The question of what language to use for teaching and learning is one that faces parents, teachers and even governments across the world. Should I send my daughter to a Chinese school, or one where they teach in English? If I send my son to an English school, will he grow up not knowing his mother tongue properly? How do we provide the next generation with the English they will need for a career that involves contact with the outside world?
People have very strong feelings on matters involving the choice of language, and it is difficult to find a way of reconciling strongly held views which are diametrically opposed to each other. But it is perhaps possible to start with some basic principles which are almost self-evident, and which should not therefore create too much controversy.
The first principle is that people learn best in languages they know well. In most cases this means the mother tongue, but people can learn other languages well enough to benefit from them as languages of instruction. Many Asians, for example, know English well enough to benefit from being taught in English. The other side to this is that students are not going to gain much from classes in languages they do not know. If you attend lectures given in Welsh or Swahili, you are obviously unlikely to get much out of them unless you happen to know these languages.
This presents governments and education authorities with a dilemma. Opt for English, and you give an advantage to people who already have access to English. This could bring major disadvantages to people who are already less well off, particularly those in the countryside and away from the major centres of population. Opt for the mother tongue or a range of community languages, and many students are going to grow up without the skills they need in a world that requires English. Whatever decision is made, there are lots of people who will insist that it is the wrong one.
Fortunately, there is a way out. The argument is based on the false assumption that teachers only use one language in the classroom. Yes, it is true that early last century, teachers using the ‘direct method’ tried to teach foreign languages by using only the target language, and banning the use of the mother tongue. But most people who understand how students learn languages now think that was pretty crazy. In the twenty first century, the teacher is not alone, and can draw on learning technologies and other forms of support. There is no point in carrying on an irresolvable argument in which both sides are partly right. The challenge is to design a curriculum which brings the two sides together, and gives the next generation of students the best of both worlds.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
What is the value of phonics rules?
Phonics is an approach to early reading that sets out to provide the beginning reader with rules that relate the spelling of a word to its pronunciation. For some languages, such as Spanish and Malay, these rules are relatively simple and straight forward, but for other languages like English and French, the rules are more complex. In fact, the rules for English are so complex that many people argue that they are of no value at all.
The phonics approach is actually the traditional approach to early reading, and it goes back hundreds of years. In the twentieth century it came under attack from competing approaches under various names ranging from ‘look and say’ to ‘whole word’ and more recently ‘whole language’. Supporters of phonics will argue that if there are pronunciation rules, then it makes sense to explain them to the learner and make use of them. Opponents will argue that just knowing the pronunciation of words is not nearly enough, and that the learner also has to understand the meaning of words, and indeed the meanings of whole sentences and texts. The problem is that both sides are of course perfectly right.
Phonics rules are really designed for native speakers of the language. Beginning readers already know the words they see written down, and so they relate the spelling to a pronunciation and a meaning which are familiar. When you start learning a foreign language, you probably don’t know the words at all, and so you have to learn the spelling, the pronunciation and the meaning all at the same time. Meaning is all important here. Words like cam and pus are very easy to read aloud using phonics rules, but there is no point unless you know what a camshaft is or what pus is. Of course, although words like these are easy to read aloud, they are quite unsuitable for infant beginning readers.
‘Look and say’ is more appropriate when the learner can already recognise words. When we learn a new skill, such as riding a bicycle or driving a car, there comes a time when we begin to do it automatically, without thinking. What is happening is that a different part of the brain takes over. Recognising written words is also a skill, and we use different pathways through the brain according to whether we are reading phonically or using a ‘look and say’ method.
We can’t drive a car without thinking before we have learnt to use the brake and the steering wheel. Similarly, ‘look and say’ is not very effective before the readers have learnt to recognise words at all. Flash cards are useful for words that beginning readers already know, and it is a useful method of making the word recognition automatic, and turning a beginning reader into a fluent reader.
The ‘reading wars’ of the last century were really motivated by a political struggle in the US, the UK and other countries. Scientifically they are irrelevant, and the idea that there is a choice to be made between phonics and ‘look and say’ does not make sense. Beginning readers need all the help they can to link the spelling of a word to its pronunciation and meaning, and phonics is a good way of doing this systematically. But when children go beyond reading one word at a time, they need to automate the recognition of individual words. This is the point at which ‘look and say’ comes into its own.
The phonics approach is actually the traditional approach to early reading, and it goes back hundreds of years. In the twentieth century it came under attack from competing approaches under various names ranging from ‘look and say’ to ‘whole word’ and more recently ‘whole language’. Supporters of phonics will argue that if there are pronunciation rules, then it makes sense to explain them to the learner and make use of them. Opponents will argue that just knowing the pronunciation of words is not nearly enough, and that the learner also has to understand the meaning of words, and indeed the meanings of whole sentences and texts. The problem is that both sides are of course perfectly right.
Phonics rules are really designed for native speakers of the language. Beginning readers already know the words they see written down, and so they relate the spelling to a pronunciation and a meaning which are familiar. When you start learning a foreign language, you probably don’t know the words at all, and so you have to learn the spelling, the pronunciation and the meaning all at the same time. Meaning is all important here. Words like cam and pus are very easy to read aloud using phonics rules, but there is no point unless you know what a camshaft is or what pus is. Of course, although words like these are easy to read aloud, they are quite unsuitable for infant beginning readers.
‘Look and say’ is more appropriate when the learner can already recognise words. When we learn a new skill, such as riding a bicycle or driving a car, there comes a time when we begin to do it automatically, without thinking. What is happening is that a different part of the brain takes over. Recognising written words is also a skill, and we use different pathways through the brain according to whether we are reading phonically or using a ‘look and say’ method.
We can’t drive a car without thinking before we have learnt to use the brake and the steering wheel. Similarly, ‘look and say’ is not very effective before the readers have learnt to recognise words at all. Flash cards are useful for words that beginning readers already know, and it is a useful method of making the word recognition automatic, and turning a beginning reader into a fluent reader.
The ‘reading wars’ of the last century were really motivated by a political struggle in the US, the UK and other countries. Scientifically they are irrelevant, and the idea that there is a choice to be made between phonics and ‘look and say’ does not make sense. Beginning readers need all the help they can to link the spelling of a word to its pronunciation and meaning, and phonics is a good way of doing this systematically. But when children go beyond reading one word at a time, they need to automate the recognition of individual words. This is the point at which ‘look and say’ comes into its own.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
What kind of English should we teach in Asia?
The question often arises what kind of English should be taught in Asia. Most Asians want to sound like Asians when they speak, not like somebody from the UK or the US. Of course, some people who have been educated in an English-speaking country are proud of their native-like command of English, and they have every right to be proud of their achievement. But in general the consensus seems to be that Asians should learn to speak a kind of English that is recognizably Asian.
The result is that new kinds of English – the ‘new Englishes’- are developing all over Asia. Some of these new varieties have semi-humorous names, including Chinglish, Japlish, Manglish and Singlish. And from a scientific point of view, these new
Englishes are every bit as valid as the old Englishes of the UK and the US. There is no way that the vowels produced by a BBC newsreader are scientifically superior to those produced by speakers of Chinglish or Japlish.
Like anybody else, Asians have the right to speak English in any way they like. What Asians can’t do is to force anyone from another part of the world to understand what they are saying. And already the new Englishes are becoming mutually unintelligible. We know what happens, because it happened a long time ago in Europe, at the end of the Roman Empire. Latin, the language of the empire, broke up into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and a number of other minor languages and dialects. That is what has been happening to English since the end of the British Empire.
Asian students learning English in the twenty first century have to be prepared for careers in which they can expect to use it to interact with people from other countries. So what they need is a kind of international English that can be used and understood everywhere. And the only way that can be achieved is by using a common model. More precisely we need two models, one British and one American.
If Asians use a British model, they are not going to end up speaking like someone from England. They will still sound like Asians, and they will have the great advantage that other people will understand them. That is the thinking behind Miquest’s Mikids software which I have already described.
Of course, not just any kind of UK English will do. We have to use models that are close to the historical source from which different varieties round the world derive. The children and adults used for the Mikids recordings were from the UK, and spoke the kind of English that in former times was used in different parts of the empire.
It is very important indeed for the teacher to use a good model in the classroom. The teacher shouldn’t be expected to provide the model herself, because unless her English is pretty good she is going to pass on misunderstandings of the meanings of words, grammatical mistakes, and of course faulty pronunciations. But if teacher and students all use the same professionally produced model, the students will acquire a higher standard of English. Not only that, but the teacher will be able to improve her English at the same time, and feel more confident when the same teaching material comes round again.
.
The result is that new kinds of English – the ‘new Englishes’- are developing all over Asia. Some of these new varieties have semi-humorous names, including Chinglish, Japlish, Manglish and Singlish. And from a scientific point of view, these new
Englishes are every bit as valid as the old Englishes of the UK and the US. There is no way that the vowels produced by a BBC newsreader are scientifically superior to those produced by speakers of Chinglish or Japlish.
Like anybody else, Asians have the right to speak English in any way they like. What Asians can’t do is to force anyone from another part of the world to understand what they are saying. And already the new Englishes are becoming mutually unintelligible. We know what happens, because it happened a long time ago in Europe, at the end of the Roman Empire. Latin, the language of the empire, broke up into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and a number of other minor languages and dialects. That is what has been happening to English since the end of the British Empire.
Asian students learning English in the twenty first century have to be prepared for careers in which they can expect to use it to interact with people from other countries. So what they need is a kind of international English that can be used and understood everywhere. And the only way that can be achieved is by using a common model. More precisely we need two models, one British and one American.
If Asians use a British model, they are not going to end up speaking like someone from England. They will still sound like Asians, and they will have the great advantage that other people will understand them. That is the thinking behind Miquest’s Mikids software which I have already described.
Of course, not just any kind of UK English will do. We have to use models that are close to the historical source from which different varieties round the world derive. The children and adults used for the Mikids recordings were from the UK, and spoke the kind of English that in former times was used in different parts of the empire.
It is very important indeed for the teacher to use a good model in the classroom. The teacher shouldn’t be expected to provide the model herself, because unless her English is pretty good she is going to pass on misunderstandings of the meanings of words, grammatical mistakes, and of course faulty pronunciations. But if teacher and students all use the same professionally produced model, the students will acquire a higher standard of English. Not only that, but the teacher will be able to improve her English at the same time, and feel more confident when the same teaching material comes round again.
.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
A review: the Mikids learning software from Miquest
Today I’m going to do a review of the Mikids multimedia learning software produced by Miquest Worldwide Sdn Bhd of USJ, Kuala Lumpur. This software sets out to solve some of the problems I have already written about in my last two posts. But before I go any further, I must make something clear. I do have an interest in this software, because I was involved in its making. I organised some of the recordings, and edited much of the text. The graphics artists used a cartoon character of me for the science teacher, and yes, it’s my voice in the recording. What this means, of course, is that I can tell you about the software from the inside.
Miquest set out to produce some basic learning materials to help the teacher in the classroom. The language used is English, and the software includes lessons and lesson plans. Everything the teacher needs for each lesson is provided, and the material is presented by cartoon characters. The idea behind the cartoons is that they catch children’s attention more effectively than real-life videos, which nowadays they see all the time. The teacher can either use the presentations directly with the class, or incorporate the ideas or the material in her own lesson presentation.
There are four subjects: English, maths, science and moral education. (If you get the other three, moral education comes free.) One of the big problems for the someone teaching English or teaching other subjects in English is to know the exact words to use, and in some cases how to pronounce the words. For example, how do you say “6 – 2 = 4” or even “⅓” in English? It’s not obvious until you know. Well, all that is done for you in the software.
Much of the feedback has been on the amount of material included. Some people have said there isn’t enough, and have asked for supplementary materials. Now if you go through the lessons too fast, then of course you run out of materials. But then the children are unlikely to be learning very much. Even if they are native speakers of English, there is more than enough for them to learn. And there is a lot more to learning than just going through the materials.
But many more customers say there is too much material, and that they can’t get through it all in the semester. Too much? Of course there is too much. Any course at all, from pre-school to university, contains too much material for the teacher to get through. The teacher has to select, and decide what is going to be most useful for the students, given the stage they are already at.
The idea that you have to do everything on the syllabus is part of cramming, and has nothing to with genuine education. Children can’t learn everything by the age of six, and what is important is that they are learning something useful and making good progress. In any case, many things on the preschool syllabus are a foretaste of what they are going to do in primary school, and it is in primary school that they learn it properly.
So one of the things teachers need training for is how to use teaching materials. People who know nothing about early education sometimes think that anyone who can add two and two can go into the classroom and start teaching young children. But as all teachers know, it isn’t like that at all. Especially if you are teaching English or teaching in English, you can’t do it all on your own, and this is where software such as the Mikids programme comes in. But materials developers can’t do it on their own either. They need constructive feedback from classroom teachers telling them what more support teachers need. Miquest has solved the biggest problem, which is to provide basic materials, and now is the time to address the problem of helping teachers to use the materials more effectively.
If you wish to respond to anything I have said in this posting, please do so. I want to hear from you.
Miquest set out to produce some basic learning materials to help the teacher in the classroom. The language used is English, and the software includes lessons and lesson plans. Everything the teacher needs for each lesson is provided, and the material is presented by cartoon characters. The idea behind the cartoons is that they catch children’s attention more effectively than real-life videos, which nowadays they see all the time. The teacher can either use the presentations directly with the class, or incorporate the ideas or the material in her own lesson presentation.
There are four subjects: English, maths, science and moral education. (If you get the other three, moral education comes free.) One of the big problems for the someone teaching English or teaching other subjects in English is to know the exact words to use, and in some cases how to pronounce the words. For example, how do you say “6 – 2 = 4” or even “⅓” in English? It’s not obvious until you know. Well, all that is done for you in the software.
Much of the feedback has been on the amount of material included. Some people have said there isn’t enough, and have asked for supplementary materials. Now if you go through the lessons too fast, then of course you run out of materials. But then the children are unlikely to be learning very much. Even if they are native speakers of English, there is more than enough for them to learn. And there is a lot more to learning than just going through the materials.
But many more customers say there is too much material, and that they can’t get through it all in the semester. Too much? Of course there is too much. Any course at all, from pre-school to university, contains too much material for the teacher to get through. The teacher has to select, and decide what is going to be most useful for the students, given the stage they are already at.
The idea that you have to do everything on the syllabus is part of cramming, and has nothing to with genuine education. Children can’t learn everything by the age of six, and what is important is that they are learning something useful and making good progress. In any case, many things on the preschool syllabus are a foretaste of what they are going to do in primary school, and it is in primary school that they learn it properly.
So one of the things teachers need training for is how to use teaching materials. People who know nothing about early education sometimes think that anyone who can add two and two can go into the classroom and start teaching young children. But as all teachers know, it isn’t like that at all. Especially if you are teaching English or teaching in English, you can’t do it all on your own, and this is where software such as the Mikids programme comes in. But materials developers can’t do it on their own either. They need constructive feedback from classroom teachers telling them what more support teachers need. Miquest has solved the biggest problem, which is to provide basic materials, and now is the time to address the problem of helping teachers to use the materials more effectively.
If you wish to respond to anything I have said in this posting, please do so. I want to hear from you.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Childhood learning and the commercial market
Lots of people in different countries round the world think of education as cramming. It is as though the child’s brain is an empty vessel that somehow has to be filled with knowledge. The goal of education then becomes to cram as much knowledge into the child’s head as quickly as possible. Even for very young children, teachers have a detailed syllabus that they have to get through by the end of the term or the semester. And when part of the syllabus has been ‘done’, it is assumed that the children have learnt the lesson: we did tens and units last month, so the children know how to add and subtract numbers up to 99.
Over the past thirty years or so, people who do research in education have found out an enormous amount about how children learn. The human brain is designed for learning, and even as adults we spend our time learning about new things: new faces and new buildings, we see new places on the television, and occasionally we learn new words. When you see a new face in the press or on the media, you can’t decide not to learn to recognise it. Learning is something we do automatically without thinking, and we have no choice but to learn.
The ‘empty vessel’ theory could scarcely be more wrong. And yet everybody seems to want to cram children’s heads. Parents naturally want to give their children the best possible start in life, so send them off to pre-school centres to get their heads crammed. Teachers naturally want to please parents, and so do their best to stuff knowledge into the heads of their offspring.
What about the commercial companies that make the learning materials for schools and pre-school centres? Well, if they produce materials based on what we know about learning, they are not going to sell very much and so go out of business. In practice, companies have little choice but to produce cramming materials.
Parents, teachers, and materials producers are locked into a vicious circle, and as a result children are crammed rather than educated. Politicians aiming to raise educational standards naturally put pressure on schools to intensify the process of cramming, and people who understand the problem are falsely dismissed as in some way opposed to educational standards. In this way, cramming has for a very long time enjoyed a position of hegemony, which means that it goes virtually unchallenged, and in practice it is taken for granted to the extent that it is assumed there are no other approaches worthy of serious consideration.
The truth is that large numbers of children have little or no understanding of the stuff that is forcibly crammed into their heads. Now intelligent people don’t spend time trying to learn things they don’t understand, and this is why children switch off in the classroom, and eventually opt out of education altogether. As the pre-school sector grows, the problem emerges earlier, and increasingly children are fed up with education by the time they arrive at primary school. And the point is hardly controversial, for it is one of the first things you learn in Education 101.
The question is what can be done about it. I think the private sector has an important role to play, and the people who are going to bring about change are parents who are highly motivated to give their children a better life than they have enjoyed themselves. Good education has traditionally cost a lot of money, but technologies associated with the internet have brought about huge cost savings. What is really needed is good ideas, and the insight and determination to turn them into practical realities in the classroom. I will be dealing with these issues in some detail in future posting to this blog.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Supporting English Language Teachers
Many people around the world need a good command of English in order to succeed in their careers, and indeed in life. If you come from a well-off background, and especially if you come from one of the highly developed countries of Europe or North America, you have access to all the facilities you need to acquire a good level of English.
But for people in the poorer regions of the world, the situation is very different. If you manage to get any English lessons at all, it is very likely that your teacher doesn’t really know enough to teach the language properly. There’s no point in blaming the teachers, because they can only teach what they themselves know, and probably haven’t had the training they need.
Before we can expect students in less well-off regions to learn English successfully, we have to train the teachers. And that means starting with the training of teacher trainers. The question is who the teacher trainers are.
In the days before the internet, teacher training was in the hands of universities and teacher training colleges. The British Council has also done an excellent job in promoting British English around the world. But relative to the size of the problem in the twenty first century, this is no longer enough. It is no longer enough to train an élite who can then pass on their expertise in their home environment. We need to get quality information and training to teachers in villages in India, in China and in Cambodia. We have got the technologies, and people all around the world have the expertise, and what we need to is to put these together.
This is what this blog is about: organising the English language support that people need to succeed. I’ve spent many years in UK universities teaching teachers of English, so I have got the linguistic expertise; but I need other people to help at the other end, delivering the support to people who need it. I’ll be dealing with these and other matters in more detail in future postings. So watch this space!
But for people in the poorer regions of the world, the situation is very different. If you manage to get any English lessons at all, it is very likely that your teacher doesn’t really know enough to teach the language properly. There’s no point in blaming the teachers, because they can only teach what they themselves know, and probably haven’t had the training they need.
Before we can expect students in less well-off regions to learn English successfully, we have to train the teachers. And that means starting with the training of teacher trainers. The question is who the teacher trainers are.
In the days before the internet, teacher training was in the hands of universities and teacher training colleges. The British Council has also done an excellent job in promoting British English around the world. But relative to the size of the problem in the twenty first century, this is no longer enough. It is no longer enough to train an élite who can then pass on their expertise in their home environment. We need to get quality information and training to teachers in villages in India, in China and in Cambodia. We have got the technologies, and people all around the world have the expertise, and what we need to is to put these together.
This is what this blog is about: organising the English language support that people need to succeed. I’ve spent many years in UK universities teaching teachers of English, so I have got the linguistic expertise; but I need other people to help at the other end, delivering the support to people who need it. I’ll be dealing with these and other matters in more detail in future postings. So watch this space!
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