The death of General English
And if it isn't dead, it damn well should be
General English? Dead? It should be!
Let me begin by defining what I mean by ‘General English'.
The approach is adopted by many schools and most private language centres in SE Asia, and here it is.
Students work their way through a series of textbooks, New Interchange, et al, and start as beginners and work their way up to upper intermediate level.
Beyond this lay higher level textbooks that native speakers would be expected to study in their final years of school before moving on to university. These books and this level are not the subject of this article, so let's take a step back to the beginning.
As most of you know, there are two types of beginners: beginners and false beginners, the latter being those who have already had some exposure to English.
What I'm saying here is that there are also false pre-intermediates, false intermediates and false upper-intermediates. And all of them are products of General English.
So what's wrong about this?
"What's wrong about this?!!"
‘What's right about this?' is the question that should be being asked.
And my answer to that is that there is very little right about this.
Students study English with local teachers or native English speakers (NES), or both, but what they're ultimately looking at is a textbook, many of which were never published with Asian markets in mind.
And how are students graded? Through walled-garden tests: gap fills and multiple choice questions. The fact that too many students can't actually use this language in conversation should be setting the alarm bells off, but it doesn't when the onus is on the completion of a textbook and ‘guess tests', hence ‘false' applying across all levels.
Yes, there are quite a few schools where NES's are required to build on the textbook work that is already being delivered by the local teacher, but all they're actually doing is giving students more grammar and no proper conversation.
And if a student is unable to verbally communicate in any language, then they won't retain what they're being taught over the mid- to long term.
This is why illiterate people don't become mutes: they have to regularly and actively use their language.
Hence the rise of international schools, English Programs and after school/weekend tuition, all of which are ideal for the minority of families that can afford them.
Through my own personal experience and after chatting with other teachers, both off- and online, what I'm seeing emerging though is an excellent approach that I referred to in my ‘Short and Sweet' blog: whereby, skilled local teachers handle the ins and outs of grammar and qualified and experienced NES's top it off with listening and conversation.
And this works infinitely better than ye olde General English.
RIP
Comments
It’s not General English coursebooks that are at fault - most of the well known books are excellent. The problem lies with the testing and the motivation that the test engenders. If a test is multiple choice or cloze based, then succeeding in multiple choice or cloze tests is what teachers and students will work towards. This is especially true of schoolchildren, most of whom are learning only because they have school or national examinations to pass. Likewise, it influences teachers who get judged on their students results. And pretty much all these examinations are cloze or multiple choice based.
So if you want students and teachers to apply themselves to other skills, then the testing needs to be re-designed accordingly. Otherwise you’re just pissing into the wind.
But there’s a reason that most testing is multiple choice or cloze. Listening is not so hard to test - although even then, testing multiple batches of students in different venues can skew results because of variation in the quality of sound production or acoustic environment.
But the real difficulty comes with large scale empirical testing of student’s productive skills. It’s notoriously hard to do. How are you going to test the speaking skills of a couple of hundred thousand school leavers over a short exam period? Who would administer the tests? How would the tests to be validated? Likewise, who are you going to find to mark a couple of hundred thousand writing scripts? And again, how are you going to ensure that the examiners are sufficiently well-trained and/or impartial that they award valid and consistent scores?
These problems arise wherever language is taught - not just in Thailand. And that’s why, outside of the specialist examiners like Cambridge, the BC or ETS, multiple choice tests are ubiquitous.
By Nodrog, Middle East on 2012-10-11
@RDF.
Yes, you are 100% correct.
If you can’t teach (stimulating) conversational English, then you’re just a ‘net-downloading grammar bore.
Period.
(Oops, punctuation terminology. Zzz.)
By Geoff Richards, Isaan on 2012-08-01
I am enjoying the entries here crucifying teachers for not learning English with notes filled with poor spelling, grammar and punctuation. Perhaps they should learn their own language, first.
Which English should we teach? American? British? Liverpool? The argument about South Africans teaching is quite pitiful and pointless. No country owns English. If you can communicate in a clear manner to other English speakers, you are speaking English. China has the most English speakers in the world and I doubt they are speaking BBC English.
Thais need a motivation beyond the government telling them to learn it. The US has many programs to get people to eat better, not drink and smoke, and drive carefully. How many people are taking that advice?
The problem I see with teaching here is that too much is focused on grammar and not enough on conversation. Why? Because conversation is more difficult to teach. Grammar can be taught from textbooks. In fact you can learn a language entirely from textbooks and never speak a word of it. That is the problem here. Not enough people get the kids to actually talk other than spouting out rote memory passages.
I am still new at the game and I get very little direction from the school which turns me loose to try different things. Sometimes they work and sometimes they fail. My kids tell me they can read just about anything I give them but few can understand my American accent. Thus, I have to be patient and persistent.
By RDF, Chiang Mai on 2012-07-31
Aaron, sorry , I did not realize that your comment as to lesson planning time was a quote , and I’m sorry for stating ” no planning needed,” I later stated that a few minutes at most , so , yes like anything in life some planning is needed , however , just like when teaching one should do so according to the level of the students , so too should I have been commenting here , Eg according to the level of the average teacher, as such , yes planning is very much needed , I was incorrect to be stating according to higher levels.
Look at all the great teachers in history, they tought by way of discussion , IE discourse, no blackboard DVD , VDO , prepared notes etc , their most powerful tool besides knowledge was their creative minds , many would start the discourse by asking the participants what they would like to discuss !! Extemporaneous being the key word, until education in general starts re adapting to this style education will be found wanting simply because teaching by way of instruction precludes comprehensive thinking . yakity blaah yakity.
Geoff , thanks for the link amusing and true indeed, experience does count , but TALENT is supreme.!!
Yours in Education,
Kieran
By Kieran, Nakorn Sri Dhammarat on 2012-07-31
@Kieran
Ditto!
I think you’ll enjoy this guy’s highly amusing but horribly true blog. I most certainly did, LOL.
http://www.ajarn.com/ajarn-guests/articles/people-without-formal-teaching-qualifications/
:o)
By Geoff Richards, Isaan on 2012-07-31