The Sorry State of English Teaching Today

After nearly a year away from my blog, it's time for me to return and put pen to paper (or finger to button) and pontificate about a theme that's close to my heart.

Things are definately better here now for us. I don't know whether I've managed to build a life of sorts here precisely because I've been away from the blog or whether I've consciously neglected the blog in order to build a life here for myself. However, one thing that is for sure is that I feel those creative energies flowing and you, yes you, are going to be the unfortunate victim of my scribbling.

Let's start with a question. What's my job? That's right, I'm one of the army of UK citizens living abroad and teaching English.

Now, you may not know that I'm doing a teaching diploma course here in Buenos Aires, which is called the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults). I started it last year and finish in December, pass or fail. In their course blurb the providers, Cambridge Uni, in their customary snobbish way state that "candidates are informed the DELTA course is at master level". Now, I must admit that this made me feel intimidated, which knowing Cambridge Uni was certainly intended to be the case. All the same, it also made me feel very proud, having left school with three CSEs and never even imagining I'd even get to have a degree, let alone the chance of studying for a master's.

After months of burning the midnight oil studying flashcards with linguistic terms such as paradigmatic, binomials, trinomials, soprasegmental elements of speech, fricatives, plosives and cataphoric referencing, I was over the moon when I passed the first teaching theory exams last year. Got a merit to boot. As the year began, I was eagerly awaiting the second stage of the course, which would see experienced writers and tutors flown in expecially from Cambridge Uni, providing stimulating lectures to motivate us to reach even higher levels of inspired teaching. Halleluyah!

Unfortunately, I was to be deeply disappointed. I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that TEFL, or teaching English as a foreign language, is an industry in a crisis and becoming ever more intellectually one-dimensional.

Why do I say it's in a crisis? First of all, Cambridge Uni have always emphasised the value of the native, mother-tongue English teacher rather than the local teacher who is not a mother-tongue speaker. For example, fictitious John Smith, 21 years old, unemployed from Barrow with a degree in IT can do a one-month Cambridge Uni TEFL course and fly off to Japan, where without speaking a word of Japanese he can earn more money than Sachi, a qualified Japanese teacher whose studied English all his life, knows the works of Dickens off by heart and has probably got a degree in it as well. I think this preference is politically motivated. In my opinion often the most effective teachers are those like Sachi, who share the students own first language and had to learn English in a highly conscious, meticulous manner themselves rather than the glorified backpackers who travel the world boasting only a poor knowledge of grammar owing to a second rate UK secondary education. Cambridge Uni cannot admit that the native speakers such as Sachi (who often don't have Cambridge Uni qualifications) are superiour to their own qualified teachers because they want to perpetuate the myth that the native, mother-tongue teacher is always best.

This myth is also reflected in initial teacher training courses which tell novice teachers that they should NEVER use the students' first language in the classroom. Why exactly is this, when all the recent research shows that giving students a swift initial translation in their first language of new words is the quickest, most efficient and most effective way to help them on the way to understanding? The answer is that once again, Cambridge University want to protect their newly qualified teachers from English speaking countries who, possessing TEFL qualifications travel the world like glorified backpackers and, like 75% of the UK population, have great difficulty in stringing two words together in any foreign language. They often have little or no knowledge (or even interest) in their students' languages.

Another myth perpetuated by Cambridge University is that language lessons are the most effective way of learning a language. I believe that this view is utter nonsense. I couldn't speak a word of Italian until I was 32, have never had a lesson in my life and yet possess a knowledge and ability in the language that a graduate in the language would envy. Why? The reason is certainly not an excess of intelligence, but rather long-term, intensive exposure to the language in a natural environment over eight years living in Rome. Any institute that really wants to help its students learn a language should be finding them short and long-term work placements in English speaking countries rather than flogging them costly courses or Cambridge exams.

Again, Cambridge Uni wants to spread the myth that lessons are the best way to learn foreign languages because it has business interests in teaching teachers, producing and running examinations and not in the travel industry!

Wait a minute, even the British Council is spouting nonsense as well!

The British Council, which offers courses in English in centres all over the world, recently produced figures stating that the number of people in the world outside of English speaking countries who are learning English will peak this year at about 1.5 billion before steadily declining over coming years, as learners across the globe move onto other languages, such as Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. The British Council also state, in a piece of research obviously produced by yet another linguist in an ivory tower in some windy university complex in the UK, that the number of adult students worldwide will apparently decline dramatically in coming years as the length and quality of English instruction for school age children around the globe improves.

I think that the British Council have got it all wrong here too. Probably, like most so called 'linguists' who have made academic careers for themselves writing about TEFL, they've never ever seriously sat down and tried to learn a foreign language. Instead, they've put all their energy into writing about how to learn and teach English. If they'd ever learned a foreign language to a reasonable level they'd know that for anybody living outside of an environment in which the language is used on a regular basis, the very act of maintaining one's level of knowledge and skills in the language is a daunting task. For example, even if Italian teenagers are going to speak English better at 16 than Italians of the same age did ten years ago, they're not going to miraculously maintain this level for the rest of their lives without regular practice. Suggesting otherwise, as the British Council do in their pessimistic forecasts for future trends, is like assuming that someone who studied the piano for ten years during their teens will be able to sit down and play a perfect waltz at their 40th birthday party.

The fact that the British Council haven't considered such factors in making predictions about the future trends on teaching English to adults is because, on the whole, they don't know what it's like to speak another language at a high level and need to maintain that level over periods of years.

The future of English language teaching for adults, in my opinion, is producing flexible, often short-term courses of study to prepare students for specific objectives, such as foreign travel and job interviews. They will need to have their scholastic English polished-off for just such things. Also, lessons will need to be seen as just one service that can be offered to help students perfect their language skills, together with conversation groups, work and study placements in English speaking nations where learners can probably learn more than they ever will in an artificial classroom.

Finally, in the same way that every investment portfolio should be balanced, no new school should open up only offering English. Instead, intelligent directors will offer English, together with Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and other languages, so that they can easily adapt to changing demand over coming years.

Any thoughts? You don't have to be a teacher to comment. The next entry will probably be slagging off Argentina or talking about football.