An English Teacher Teaches Better Romanian, pp.

66-69, in Developing a pan-European Network of

Language Resource Centres for Less Widely Used Less Taught Languages, The Proceedings of the
eEuro inclusion International Conference Equal Chances for Any European Language, Iai,
Romnia, 30 septembrie - 2 octombrie 2005, editura CDRMO, ISBN: 973-85703-9-5



An English Teacher Teaches Better Romanian

Ileana Oana Macari, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iai, Romania



1. Introduction.
The present paper introduces my course Limb i civilizaie romn, curs pentru avansai
(Romanian Language and Civilization for Advanced Students), published by UAIC Press, Iai,
2005, and describes its teaching context, target group, structure and methods employed. It is,
actually, the product of the years I have been teaching Romanian as a foreign language, validated
by the need to have a learning material tailored for a particular activity, i.e. the summer courses
organized by my university. Another observation I can make (not only) as a result of my teaching
experience at the summer courses is that students overtly appreciate work on organized material
and are more responsive and outspoken when cooperating directly with the author of the course
book. Subsequently, many of its characteristics were imposed by the actual terms of use, among
the most important of which I would mention duration of course, number of classes per day,
categories of students and motivations, levels of competence and performance.
I am aware that the title could make people rate its author as inflated and self-assertive. That is
only natural, since traditionally it is a Romanian teachers job to teach Romanian, while an
English teacher ought to stick to English. Yet, the context in which I teach Romanian does not
resemble the common situation, where the students and the teacher, all native speakers of
Romanian, spend a predetermined length of time discussing literary texts or grammar. As clear
from the title, the course is addressed to non-native speakers of Romanian, even if with a good
level of Romanian. In other words, the target group will interact with Romanian as a foreign
language or, for some of the students, as a second language. I have been (mostly) an English
teacher since I graduated (English major, Romanian minor), but for the last 9 years I have been
part of the team of the summer courses Romania Language and Civilization, organized every
year by the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University. I could say, then, that since graduation, I have
regularly been teaching a language be it English or Romanian - to non-native speakers be they
Romanians or other nationalities. Then my experience in teaching English proves very useful
when teaching Romanian, regardless of it being my mother tongue, because it enables me to use
the effective TEFL methods and approaches and thus improve the quality of teaching.

2. The structure of the course book.
Limb i civilizaie romn, curs pentru avansai is structured on two sections: I. Vocabular
i gramatic (Vocabulary and Grammar) and II. Lectur i conversaie (Reading Comprehension
and Conversation). I hesitated for a while over whether to introduce the word grammar in the
title of the section knowing, on the one hand, that students are usually said to be loath to work on
it and, on the other, that one of the most popular misconceptions about communicative teaching is
that it puts a ban on grammar. In what regards my first uncertainty, my teaching experience
confirms that diligent students, irrespective of their level of study, consider grammar the best, if
bitter, medicine to improve their performance. It gives most of them a sense of safety because
they can apply rules as soon as they have command of them and because logical explanations can
easily be provided. They also feel free to ask questions and ready to write down the exceptions to
the rules. As for the second uncertainty, my decision was easier to make since the assertion CLT
means not teaching grammar was convincingly labeled as a misconception by Geoff
Thompson in his article Some misconceptions about Communicative Language Teaching
published in ELT Journal.
The first section contains five units, each bringing forward a variety of tasks and exercises
designed to improve students accuracy and fluency and develop their vocabulary. Because they
thoroughly check students command of vocabulary, collocation and grammar alike, I would rank
among the most relevant the exercises requiring students to match idiomatic phrases containing a
particular verb (a fi to be, a pune to put/set, a face to do/make, a avea to have and a da to
give) with their respective dictionary explanations, then to solve a short lexical cloze made up of
an equal number of gaped sentences. Not less engaging and challenging, the grammar focus -
consisting of transformations (rewrite, rephrase), turning dialogues into indirect speech, and vice
versa, word formation and cloze tests - contributes to the students sense of achievement.
The other section, structured on five units as well, introduces elements of Romanian
civilization identifiable in the titles - i.e. Originea poporului romn (The Origin of the
Romanians), Mituri fondatoare (Myths of Foundation), Originea limbii romne (The Origin of the
Romanian Language), or Curtea domneasc medieval (The Romanian Medieval Court). The
second section, devised to continue the practice of reading, speaking, writing and listening
described in the previous paragraph, especially since the units in the two sections are worked on
alternatively, thus combining and diversifying the activities, includes literary or historical reading
comprehension texts followed by glossaries and three-option multiple choice exercises. Other
activities invite students to express opinions, to contribute to discussions on certain issues or to
describe the corresponding state of affair in their country. The excerpts I opted for belong mostly
to 15
th
and 16
th
century Romanian writers, commonly regarded as the founders of the standard
Romanian. Surprisingly enough, the students are generally willing to accept the challenge of these
difficult fragments, especially if they are told that such texts pose enough problems even to
Romanian native speakers. Moreover, for those interested in achieving a diachronic perspective on
Romanian, such a selection provides motivating insights.
Both sections comprise, besides the variety of exercises I have mentioned above, two types of
informative boxes; one, labeled S ne amintim! (Lets remember!), introduces a brief life and
work presentation of the writer from whose work some excerpts were selected and used in
exercises. That is the case with Mircea Eliade, Mihai Eminescu, Alecu Russo, Mihail Sadoveanu,
and Vasile Voiculescu. The other, named Observai! (Grammar Tip), structures additional
information about the grammar issue under discussion in the unit; it is intended to give students
the opportunity to either remember or learn the uses of a fi be as an auxiliary verb, the Romanian
verbs introducing indirect speech, the main categories of prefixes, and so on.
Any teacher of English will easily recognize such types of exercises and acknowledge them as
part of his/her regular teaching tools. Being a teacher of English myself, I exploited them by
translating them to Romanian, only to find they are equally effective. After teaching for a number
of years, one comes to know what questions to expect in relation with certain topics, as well as
how to identify the source of the most frequent errors. However, answering questions is not easier
when they concern ones mother tongue. Paradoxically, it is quite the opposite, in fact, if you have
never been a learner of a foreign language yourself, and that because learners usually come up
with questions similar to those the teacher encountered when studying the L2 language
himself/herself. Think of the use of tenses, word order, synonymy, homonymy, composition of
idioms; how often does a native speaker ask questions related to their use in his/her own
language? Obviously seldom, if ever, since the answer is inherent and backed up by linguistic
competence. Few people ask such questions, except the foreign language teachers who already
have the experience of approaching a(nother) language as outsiders. Then I daresay, if that did not
kill them, it certainly made them better.

3. The students.
Another prevailing circumstance that influenced the making of the course book under
discussion was the constitution of the group of students attending the summer courses. The
constitution changes every year, of course, but after working in the team for a number of years, I
feel capable to identity a number of constants characterizing groups every summer. That is to say
that even if the countries represented or the number of the representatives from a particular
country is variable is different every year, the overall professional formation of the students is
comparable.
In the advanced group I work with the number varies between 10 and 15, most of them being
philology students, more often than not coming from Poland, The Czech Republic or Germany.
There are also Socrates students, (future) foreign lecturers of our Faculty, 3 to 4 translators/
interpreters from Brussels, and historians. One or two of them may be half-natives, who have
Romanian as their mother-tongue, but have not had any speaking practice for a number of years
(10 to 20 or so). Consequently, the performance level differs inside the above mentioned group,
and so do their interests. Some of the students want to improve their conversation, still others want
to have better access to written sources, others want to become more efficient translators, and the
enumeration of their interests may go on. The effect on teaching is that none of the four skills can
be neglected without affecting somebodys sense of achievement.
Fortunately, at the end of the course they are encouraged to provide feedbacks which I
acknowledge as very helpful for the making of the course. To those feedbacks I owe the strong
belief that students of all ages hate expositions focusing overtly on Romanian uniqueness such as:
Eminescu is the matchless national poet, dor is untranslatable, and has no correspondent in
other languages, sarmale is the national Romanian dish, the Romanians have never waged any
conquering war and the like. And those feedbacks also led to a rewarding result: at the end of the
summer courses, the students are, at least to some extent, Romanian at heart and tongue.

4. Intercultural communication.
The frame provided by the summer courses in Iasi as probably by summer courses
everywhere - is at the same time challenging and resourceful. Its main particularities are: they last
for a predetermined period of time three weeks; all the participants are offered the same
conditions to study and get information; all are expected to attend the same types of activities - for
3 hours in the morning they work in practical courses (distributed into three groups beginners,
intermediate, advanced), then for 2 hours in the evening they attend a lectures in one of the various
fields relevant to Romanian civilization; they participate in after-class activities in the hostel or
outside; they all spend the coffee breaks (3 every day) and meals in the same place; and, last but
not least, they go on trips at the end of which they really become a group and behave as such.
As I showed previously, the class is made up of persons with different social and cultural
backgrounds, and the interactions established inside it are consequently complex. There is, on the
one hand, one Romanian facing a number of foreigners. The Romanian is endowed with double
extra-authority, first as a teacher, and second, as a native speaker of Romanian. That is why the
students expectations are also double and subsequently they expect all their questions to be
answered promptly and authoritatively, the teaching materials to be carefully selected and
organized, as well as comparable with the ones already experienced for learning other foreign
languages. Missteps in any of these directions are unpardonable since, for example, work on out-
of-date materials and methods may be perceived by students as the impossibility to teach
Romanian with communicative methods because of some intrinsic flaw of the Romanian language
itself.
Another complex interaction develops among the students, and in my view, it has known an
interesting development in point of intercultural communication. Until five or six years ago the
students used to be, at least during the first half of the courses, clearly divided into two groups:
that of the students coming from the former socialist countries and the one of those from the
western countries. Unfortunately that group climate was encouraged by some regulations, such
as those regarding different hotel prices for certain categories, but actually its roots could be found
in the very diverse stereotypes and prejudices affecting most individuals in the group. As a tutor I
have always done my best to promote both teacherstudent and studentstudent communication.
One reason for it is that I agree with Professor Quanyi Zhang who argues that "interaction among
students is functional to building group cohesion and enhancing their capacity to work in a
collaborative way, and that can be achieved if tutors are committed to knowing students and to
encouraging them to feel comfortable in contributing to group discussion (Gherman 2003: 433). I
did not always feel successful in my attempt, as most easterners tended to be shier and more
submissive when confronted with their western colleagues, no matter how hard I tried to treat
them exactly the same way. To a certain extent, the situation can probably be explained by the
difference bigger by then between the educational systems in the capitalist and former
communist countries. For the rest, I think, one has to look for yet in another part.

Stereotypes become (negative) generalizations due to the human tendency to strive for
a holistic picture of the world because [...] the mind strives for generalizations, for a
coherent and comprehensible, even though simplified image. In general, we do not
first see and define, we define first and then see. We pick up what our culture has
already defined for us and we tend to perceive that which we have picked up in the
form stereotyped for us by our culture. (Vlad 2003: 490)

My students are by no means exempted from this, and the attitude I used to notice in late nineties
is proof to that. So is the (fortunately diminishing) concern, not to say distress, manifest in their
parents reactions when they found out that their children chose to come to Romania, of all places!
It is not really relevant who is to blame for the perception we enjoy abroad since I, as a teacher
of Romanian, feel the summer courses offer an effective experiential learning context, as well as a
positive shift in perspective which can lead to a more realistic understanding of our culture.
I do not hope that the scale of things should ever be comparable as regards the Romanian
language abroad, but I still find professor Steen Schousboes opinion below useful enough for my
present argumentation:

There can be no doubt that the success of English in Denmark is closely connected to
the positive reception of Anglophone culture generally and in the same vein the
comparatively less positive evaluation of French and German culture hampers the
acquisition of these languages. Cultural identity is indeed a Trojan horse in foreign
language acquisition and in the many ways in which one language may influence or
eventually replace another. (Vlad 2003: 502)

Even if the success of Romanian with the summer-course students does not actually require the
building of a Trojan horse (nor is it connected to the positive/ negative reception of the Romanian
culture), cultural identity is indeed crucial for the acquisition of Romanian. This can be easily
observed with students who know next to nothing about the Romanian culture before coming here,
and who, quite soon after the town tour or trip to the northern Moldavia became suddenly aware of
a cultural background for their study they have not previously expected. In connection to this in
the course I wanted to offer a brief insight into medieval Romanian culture by means of literature,
the linguistic correspondent of the architectural context they encounter when visiting the
monasteries.
Most manifestations of both positive and negative discriminations between westerners and
easterners are now extinct inside the relationships generated during the summer courses in Iasi.
The students parents have grown less and less alarmed at the thought of their childrens coming
here. The mass media may have the merit for that, but the results are enjoyed by students and
teachers alike. It is very rewarding to hear students speaking Romanian during the breaks instead
of English, the handier lingua franca. Equally rewarding was the news concerning the students of
the 2003 edition who had established a forum on the internet where the discussions were led in
Romanian. It can still be accessed at the address http:// groups.yahoo.com/group/iasi 2003.

5. Conclusion.
Even after a hard years work, I still feel challenged by the peculiarity of tutoring the kind of
groups I have described, made up of students who start as strangers (and, besides, are also
foreigners, in relation to me and to their peers), but end up as a team. Because they have to
accomplish that in a process of working together on improving their Romanian, certain
requirements are to be filled by the teaching materials, among other things.
Consequently, the larger material already tested with students was selected and improved by
considering students feedbacks, suggestions and especially stumbling blocks. I could see in
this way what was too difficult, or, on the contrary, too facile. For example, an exercise requiring
students to add the proper prefix to specific words posed no problems especially to those coming
from countries where Romance languages were spoken or to those speaking at least another
Romance language because as they observed from the very beginning most prefixes were the
same, and used similarly as in other Romance languages. On the contrary, a high percentage of
students had problems with the exercise dealing with the use of articolul posesiv (possessive
article) irrespective of the country they were coming from.
Moreover, my experience as a teacher of English has taught me that grammar can be
taught discreetly and unobtrusively; that when one reads for comprehension the text is
approached and valued from more than one perspective; that Romanian grammar, difficult as it
may appear to be, is ruled by the same principles as any other; then, if a type of exercise is valid
for English, it should be so for Romanian as well.
And, last but not least, one should not forget that people coming for a summer course are
determined to make the most of it in point of achievement, but at the same time they feel they are
on a holiday. They expect what they learn to come in holiday wrapping, or, in other words, to also
have some fun while learning. All English teachers will recognize such expectations to be of
crucial interest for TEFL; it is actually the goal for the achievement of which they strive during all
their classes.


WORKS CITED

Thompson, Geoff, Some misconceptions about Communicative Language Teaching, in ELT
Journal, vol.50
Gherman, Mihai Alin, Annales Universitatis Apulensis, series philologica 4, tom 3, ed.
Universitii 1 Decembrie 1918, Alba Iulia, 2003
Vlad, Eduard (ed.) -isms & -nesses, 2
nd
Anti-Conference, Constana, 18-21 September 2003,
Ovidius Universty Press, Constana, 2004


Summary

The presentation describes a course book written for the students in the summer courses
Romania Language and Civilization, organized every year by the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University.
Starting from the idea that while teaching a foreign language (irrespective of the language taught), any
teacher resorts to a set of shared principles, approaches and methods, the author shows how while
teaching Romanian - she employs her experience with English as a foreign language, and how she
exploits that when teaching her mother tongue to non-native speakers of Romanian.