As a teacher trainer I have had a chance to work with Armenian English language teachers teaching at different levels, from primary school to university. During some of the sessions I had a very uneasy feeling. I would occasionally have teachers in the group who simply did not understand my English... This was particularly common in rural communities. Even in the cities in a group of 10 there would be only 3-4 teachers with very good English language skills. The rest of the group often tended to shun any discussion, because they felt uncomfortable to express their ideas in English, and thus disclose their deficient proficiency to their colleagues.
In Armenia pre-service English language training comprises a lot of drilling, memorization, translation and grammar knowledge (a changing reality, bust still a dominant one). Less attention is paid to teaching methods, though there are special courses on general teaching methodology and EFL methodology in particular. The pre-service training is quite intensive: four years of undergraduate studies, plus two years of graduate studies, which most undergraduates tend to take. However, once the students leave the university, they rarely get any other chance to learn the language they are teaching. Many do not have any chance to experience it in any authentic environment. There is no radio, no television, no books or magazines in English (well, with the exception of the capital city, of course). What shall these teachers do? How can they keep up with the current transformations of the language? You may be surprised, but there are still teachers in Armenia who insist on using SHALL with the first person singular and plural, and when I tried to dissuade them, they referred to the irrevocable argument of "But that's what we've learnt and what our university textbooks say!"
So, every time I had to conduct a teacher training session, I had wished there were a way to offer the teachers a language amendment course. I realize that this is a very sensitive issue and there are a number of questions to be considered, such as:
- How should teachers' proficiency level be assessed? It seems that the pre-service qualification is not a safe guarantee of their knowledge. An unfortunate, but true fact in Armenia. In addition, when should the assessment be carried out, with what intervals?
- What implications such an assessment may have? Will this create tensions among colleagues and de-motivation?
- Who should offer the language amendment course: a NNS or NS? In Armenia a course offered by a non-native speaker may simply be sabotaged:-)
- How to ensure the sustainability of learning opportunities? A one-time course might be helpful, but if teachers are not provided with further opportunities for learning, they will end up in a dead end again.
I'm sure there are other issues as well which I have not covered here, but I wonder what others think of this idea, and whether there are instances of successfully including a language amendment course into a in-service teacher training program.
- Christina_Sargsyan's blog
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I have been a teacher in the US for the past 20 years. Teaching in an urban setting offers many challenges that are unique to the environment. One challenge is teaching English to students who insist their dialects are the norm. This is compounded by the fact that many inner-city teachers also speak their "neighborhood" language, which provides poor role modeling for students who are having a difficult time grasping why English is so important. I believe speaking Standard English in a school setting must be the rule; teachers who struggle with their own language skills (whether because it is a second language, or they have internalized a convoluted form of the language, or whatever) should be required to attend on going courses to improve their own skills. They are, after all, role models for our students. As we all know, having poor language ability is a hinderence to success in our growing global economy.
Dear Aairsa,
it was interesting to discover that the use of standard English might be in peril even among teachers in native speaking settings. I never really realized that.
I am inclined to agree with you regarding the role of teachers in promoting the use of standard English, but I think in certain settings you have to be quite cautious when strictly following the rule of exclusive usage of standard English. I believe there is a danger of losing your audience, when you insist on such a use without explaining why you're doing it. Especially the adolescent age groups of learners may be very sensitive in this regard, because the non-standard language, be it slang or jargon, is so much part of their identity. Incidentally, the latest French film The Class is a very good illustration of this point: the students challenge their French teacher to explain why it is necessary to use certain words and not the others for self-expression, and the teacher is compelled to confess that the standard French is used by snobs (another concept he has to explain to the class):-)
There is a hot debate regarding the role of popular culture and whether it should be treated as equal to the high culture; whether there should be any such distinction at all. I believe language as the symbolic representation of these cultures plays a key role in this debate. My personal take is you can't really isolate the two. Such attempts may result in strong resistance and further social exclusion of certain groups.
So, I don't think there is a panacea for this issue: no rule or regulation may amend the situation if it is enforced without considering the characteristics of the learning environment. The personal judgement of the teacher in a specific classroom may be the only reliable criterion to use for deciding what language to use, though to make a valid judgment they indeed need to have a very sound knowledge of the language;-)
Hi Christina,
My name's Gülay Ekren. I studied computer studies when I was in the university but now I'm teaching English at Sinop University in Turkey. I'm trying to understand you and I dare say "I agree with you". It's very diffucult to teach English when strictly following the rule of exclusive usage of standard English. I can't do this in class because they don't want to learn English but it is my role. My students aren't very good in English although they are at the university and they have been learning English for 8 years. I need your help!
Dear Gülay,
I wish I could help you, but for that I will need to learn more about your teaching situation and even then the teaching tips I offer will not necessarily work, because you will still need to adjust those to the specific group of learners you are teaching. Perhaps we can start with finding out why they are reluctant to study. I believe there will always be students who will lack the motivation to learn, but I'm hopeful that as teachers we can at least try to build up this intangible, but crucial pre-requisite for successful learning. So, why do you think they don't learn? Are they open about the their reasons?
Or perhaps what you are saying is that they don't want to learn standard English. Is this the case? I've had students who'd requested to teach them slang;-) I had to go into a long lecture of why I can't teach them slang, going into the nature of this register. However, I tried to teach them ABOUT different registers and did so through movies. To show the sharp contrast of registers we worked with two movies: Never Been Kissed, about an American high school in the new millennium, and Dead Poets Society, about an elite private school in the US in 1950s. Even while using the first movie, I made sure that the students learnt the standard variants of the slang used there, since most probably moving from Australia to New Zealand, or from the US to UK they will have better chances to be understood if they stick to the standard English:-) Slang is narrowly territorial and usually specific to certain subcultures and the students need to be aware that it's much better to be heard, than to look cool, but incomprehensible:-)
So, Gülay, I'd really love to help when you share with us some specific issues in your classroom.
Pathi
Dear Sargysan,
It was an interesting reading. I too was in the same situation you are and still face this every time students leave my Institution. I am running a Spoken English Institute in Coimbatore, India. So I came up with an idea of holding a monthly meeting for all the outgoing students. The meeting will be in English. There might be a discussion among the students in groups or there might be a guest lecture followed by Q&A session.
There has been a wholesome welcome among the students. I Just give a thought at this.
Regards
Dear Gulay and Christina,
Am I right, Gulay, in thinking you mean it is difficult to teach classes using only English? If so, then - dare I say, too - I agree with you. I have a fantastic relationship with my students, where they do the work and try to improve their English skills, but I could not build this trust and enthusiasm without using their language too.
Especially teaching young adults (teenage through university), there is a world of emotional complexity with speaking a foreign language. They are exposed and vulnerable in their mother tongue and ten times so in a foreign language. As you say Christina, using dialects rather than standard English is effective in the classroom. Which makes me wonder what are the risks of asking the teachers to change their English.
Until I have built up trust with each teacher, I am very careful about pointing out language errors. In fact, my language has tended towards mirroring theirs. But my purpose is to encourage them to use English; not to correct them. I can understand Japanese English as well as say London downtown.
What do you think about using students' mother language in their lessons, and allowing country specific branches of English?
Cheers,
nick.7
high school teacher, Japan
"What do you think about using students' mother language in their lessons..."
I've expressed my approach to this issue in earlier postings, but I can reinforce it again noting that I usually avoid using the native language in the classroom if I can. You may be quite right attributing the mutual trust and motivation to the use of the native language, however, I think this goal is quite achievable in English as well. Of course, if the students' proficiency level is enough not to hinder a genuine communication. When I was teaching a beginner group, I used Armenian more often. However, with time I tried to change this as well, for instance, by providing the instructional language in English to minimize the use of the native language and expanding the use of English. I know there can be numerous counterarguments, but my major argument for the use of English is the limited exposure to English EFL students have. Classroom is where they can hear and speak in this language, and I'd rather use this time efficiently.
... and allowing country specific branches of English?
My discussion of possible answers to this question in an ESL environment may be restricted to mere speculations, even if these prove somewhat true. In an EFL setting where most teachers are NNS this is not much of an issue, since they teach what they've learnt: standard English. In general, I think students need to be exposed to different varieties of English in the classroom, but I would side with those that advocate for the use of the standard English as a learning outcome. Different dialects or varieties of English are culturally very sensitive (there is a somewhat tacit dimension to the knowledge of this or that variety which is elicited in the particular cultural setting) and it would be funny if, e.g. I who have grown up in remote, tiny Armenia start teaching cockney to my students after a year of study in London (though I seem to be prone to picking up the 'uo?' (what?)):-)
How to ensure the sustainability of learning opportunities? A one-time course might be helpful, but if teachers are not provided with further opportunities for learning, they will end up in a dead end again.
It's really shocking that teachers can't understand you in Armenia. Before a teacher can teach a language, he/she should be proficient. And if 4 years of university study did not do it, then I don't have hopes for your course of 1 week or month to amend their language deficiency. I think their defeciency can't be fixed by any teacher trainer. You are right. It's a dead end again if we rely on courses only.
So unless, the teacher him or herself work hard on their langauge development after they graduate, they will regrettably regress and lose ground on their langauge mastery. So unless you can go home with each and everyone and feed them English books and give them access to the internet to interact with other English speakers on forums like this one or on voice chat rooms, they will be doomed to be weak in English.
English teachers are supposed to have gained experience in language learning and reached and independent stage where they can continue on their on without formal langauge classes. Having said that, it's worth pointing that teacher methodology courses in Britain are usually divided into 4 hours a day of one to two weeks. In the morning, they take 2 hours of language refreshment and in the infternoon they work on some teaching methodology. They divide the teachers into groups. The advanced are in one group and the intermediate in another. This way, the langauge courses should suit most of the class memebers.
I believe that if a teacher has an internet connection, then there is no reason whatsoever for their language to be weak. They have only themselves to blame for not being good at English.
Sel6000
Dear Christina,
I found your post very interesting as we face exactly the same issues in Brazil. I am currently involved in an e-Learning Project for public sector teachers in Brazil and our biggest obstacle so far has been the low (almost non-existent) level of English of teachers, with very few exceptions!
Graeme Hodgson - Director English Language
British Council Brazil
www.britishcouncil.org.br/elt
Dear Sabapathi,
Good luck with the project! It would be really interesting if you share how the one-month course went, what lessons were learnt, what students liked, what techniques and/or sessions worked best, etc.