Teaching English all day doesn’t mean your English is getting better

First published on 29 May 2026 at https://sergiopantojaelt.substack.com/p/teaching-english-all-day-doesnt-mean

There is a strange thing that can happen to us English teachers.

You spend the whole day in English. You give instructions in English, correct students in English, explain grammar in English, manage activities in English, ask questions in English, encourage people in English.

And yet, after a few years, your own English may not feel sharper. It may even feel a little smaller.

To be clear, this does not mean you are not a good teacher. Not at all. In many cases, it happens because you have become very good at adjusting your language to your students. You simplify instructions. You avoid unnecessary complexity. You repeat the same classroom phrases because they work. You grade your language down because students need to understand you.

That is good teaching. But it may not be very good language development for the teacher.

Farrell makes this point quite directly when he says that a teacher’s classroom language is often “intentionally simplified” for learners with limited proficiency. The problem is that, over time, this can mean the teacher’s “own English fails to develop” (Farrell, 2008, p. 62).

I think many of us recognize this, even if we do not always say it out loud.

You teach A2 and B1 students for years, and suddenly your examples are always safe. Your explanations become efficient but predictable. Your classroom jokes are the same jokes. Your correction language becomes automatic. You can explain the present perfect in your sleep, but you hesitate when you need to speak about something more abstract, more personal, or less rehearsed.

Your English has not disappeared. It has adapted to the room you are usually in.

And that is the uncomfortable part. Classrooms often reward a narrower version of the teacher’s English. Clear, simple, useful, repeated. All necessary. But if that is the only English you use regularly, other parts of your language become harder to reach.

This matters because teachers need more than classroom survival English. We need language for thinking, discussing, disagreeing, giving nuanced feedback, explaining choices, talking about books, learning, mistakes, confidence, frustration. We need English that can move beyond instructions and examples.

This has been on my mind while planning the professional development courses I’ll be running next semester. I keep coming back to the same idea: teachers need spaces where they can think about teaching and also let their own English stretch a little. Spaces where they can read, speak, notice, question, practice, and use English that is not only for managing a class.

And maybe that is the part we sometimes forget. The classroom gives us constant contact with English, but usually a very particular kind of contact: repeated, graded, careful, useful.

Teaching English all day may keep your English active. But it does not automatically help it grow.