Where are good students from?

to the native speakers who are teaching English to foreigners from various parts of the world :

Do you find more easy when you're with students from certain country and why?

I suppose that Germanic-language-speaking people might have a little advantage and some French speakers.

I'm no native speaker, you know, but I do teach English. And I could tell you that I't basically a matter of predisposition, interest and motivation. As we all here know, the best students and succesful learners are those who practice all the time and do their best to learn the language. Speaking it well is a reward to your efforts.

However, there's also this Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, saying that there are different fields that you can be good at: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, body-kinesthetic, Auditory-musical, interpersonal communication and intrapersonal communication. And some of those areas are very much related. For example, the verbal-linguistic with the auditory-musical field.

People who have developed or are better gifted, when it comes to the verbal-linguistic area, usually have a broad vocabulary and reach speech (in their mother tongue) and tend to learn foreign languages with a nice style and ease.

I've also heard that musicians, who obviously have the Auditory-musical skill, have a little advantage when learning languages, since their ear is capable of identifying the exact tune and difference between different sounds (phonemes), hence, it enables them to speak with a nice accent usually.

So far I've seen this to be true, I am a musician myself, play the piano, guitar, and quena*, and my level of English is quite acceptable I reckon. One of my Peruvian teachers was a musician as well, and he speaks with a nice sounding American accent, it was like, you can't tell he's Peruvian.

What do you think about musicians having a slight advantage when learning languages? what are your thoughts on this, my friends?

Regards.

Pete

P.S.- So far, some may be thinking 'What the bloody hell is a Quena?? Well, it's an andean musical instrument which has its origins in almost 1500 years b.C. in the Peru-Bolivia area. They were originally made of llamas bones and stuff and it had a pentatonic scale (that's only five notes, as some punks like when doing some rock or blues ;) ). Now they're made of bamboo or similar materials and since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, quenas usually have the normal scale with seven notes, they have 6 finger holes and one thumb hole and is open on both ends. It's a bit difficult to play, but yeah, it's good fun.

<<...reach speech...>>

Oh scrap, I've done it again. Can you actually pronounce that 'reach speach', mates? It sounds a bit odd. I think I should say reach vocabulary or something...

me and my mistakes ;)

Asian students are often highly motivated and very diligent, but alas with their native languages being so different from English, they often struggle with the pronounciation and therefore often do not dare to practize their skills and thus do not get the possibility to get better through interactiuon with native speakers.

We Europeans or other speakers of languages closely related to English often forget how privilieged we are in this respect.

And yes, I know som Hungarian, Basque, Finn or something will come along and point out that their languages are just as different from English as Thai and Quecha are, But hey, I was generalizing! Naughty me...spank me!

Pete,

I'm teaching English to children aged about 8-11, some of them who take music lessons have good sense of pronunciation, intonation and rhythm. Maybe I'm not that good to teach English but still trying to learn. Poor kids! :)

I don't play any musical instrument but I like listening to music a lot. These days I'm addicted to little wing by Jimi Hendrix. So good thing you have musical talents.

Quena? How does it sound?

Dawn