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Is this correct?She was a student teacher at this school. She visited classes and made classroom observations.OrShe was a trainee teacher at this school. She visited classes and conducted classroom observations.Which is more correct? Trainee teacher or student teacher?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Is this correct? She was a student teacher at this school. She visited classes and made classroom observations. Or She was a trainee teacher at this school. She visited classes and conducted classroom observations. Which is more correct? Trainee teacher or student teacher?[/nq]
Both designations could be correct, at least in British English.

Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

Usenet · Answer

Both designations could be correct, in American English.

"Student teacher" would be more common in AmEng.
"Conducted observations" would be more formal.

Usenet · Answer

Both designations could be correct, in American English.

"Conducted observations" would be more formal, although I doubt that observation has anything to do with UK/US English distinctions.

"Student teacher" would be more COMMON in AmEng, in my opinion. "More correct" is a whole different story. Let me just check and show you how to do it yourself as well.
Well...hmm...21 hits in the British National Corpus for "student teacher" and just 6 hits for "trainee teacher."
Google : .co.uk restricted search: "student teacher," 21, 800. "Trainee teacher," 4,030.
.edu restricted search: 88 hits for "trainee teacher," 156,000 for "student teacher"
VERDICT: "Student teacher" is more common that "trainee teacher" in both UK home university sites and US education sites worldwide. However, "trainee teacher" is almost nonexistent in US sites, while in the UK it has a certain limited amount of acceptance among the educated. Unfortunately, the people building the American National Corpus are not done yet. But rest assured...Godot is on the way.

More or less any such phrase can be superficially researched for free in this manner. Usually, that's more than good enough for what a native or non-native speaker needs.
These are the sites:
www.google.com (Advanced Search - Domain Only .co.uk/.edu) http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html
A word of warning...do not trust a simple Google search in English to solve all your worries: it is believed that there are more non-native speakers of English than native speakers of English in the world right now. Do not make absolute judgements based on what you find in US sites, since the .edu domain applies to all US educational affiliates worldwide, not just in the actual 50 states. I'm not sure about the .co.uk domain.
Begrudgingly, it must be admitted that the British are well ahead of us Americans when it comes to putting out free on-line, user-friendly corpora. One might say "light years ahead" and be closer to the mark (snarl of pained disgust).
All thanks to a fine English gentleman called Steve Taylore-Knowles for donating a good deal of time and effort to teach me this trick.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]More or less any such phrase can be superficially researched for free in this manner. Usually, that's more than good enough for what a native or non-native speaker needs. These are the sites: www.google.com (Advanced Search - Domain Only .co.uk/.edu) http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html[/nq]
Thank you very much for passing on these sites. They will be of much help to me. Ching

Usenet · Answer

You're very welcome, Ching.

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