 1933 in the ICI laboratories at Northwich, and to discussing the enormous social changes which have resulted from this discovery, then I believe that we should be training future leaders in this country to face the world of tomorrow far more effectively than we are at the present time. — Ronald Sydney Nyholm

When I was six or seven, we went to the nearest English primary school, St Weonards, about seven miles away. The teaching was good, and this was the start of my beginning to shine as a student. — Saul David

It was not considered right for a man not to drink, although drink was a dangerous thing. On the contrary, not to drink would have been thought a mark of cowardice and of incapacity for self-control. A man was expected even to get drunk if necessary, and to keep his tongue and his temper no matter how much he drank. The strong character would only become more cautious and more silent under the influence of drink; the weak man would immediately show his weakness. I am told the curious fact that in the English army at the present day officers are expected to act very much after the teaching of the old Norse poet; a man is expected to be able on occasion to drink a considerable amount of wine or spirits without showing the effects of it, either in his conduct or in his speech. "Drink thy share of mead; speak fair or not at all" - that was the old text, and a very sensible one in its way. — Eoghan Odinsson

In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in High School to teaching remedial English in college. — Joseph Sobran

When we were kids, Fitz was unbeatable in Scrabble. It would drive Eric crazy, because he wasn't used to be bested by Fitz in much of anything. But Fitz had an uncanny memory, and once he saw a word, he wouldn't forget it. [ ... ] But Eric wasn't used to be second-best, so he commissioned me into teaching him the dictionary. [ ... ] Three weeks after we'd taken on the English language, it rained on a Saturday. "Hey," Fitz suggested, like usual. "Bet I can whip you in Scrabble."
Eric looked at me. "Huh," he said, "What makes you think that?"
"Um ... the five hundred and seventy thousand other times I've kicked your ass?"
Fitz knew. The moment Eric laid down the letters J-A-R-L and then casually mentioned that it was a term for a Scandinavian noble, Fitz's eyes lit up. — Jodi Picoult

And so we went. And so it went. And, slowly, I began to learn: speaking in the same language does not equal communication, especially when there is a cultural divide. — Gerry Abbey

In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene. Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar. — Thomas Merton

Don't fuck with an English major. They keep lots of useless crap trapped in their heads. Once in a while they let some of it out and it bites you square on the ass. — P.C. Cast

My parents spent countless hours teaching me to read and write. My mother was an English teacher who patiently taught me where to put my periods and commas, and my father, who loves books more than anyone I know, taught me from an early age that books are precious and should be handled gently , "like butterflies. — Jessi Klein

Jesus is teaching and wants you to learn. This means you will be stretched. Jesus does not want you stuck in a bonehead English class, which I was for several years. — Jonah Books

Remind me who you are," he said in a gentler tone, almost a please. "How we know each other."
"Okay," she began. "I'm Savannah Evans, a grad student and teaching assistant who teaches English at a college in Cambridge. I applied to the colony to work on my poetry and arrived six weeks ago. "We've spoken many times. You've praised my work, which I find a great honor as I'm a fan of your art. — Lisa Carlisle

I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated. — Benedict Cumberbatch

He may be dead; or he may be teaching English. — Cormac McCarthy

I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards. — Pat Conroy

Teaching English and teaching Writing are two separate things. — Vanna Bonta

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

Foreign languages, I think they are important but I don't think it should be required because-actually I think they should be teaching you English and then teaching you how to understand double talk-a politician's double talk-not teaching you how to understand French and Spanish and German, when am I going to Germany? I can't even afford to pay my rent in America, how am I going to Germany? — Tupac Shakur

It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open. — John McWhorter

I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement. — Joanne Harris

I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. — Pat Conroy

When I was teaching English and trying to get kids passionate about reading, the most effective weapon I had was 'The Martian Chronicles.' — Jack McDevitt

My mother had been an English teacher in India before she came to the U.K., and she taught me to read early on - not only in English, but in Hindi, too. My teachers didn't like the fact that I was reading more quickly than they were teaching, and as a consequence, I would sometimes get bored in class. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

The Americans fished on, not hoping for much anymore, perhaps for a miracle, searching for small things to be happy about, because they were Americans and this was what their upbringings had taught them to do. They found a brief happiness, for example, in the potato chips that came to their rooms on expensive china and in the genuinely hopeful way the hotel girl asked if they'd had any luck. They took pleasure in their morning calls to the Lufthansa man, his wriggly explanations for the canceled flights to Norway. They smiled at the way a church had been built so the setting sun hit it high and perfect and orange, and the way they could follow the river to a park where miniskirted women lay in the grass with headphones clamped over their ears, and even at the way the little student-girls came filing down at noon behind their English-teaching beauty to call them fools. — Anthony Doerr

It was easy not to like the other foreigners. I wondered how I'd fallen in with such a band of freaks. There were so many odd, wandering types
a host of bent Australians, warped British, tainted Canadians, tormented runaway Americans. (I considered myself fairly well balanced among this cast, but then look what became of me.) I'd expected it to a certain degree, but I was still surprised. Most of them seemed like misfits. Only a few content. But all of us found teaching work with astounding ease. It didn't matter that, on the whole, we were ragged and suspect because the demand for English in Korea was so great that almost anyone was accepted. — Cullen Thomas

Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other? — Mary Rose O'Reilley

It was a clear autumn day Sunday in 1876; Vincent van Gogh, twenty-three years old, left the English boarding school where he was teaching to give a sermon at a small Methodist church in Richmond, a humble London suburb. Standing in front of the lectern, he felt like a lost soul emerging from the dark cave in which he had been buried.

The sermon, which survives among Vincent's collected letters, reiterates universal ideas and is not an outstanding example of the art of homiletics. Nevertheless, his words grew out of his tormented life and had an intense emotional charge. Preaching to the congregation, he was also preaching to himself -- and of himself. The images he used were the same as those that were to be given powerful expression in his pictures.

The text chosen for the sermon was Psalm 119:19, 'I am a stranger on the earth, hide not Thy commandments from me.' — Albert J. Lubin

What we found developing at Gustavus Adolphus was a sense that we should all be sharing the responsibility for teaching writing. We formed a writing committee that consisted of professors from many different disciplines, and we invited proposals for 'W' courses from the entire faculty. The response was instantaneous. As soon as the ownership of writing by the English department was lost, people in other fields said, 'I'd be willing to give it a try. — William Zinsser

You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school. — Emily Rios

You can learn English online — Brian Daniel

new strategies in teaching and learning English language — Wilga Rivers

One of the most painful parts of teaching mathematics is seeing students damaged by the cult of the genius. The genius cult tells students it's not worth doing mathematics unless you're the best at mathematics, because those special few are the only ones whose contributions matter. We don't treat any other subject that way! I've never heard a student say, "I like Hamlet, but I don't really belong in AP English - that kid who sits in the front row knows all the plays, and he started reading Shakespeare when he was nine!" Athletes don't quit their sport just because one of their teammates outshines them. And yet I see promising young mathematicians quit every year, even though they love mathematics, because someone in their range of vision was "ahead" of them. — Jordan Ellenberg

My task as a language arts teacher is to provide texts that are not so difficult that my students shut down in frustration and not so easy that my students don't push their thinking. — Kimberly Hill Campbell

I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you. — C.S. Lewis

I said, "I'm satisfied teaching the martial arts."
"Not me," Arnold responded. "Bodybuilding is just a stepping-stone to me. I plan on becoming a real estate mogul, and from there, I plan to get into the movies."
I had to smile as I said to myself, "How's he going to be an actor when he can hardly speak English? — Chuck Norris

For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps unequalled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty, about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed perhaps of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, — Jerome K. Jerome

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm. — Mary Ellen Chase

Besides the aesthetics, besides teaching an appreciation of T.S. Eliot, a basic need is fulfilled when you teach English at CUNY. — Billy Collins