Comments by "Ian Montgomery" (@ianmontgomery7534) on "Why You Should NEVER Teach English in Japan" video.

I am not a teacher but occasionally I helped a Chinese friend teach English at his school in China. I found two things that I found to be important that are likely overlooked by people. the first is to teach them how to position the tongue when pronouncing letters that are pronounced differently in their native language. the classic is Chinese saying "Sank you" rather than "thank you". I taught our house keeper how to position her tongue and she pronounced it perfectly straight away. The other is acknowledge that in reading we use a different part of the brain to read words than they use to read symbols. Even just saying the first letter of a word can often jog your memory of what the word is as they treat the whole word as a symbol. Once it is explained to them they improve remarkably. I like the fun in your classes.
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I remember being put on the spot by being asked to teach the kids a Christmas carol. As I am an atheist this was not easy as I hadn't sung one since I was a child (I was 50 at the time). Luckily I could remember most of the "I wish you a merry christmas"
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@PatSaku yes it is but only if you either see someone make the sound or you are told how to. I taught quite a few Chinese how to do it properly and none had a problem learning it.
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@PatSaku I would have suggested pronouncing whirled as it is very close.
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@PatSaku I agree. with Mandarin it important to understand implosive and explosive sound making too. Unfortunately I lost the best book that explained it (or someone lost it for me!!!)
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@PatSaku When I lived in China Anna my girlfriend had no problem with them after she had been living with me for a while. We had a humourous situation in Shenzhen when she gave a Canadian friend of mine a hard time. he said "only here would you get a diminutive Chinese woman give you a hard time in perfect Australian with a slight American accent" We had a good laugh at that.
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@PatSaku yes in the early 2000s when I was in China the Chinese people I knew who spoke the best English had taken the time to go to the docks and talk with sailors (and act as interpreters for them). they wouldn't have to do that now.
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