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DOCUMENTS FOR DEBATE: WHERE WE ARE & WHERE

WE WANT TO GO

WHAT THE SITUATION IS LIKE IN THE EFL CLASSROOM:

• 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.

The result of the combination of these factors in a typical secondary / high-school is


that, when they finish high school:

• students generally have low confidence in their own communicative ability;


• students generally have low motivation to learn to communicate in English, and
a high motivation to memorize English in a non-communicative form;
• students lack the ability to creatively express their own thoughts and opinions

"Communicative language learning" emphasizes interactive language learning, as


opposed to the traditional "grammar-based method" of the mere memorizing of rules of
grammar, semantics, phonology or lexical items. This method emphasizes:

• a central teacher role,


• memorization and rote training, and
• a passive rather than active learning strategy

By contrast, a communicative language learning approach emphasizes:

• the student having a central role;


• the primary goal is the ability to communicate;
• meaning is paramount, and language learning is contextualized; and
• an active learning approach and active learning strategy.
• students are encouraged to be responsible for their own learning and assessment

The principal goal of communicative language learning is to develop "communicative


competence". Communicative competence is a broad concept, encompassing the
following concepts:

• grammatical (syntactical) competence;


• semantic competence, which includes competence with lexical items and
idioms;
• phonological competence;
• strategic competence (social appropriateness); and
• fluency.

Classroom Activities

Developing communicative competence is associated with the following classroom


activities:
• The students speaking and listening for most of the lesson;
• The students participating intensively in the class;
• A focus on comprehensible and meaningful input and output;
• Involving the students in different kinds of roles, necessitating the use of
different styles of speaking;
• Students practice using conversational routines and expressions, to use authentic
English communicatively;
• Information sharing;
• Requiring students to develop meaning collaboratively by peer interaction;
• The students manipulating language in a substantial and meaningful way (CLIL
approach);
• The teacher providing information about language usage;
• The teacher providing timely and meaningful feedback;
• A positive and supportive environment that encourages language manipulation
and exploration; and
• A learner-centered environment, with the teacher acting as facilitator.

A short comment on peer interaction: the acquisition of English-language speaking


experience is not the transfer of relevant input from a more capable person to a less
capable person, but rather the development of communication strategies through
interaction.

Methodology

Small group work is preferred, as it encourages:

• requiring students to actively participate in all class activities;


• group initiatives;
• formation of communicative interaction determined by each group;
• delegation of the responsibility for learning to the groups, so students take
responsibility for their own learning;
• working towards established goals within each group.
• functioning well without a leader;
• students having a positive attitude towards each other and towards the
classwork; and
• cooperative behavior.

The Instructor's Role

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.

Cooperative learning is centered on students working together in class, and is based


upon small-group work.

Teachers can facilitate cooperative learning by :

• Playing a facilitating role: supporting and encouraging students' self-directed


study efforts, by being available to answer student questions during practice
time.
• Encouraging positive interdependence: group members can only succeed if they
work together. This can be fostered in numerous ways by the teacher,
particularly:
o assessing a group as one entity instead of individually;
o assessing group performance based upon their communication, which
requires dynamic input from all members of a group;
o facilitate some degree of competitiveness between the groups, to positive
interdependence with the cooperative small group.
• Ensuring group goal similarity: the more similar the goals of the group, the more
cooperative their activities will be. The teacher defining class goals will provide
focus to the activities of the group.

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.

With this technique of developing communication strategies through interaction, the


assessment method can be varied according to a teacher's individual teaching style and
situation; although obviously a communicative assessment approach is the most
appropriate. The assessment should not be norm-based--comparatively assessing the
groups along a bell-curve--but criterion-based--comparing the student to a pre-
determined standard. This encourages the students to improve to that standard.

Advantages and disadvantages

The advantages of this approach mirror the classroom activities that are associated with
communicative competence:

• Students spend most of the classtime speaking in and listening to English;


• Students are expected to participate intensively in the class;
• Students must focus on comprehensible and meaningful input and output;
• Students play different kinds of roles;
• Students practice using authentic English communicatively;
• Meaning is developed collaboratively by peer interaction;
• Students manipulate language in a substantial and meaningful way;
• Students receive instruction about appropriate language usage and language
context, to focus upon communicative strategies or functional language
situations;
• The teacher has the opportunity to provide timely and meaningful feedback and
advice;
• An environment is created that encourages language manipulation and
exploration;
• The learning environment is learner-centered;
• The class is both flexible yet has clear patterns:
o flexibility: The class can fit different ability levels within the class.
o students learning and practicing together in a non-threatening
atmosphere can gain the confidence to do oral presentations in front of
their peers.
o assessment is gradual, continuous, direct, and communicatively based,
and provides immediate feedback to the student;

The disadvantages of this classroom technique include:

• 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.

Student Reaction and Feedback


Initially, many students are apprehensive about performing in front of the class. As time
goes by, and the practice/performance continues, students begin to have a great deal of
fun with the performances.

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