Adaptability

develop the skills that their work or their school requires. For her, this could include special needs pedagogy, alternative pedagogy, language development, dealing with discipline, and the use of drama in teaching. Her ideal graph is linear showing a learning period that is as intensive as the periods before graduation. However, she thinks that teachers in reality tend to undergo a less intensive period after graduation. Gwen, the most experienced language learner, and Evelyn, the other learner-teacher, appear to think in a similar fashion.

Erin’s three graphs merit attention since she wished to provide the researcher with three different lines. One, she said, showed the ideal impetus for development, while another one, which she called ideal-real, depicted the best possible trajectory in real life contexts. She thinks this ideal-real curve describes the development of outstanding teachers. The third one, which she referred to as the real trajectory, illustrates her experience with teachers she considered average. Her ideal-real representation differs from the ideal one because in real life external and internal factors might influence the intensity and effectiveness of learning. In reality, she perceives that teachers’ knowledge starts to fade or diminish as time passes.

learns them”. Ann emphasises the need to improve one’s language skills and to keep up with recent coinages: teachers should not ”use the slang of ten years ago”. The language of the Internet is much shorter, “only letters, abbreviations remain” and that, too, needs to be taught and learnt by teachers who started their careers when there was no World Wide Web, says Beth. “Language is a living phenomenon, it is being shaped […] there are new idioms, new coinages, it is essential for a teacher to know idiomatic expressions,” remarked Gwen. “More and more things are invented, so we have very many new words,” says Evelyn. In his 2006 research article Borg discussed the same issue: “language is constantly changing, it’s difficult to keep up to date” (p. 21). Having collected data through focus group interviews, emails and essays, from various participants including two experienced, mostly non-native groups of teachers, two trainee groups (Hungarian and Slovene) and one group of other subject specialists, he concluded that the need to keep up with language change was one of the distinctive characteristics of language teachers.

Apart from briefly commenting on the need for a teacher to be familiar with the

“living language”, Irene mentions the changes a teacher has to live with if she decides to work for another kind of educational institution: “if she has a new job, the teacher will have to be trained in the requirements of the given workplace”. Brian expresses a similar view when he remarks that a teacher has to be familiar with language exams and requirements. The introduction of new technology and the use of interactive boards in her mother’s school were mentioned by Evelyn.

Muriel believes that language teaching only makes sense if it takes it into consideration what learners need. She describes one of the courses she attended. This English language course was organised by the bank where she works and employees were supposed to learn business English but the teacher appeared to be ignorant of many of the fields they worked in.

Researcher: So this was a course that failed.

Muriel: Absolutely, she didn’t know simple ... (restarts) like ‘safekeeping account’, this was totally unknown to her. It would have been an unknown expression for my secondary school teacher, too, because this is specialist vocabulary, but she was here to teach us business English.

And I wouldn’t have condemned her if she had interviewed us in Hungarian about what problems we had and then she could have got prepared, but ... (Muriel)

Steven even suggests that the teacher should spend the first few lessons “learning about the students and not teaching anything to them at all”.

Irene believes that “every class needs something different”. The learner turned trainee Evelyn points out that she, too, has to adapt to the group when she teaches Grade 1 right after Grade 8. As she says, “If I go to a beginner group, I am not supposed to use academic English because they will look at me strangely”. Maureen, who attends most of her English classes in the evening after work, also emphasises that the teacher needs to be interesting enough, especially if “classes start at 5.30 and finish at 9 o’clock at night”.

Apart from learning new vocabulary to meet the needs of their English for special purposes classes, teachers may need to refine their subject knowledge as well. An interesting example is provided by Beth, who appreciated that her teacher could unlearn something she had known earlier:

My English teacher in my secondary grammar school, the one who was a good one, I don’t know where she learnt it, maybe at a conference, or just saw this in a dictionary, but there is that expression that “it’s raining cats and dogs”. And she told us that she thought this was a generally used expression and then it turned out that nobody actually used it in Britain. … So she told us that she had realised this and that we [the students] should not use it either. Yes. … (pause) So, we are not to use it as it is a myth.

Irene reports an interesting anecdote from her experience in which the teacher’s ability to respond to the changing circumstances is central.

For example I had a teacher, I looked up to her because ... (restarts) we had a problem: she didn’t speak English during the lessons, only Hungarian. And when we asked her to do it in English because that’s what we are used to [...]. And then she said she would try. She said it would be difficult for her, but she spoke English of course, and she needed one or two weeks and then she got into it. (Irene)

Even Dorothy touches upon some sort of flexibility that she expects the teacher to possess. Although she thinks it is impossible to adapt to a whole group, in her favourite one-on-one teaching situation she expects teachers to “learn new methods if the earlier method does not work with one particular student”. Sylvia, too, when praising her mother, remarks:

“She has got everything. She speaks the language at a near native level, understands me, knows me, knows what I need and I can tell her if something is not useful for me, I can tell her to go on. And then she teaches me with different methods.” In addition to the teacher’s native-like command of English and familiarity with the learner’s needs, the availability of different and varied techniques is obviously a must in the eyes of this learner. Additionally, some sort of spontaneity is expected and the ability to extemporise.