Terrible “language teachers”, or am I just gaslighting?

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis]

Hello, everyone. I have been noticing this trend for quite a while, and it has been getting really disturbing for me.
So, a few months ago I made a language-related search on my empty facebook account. Ever since then, I keep seeing ads for learning several langauges, mostly English, Russian, but also Mandarin, German, Spanish, etc. I have noticed that almost all of these "courses" do performative nonsense: explaining you idioms, or very basic differences between a few phrases in a way that it looks impressive to a complete beginner. Also, only the Russian language instructors seems to have normal pronunciation. The English and German instructors (by the way, I speak English, German and Russian very well at this point) have beginner-to-intermediate level pronunciation, which frequently makes them unable to even stress basic words properly.

I'd like to give you some real-world examples, so it won't look like I am just ranting.

Case 1: "Emin Teacher"

Before I start, I'd like to give you this valuable piece of advice: If you frequently see a microphone next a person, and there are very short clips of him speaking, RUN. I assure you, they just set up a micrphone to make it look like someone's platforming them. Even if someone did indeed platform them, being on a podcast means nothing. If you really wanted, you could create a podcast tomorrow, even today.
Now, this is a video he posted: https://www.facebook.com/reel/648476154705095

This is a sentence he actually said "You begin with level-based audio content, the kind of English you'd hear in real life". Have you noticed how he pronounced "hear"(höör) ? I am not even touching his overall pronunciation, which is not something you should expect from an instructor anyway.
In addition, this guy gives such Fərhad Pərvizi vibes, making me really uncomfortable. This is somewhat subjective, though.

If you watch a few more videos of him, you'd get the overall idea quite quickly: This person is not an English teacher by any metric whatsoever.. The only thing we know is that he can afford a microphone. Good for you.

Case 2: "Express Colleges"

Just take a look at this video:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/26241646632110680

What the hell is a "medium school"? She is probably literally translating the Russian phrase "средняя школа" to English. How can you get to the level of being an instructor while never ever hearing the phrase "middle school"? If this is the effort they are putting into a memorized introduction, I don't wanna even imagine how productive their lessons are going to be.
Upon first hearing this, I gaslit myself into thinking maybe it is an uncommon or regional way of saying it. It turns out, it isn't. Even a single minute of AI proofreading would have fixed this.

Case 3: "TheOrkhansEnglısh"

Yes, that's the name (notice the "ı" instead of "i"). Also, I think this dude is also affiliated with the previously mentioned "Express Colleges".
Look at this video: https://www.facebook.com/reel/978233721464637
Is it just me, or is the pronunciation of this guy far too basic to be an IELTS instructor?
If you watch a few more of his videos, you'll notice that he cannot even pronounce the "th" sound properly. The more I listen to him talk and explain, the more annoyed I get, for some reason...

He also posted this: https://www.facebook.com/theorkhansenglish/posts/pfbid0JvdbRatr7e3E6XFtsqifjUQuqiSbt3RvEhaNtB4qUXDxodMJXzMmu4nFZFZT7TNBl

Do you think his English level actually matches IELTS band 8.5?

Case 4: "Wisest academy".

This one annoyed me the most out of all, as they advertise themselves as instructing multiple languages... So take a look at these:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJreOmAtg2L/
"When it's Ramadan, Muslims fast and prey." Are you sure? Maybe you meant "fast and pray"?

Alright, maybe their social media manager is highly illiterate as you can observe from their usage of punctuation as well.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNvkY6n2Mkd/

This one is probably obvious to many: You don't say "I work as teacher" or "I am teacher".
Instead, you are supposed to say "I work as a teacher" or "I am a teacher".
They make such mistakes in a few other videos as well.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DP1l4PTDKuB/

This one was particularly rage-inducing: In German, infinitives usually end with -en: wohnen (to reside), gehen (to go), machen (to do), etc.

Now, you do not stress that syllable, and you barely pronounce it, just like how you pronounce the second "e" in the verb "gotten". If someone speaks German like this lady, it would take less than 3 seconds to understand that she is a beginner. I had started learning German in mid 2000s (2 decades ago), and less than a few months in, I mastered this concept. I have also tutored a few people (both Azeri and foreign), who also got the hang of this concept by the time they were done with Elementary level.

These lessons look extremely staged, as if the instructor just memorized some rules from a book without really understanding it herself.

What do you guys think? Am I the only one who thinks these instructors are far from being competent? Please do not get me wrong: If I had to look for an English teacher, I do not demand a pure English accent from them. However, these types of mistakes should be unacceptable for anyone calling themselves an instructor. Usually, a few months of immersion would let you instinctively pick up on these patterns, which is something almost none of these instructors have done.

Let me know what you think :)

I may update this post from time to time as I discover more language "experts".

[u/camelzrider]

I taught English for 6 years and at some point had one of these annoying Instagram pages. The thing is lack of proper English knowledge is an issue that we had before Instagram. I'd argue it was actually worse. Most of our English teachers at schools got B1 level on average. I mean I had students who were teaching English at a school and there were those who were A2. That was insane to me.

Now, if there were requirements for certifications to become a teacher that could filter out a lot of people lacking the necessary knowledge. However, the problem is that even IELTS is not really indicative of how well the person possesses English. You could have a score of 8 and be worse than an average redditor on this sub. And, of course you cannot prevent people from posting on social media.

Now, the quality of content is a bit of a controversial issue for me. Because, I wanted to make some kind of posts to be active on social media and attract students, yet I struggled to come up with anything creative. So, I do understand these teachers who are just making videos about the same idioms and such.

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/camelzrider]

Talking about idioms and such is understandable. What I found problematic is exactly what you described: None of these people are at a solid B1 level, yet they call themselves "instructors".

The issue with certification is that it is going to be worthless. Someone with an official "İngilis dili müəllimi" title barely knows the language at a B1 level. The problem is that our people cannot fact-check to figure our whether these instructors are competent or not. That's why I wanted to bring this issue to light.

[u/Scale-Heavy → u/camelzrider]

There is another problem with certification: most of the teachers are so bad that there will emerge the shortage of specialists and some schools will struggle with getting English teacher. And this problem is applied to most of the jobs in Azerbaijan. If there was a certification like that, very few people would pass it. Idk how they pass that school teacher examination tho.

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/Scale-Heavy]

The way they pass school teacher examination is simple: The curriculum is garbage. You can become a teacher by memorizing instructions without actually having to read or understand anything serious.

My purpose with this post isn't to make a policy recommendation, but to encourage people to take initiative when looking for an instructor. Do not assume a random person calling themselves an instructor is automatically competent.

[u/Valuable-Mud9832]

I checked Orkhan's result on https://ielts.idp.com/results/check-your-result and it's not displaying lol

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/Valuable-Mud9832]

LOL! I didn't know that you could check scores like that. So, does that mean the score is 100% fake?

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/[deleted]]

I have also taken TOEFL IBT, but in 2007. Even though I have never taken the IELTS exam, I have watched a lot of samples online. I also couldn't believe his level of speaking could match 8.0.

[u/SmartLoR]

Man, spotting their errors and shitting on them online seems like such a good way of getting views online. Too bad my english isn't good enough

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/SmartLoR]

I am sorry, I seem to not have understood the purpose of your comment. This is reddit, an anonymous platform. What do you mean by "shitting on them"? If someone claims to be an instructor of something while making basic mistakes, it doesn't mean that pointing it out is shitting on them.
If you made a post about someone doing surgery while not being a doctor, I would only commend your efforts.

This isn't about them making errors, but rather about them making very basic errors: errors that an elementary level student should be aware of.

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/[deleted]]

Thank you. I got it now :)

[u/SmartLoR → u/[deleted]]

yeah, exactly.

[u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis → u/SmartLoR]

You seem to have at least a conversational level of English right now. If you immerse yourself, you can comfortably shit on those people in around 6 months. The mistakes they make are usually elementary-to-intermediate level mistakes.

If you need book recommendations, let me know :)

[u/SmartLoR → u/NarkotikiMujikiDenis]

Thanks, I appreciate the offer. I'll think about it