Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / April 2005

Both designations could be correct, at least in British English.

Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

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.