Non native speakers, do you teach with a script or not?
I'm an AP in a large public university (equivalent of R1 in the US) in the humanities. My situation is a bit tricky, as I am required to teach in my fourth language, which I've learned for around maybe 2 years in total (my uni gave me a year to study the language). Current level is probably somewhere B2.
Also note that English is not my first language but my second. My academic specialty is my third language. In other words, I am going to use my fourth language to teach about the culture in my third language. I only have to teach one class next Fall. It's a large lecture class.
This is my first time teaching (only TAed before, in English), and I've finished my class slides with the help of many translation tools and am currently practicing with my private tutor (assigned by university). I will definitely practice a few rounds myself after going through round one with my tutor, and what I plan to do when the semester begins is that I will read out loud the texts on the slides or write a script (although the idea alone exhausts me, to be honest), but I am receiving conflicting advice. My colleagues who aren't native speakers said they always read from a script (translated from DeepL), but the tutor insists that I speak "naturally," that as a student they would rather hear me struggling a bit in my own words than just hear me read out "blandly" from a script.
But how can that be possible? Even if I am going to teach in English (which I am definitely more comfortable in), I think I will need some sort of script? When I present at conferences, I always prepare a script, as I thought that is the responsible mode (I hate it when people go over time or not knowing what they're talking about...). A colleague of mine also suggested that I never make a presentation by reading from a script, but they have been learning the language for many over ten years? Also, their native language is English.
Obviously, if I devote all my time in perfecting my language, I can probably do it??? but I also need to publish a book and do lots of other research. I simply can't devote all my time into the new language, so I am a bit torn of what I should do. Should I stick to the plan to read from scripts or not?