#1 The Over-Teacher
Have you ever had a bad golf or tennis lesson?
A bad golf/tennis lesson is when the coach says:
“Put your fingers here, and hold your head like this, and do this with your arm, and twist your hips like this, and point your toes over there…”
And then with an evil smile: “Now hit the ball.”
In English, The Over-Teacher will tell you that the subjunctive verb must precede the pluperfect noun but only if it’s modified by a transvestite preposition.
And then with an evil smile, he says: “Now speak naturally.”
Good luck.
#2 The Talking Dictionary
To observe this type of teacher in his natural environment, you only have to travel to the video jungle of youtube.
Here’s how to identify him: he will “teach” you a word and then bore you into a coma as he talks about the definition.
#3 The Corrector
You make mistakes…
But you don’t want to make mistakes…
So how do you solve this problem?
Ask a native speaker to correct your mistakes!
Right?
Wrong.
Very expensive research done by very smart professors that I read about in some very boring books will tell you that correcting students doesn’t work.
My years of trying to correct my own students (I must confess, I’m a recovering Corrector), will also tell you that it doesn’t work.
What correcting does do is stop the conversation, make you feel stupid, make you nervous, and then make your speaking worse.
There are ways to fix your mistakes, but correcting isn’t one of them.