Did any Teachers Inspire You?

[tulosai]

Did any of you have a foreign language teacher that inspired your love either for a specific language or for languages in general?  I had a high school French teacher who had us watch a French Opera as part of a French language course.  I think that's when I really fell in love with French.

Has anyone had an experience like this?

[LauraM]

Yes, indeed.  During my freshman year of college I lived in the Spanish language dorm.  I felt more than a bit intimidated as I was among many students who were either native speakers or who had spent a year or a semester abroad during high school. 

The dorm director who was also an instructor at the college was very empathetic and helped me get over feeling so intimidated.  She went out of her way to encourage me to speak more and to draw upon the skills and the proficiency that I had.  She was this way with all of us; very upbeat, with an infectious enthusiasm for study of the language. 

[kitkat0124]

I had a teacher in arts, she was fluent in french. During breaktime she will teach us french words. Her love for arts are really unbelievable. She had a great influences from her french grandmother. She encouraged us to try to learn different cultures/people as many as we can, inspires us to study languages that we think can help us in the future. Her outlook in life is very inspiring.

[thekernel]

Yes, my drama teacher. He was very funny, very easy to relate to, and seemed to put up with everyone's antics with aplomb. He also had to deal with his wife's illness which was very hard for him but it showed a lot of character to come in and teach us.

[Gregor]

I had a French teacher who inspired me and I went on to do French at university largely because of him.

[klassiter]

Yes, I had a teacher in high school that inspired me.  During my Senior year in high school I was having a very hard time in my Spanish class.  The teacher I had at the time was difficult to understand.  After tutoring, and still not having much success my parents requested that I be moved to another Spanish class.  It was there that I met Mrs. White.  Mrs. White was a great teacher, I learned a lot in her class.  I remember from the time you stepped in her classroom you could only speak Spanish.  If you did not know how to ask for something you had to find out from someone before asking her. By being immersed in the Spanish language this way, I learned so much.  I left that classroom knowing so much more than I did from my previous Spanish classes.

[Beverly]

It's not the teacher that inspired me ,it's the other student.  My first English course was when I was 13 years old. Now mind you,I only knew couple words .This English course must really be desperate to get students that they just asked my dad which grade I was in and ,they put me in the grade that they THOUGHT I was SUPPOSED to be in. The result? My first day in class was terrible. I remember vividly that they had a test. In my first day. It was grammar test and I had no idea anything about it. Even though I was supposed to master it, I was in a public school with over 50 students in one class so my teacher really didn't care if we learnt the language at all.

Here I was ,with my pen on my hand ,tried to ask this student next to me who was a lot older than me, to help me a little. to explain to me before the test started. She wouldn't.  I was so angry that I made a goal to myself that one day,I'd be standing up there,teaching and I'd be a lot better than this student.

[Jellyfish]

Not really. But I have to say that I only had good teachers so I learned a lot from them.

[GetFresh]

My high school Spanish really inspired me to learn the Spanish language.  She had such a passion to teach us that it amazed me.  She was one of those teachers who care more about teaching rather than money aspect.  She took her time/resources to help us all individually.  I've never had a teacher like that ever since.

[mareebaybay]

I won't say that any teachers inspired me, but they sure did push me. A lot of my teachers pushed me to learn multiple languages. They tried to sell me, on it being beneficial which it actually is.

[sidney]

No, not really. My teachers aren't that "inspiring" enough to make me learn a new language or develop a general interest in whatever they're teaching, lol.

[True2marie]

Yes, I was inspired by several teachers to learn Spanish.

The one I remember best is Ms. Anguera. She made me feel smart, able and special.  I know she's retired now, but this woman was a wonderful teacher.

[pandandesign]

Yes. I remember when I was in middle school, my English teacher was Vietnamese. She was the first teacher who taught me how to speak, read, and write English better. She has helped me to improve my skills in writing, reading, and communication. She was the only teacher I couldn't forget because that was one of the reasons I like English. Without her, I wasn't able to speak English well enough to be able to communicate with other people.

[Denis Hard]

We had an English who was born in England but spend most of her childhood years in Switzerland. She was fluent in four languages and liked to show off her linguistic skills. I was inspired by her [ability] and actually I attempted learning French, found it too hard at that time and quit.

[Korsakoff]

I'm almost getting jealous reading the replies here in this topic, I wish I had such inspiring teachers when I was still going to school. Unfortunately all my teachers were straight forward and only bared the necessities. A thing that inspired me was perhaps my English book, because I wanted to understand every word in there as soon as possible, so I was always ahead of my classmates.

[Kotro]

Can't say it happened to me. I had good and bad language teachers (English, French, Latin and German), but any development or lack thereof in a specific language came for my own previous level of interest in it. I have, howver, had some inspiring professors at college who really wowed me with their knowledge of languages and linguistics, and inspired to take further interest in some of the nuances of the languages I already knew.

[Rosa]

Yes, my French teacher, Madame Ponctine was very inspirational . She would tell us alot of stories about her homeland and each week she would teach us a new French song :love:.Her tenure was very short :cry: but  even now I continue to love the subject:grin:.