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• All students are taught the same material. Most texts used in secondary-school
classrooms must pass Ministry of Education approval
• Material taught in secondary school English classes is not communicatively-
based; rather it is directed toward students' preparation for the all-important
university entrance examinations, which principally test a student's general
ability to memorize. English exams are usually a compulsory part of all these
exams, for all majors. Usually, an exam consists of a long reading passage,
followed by a small number of "reading comprehension" questions (actually
testing the student's ability to pick out details from the text), and a few
vocabulary or grammar questions. Becoming more common is a listening
passage with a few questions. There are no communicatively-based university
examinations, nor, due to established educational, cultural and social
preferences, and logistical problems, likely to be in the foreseeable future.
• English as a Foreign Language has been taught as a passive subject for years,
not an active one. The English-language classroom provides little exposure to
interaction .
• Most EFL/ESL classrooms in secondary and high-school are teacher-oriented
and teacher-directed. Furthermore, classes are large (frequently 25-35 students
in a class), which decreases the time for any student-teacher interaction.
Moreover, students have little or no acceptance of or responsibility for their own
learning.
• The surroundings are not “foreign language friendly”. The students don’t
encounter English outside the school: the films are dubbed; they have few
opportunities to interact with native English speakers.
Classroom Activities
Methodology
The instructor's role is based upon defining class goals, and facilitating cooperative
learning and communicative learning.
There is a strong need in the classroom for clarity of goals: the goals themselves, the
means of achieving the goals, and the means of assessment.
Assessment
Contemporary EFL assessment can be two-dimensionally expressed along a spectrum
from traditional to communicative. The traditional assessment is the paper test, which
involves usually rote memorization, application of strict rules, and (frequently) only one
acceptably correct answer. The advantages of this assessment method are: students are
familiar with it, the grading is explicit and relatively easy, and the results are easy to
interpret. The disadvantages of this assessment method are: students are graded against
each other in a competitive atmosphere and grading takes no account of students' real
communicative ability. The communicative assessment, or interview assessment,
involves a short conversation between the teacher and the student either at the end of
each class (continuous assessment), or only at the end of semester. This periodic
assessment shows a "snapshot" of the student's communicative abilities. The advantages
of this assessment method are: students use their English abilities in a "real English"
situation to reflect and encourage their communicate ability, and teacher and student
have a greater chance to bond. The disadvantages of this assessment method are: it takes
a fair amount of time to do individual interviews, and the results are not always easy to
quantify.
The advantages of this approach mirror the classroom activities that are associated with
communicative competence:
• Students do not always "feel" that they are making progress, because there is no
paper test in this technique. If the teacher can videotape performances
occasionally, and add this to the student's portfolio which he or she is
accumulating from all his or her classes, the student can see for himself or
herself how much progress is being made. Other ways to "prove" the student's
progress might include teacher's notes or written feedback on occasional
performances;
• The teacher's general character must be outgoing and active--a quiet,
introspective approach is not appropriate;
• Classes with very strong 'cliques' or personality differences hinders
communication;
• The classroom tends to become quite noisy, which may pose a problem in some
settings.