subject: The world's English learners crave the ability to speak [print this page] The world's English learners crave the ability to speak
Since I have been running Out There I have been amazed at how many English learners continue to follow classes that are sold to them by schools, colleges and companies that continue to use materials and methodologies that do not prepare them or support them in their pursuit of their primary goal: to be able to speak the language proficiently.
If you teach English ask yourself how many students you have taught that can read and write English to a fairly good level but when you ask them a simple question they clam up and become very shy or struggle for the right words? More often than not these learners are not new to the language, they have been striving to speak it well for years and have invested hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds in the project. So why, like Korea (which seems to have a perpetual high-level debate about how best to improve the English speaking and listening skills of its students without making any progress and spending buckets of cash to boot) is it so hard for the industry to acknowledge the problem and fix it?
In my opinion it is because the market is so lucrative for the big players that for them to embrace reality and focus on the problem is simply not worth it. It would involve them producing materials with a focus that would distract from the materials and methodologies that they continue to produce and promote.
Why does a super intensive course based solely in the classroom produce worse results than a work placement programme? Why do those who work really hard in a conventional classroom environment struggle so much when they actually have to put what they have been studying into practice?
I got this from a very very reliable source, someone with years at the top of a major international chain of English language schools. Apparently, the academic director of the whole company often confessed to finding it embarrassing come certificate time because the super intensive students (who had been in the country and with the organisation for the same period of time and started at the same level) uniformly had inferior speaking and listening skills to the work experience mob. I think the words he used were 'a waste of time'.
This could well explain the growth in work experience programmes, word probably went round amongst learners. There was a boom. And what did the industry do, it saddled work experience with a requirement to take a conventional language programme. It needed to sell books and put bums on seats. Simple. There seems to be a real gap between what learners instinctively know they need and what most 'experts' advise them to buy.
And now we can see with Skype and the massive growth in on and offline language exchanges that learners are having to do it for themselves. In other words they are not getting what they intuitively know they need from the industry; an industry that claims to serve them and provide value for money solutions to their primary problem, communication.
The above scenario is acted out all over the world all of the time. Students invest in courses that teach them rules and how to write but the acquisition of speaking skills and the careful preparation and support it takes to help someone overcome their fears and get used to producing language effortlessly from the full repertoire of their knowledge and vocabulary are flagrantly ignored by most of the international English language teaching industry. The classroom is the operating theatre of ELT. Unfortunately the patients have to function communicatively outside of the classroom for most of their time. Would Alex Ferguson send Man Utd out to play a game with new tactics without having tried it out in as close to a real game situation as possible, away from the warmth of the room with the whiteboard in it? I think not.
But, educational systems the globe over still 'teach to the test', and, as I found out in India recently, are still trying to train non-English speaking English teachers to train other non-English speaking teachers to teach English. Think about it. All the consultancy fees accrued by the 'old guard' as a result of that little venture could be used to simply give groups of teachers credit at the local internet cafe, two minutes showing them how to use Skype, a couple of handy URLs and a few useful and cheap materials to get them pointed in the right direction and focusing on their own speaking and listening skills and then those of their students.
Status Quo are a rock band famous for only using three chords in all of their songs. They were hugely successful and still have their ageing devotees, but popular music moved on and left them behind, now they complain about not getting airplay.
Is the mainstream global ELT industry, the status quo, going to go the same way? Are publishers, schools and teachers going to wake up and realise that they are doing their clients a huge disservice and providing services under false pretence? Who knows, it could take forever and unlike oil, which will run out, big companies go on and on and on, look at all the bankers who survived, kept their jobs and are still trying to award themselves massive bonuses despite their best efforts to line their pockets whilst bankrupting the planet.
Recently, after launching the new Languages Out There website and finally getting our speaking and listening materials online for teachers and learners to use I came into contact with some kindred spirits who create materials that help and guide learners to speak English better. We had an email chat or two and worked out that there really aren't many of us producing carefully thought through materials and who have worked it out for ourselves...that the purpose of learning English is to be able to speak English.
Since you could well be reading this on our website you might find what they have to say and their materials of interest, especially if, like me, you think that speaking is fundamental to learning a language:
Eric Roth's site www.compellingconversations.com
Karenne Sylvester's www.kalinago-english.com
Languages Out There supports learners through the psychological process of lowering their output filters, that's the thing that inhibits natural production of language if someone lacks confidence, is anxious and is worried about losing face. We are pretty sure that it is a psychological rather than a linguistic process, but the world of linguistics has ignored developments in the understanding of the psychology of language production and use for decades. The brain, which enables us to speak, I think we'd all agree, can recognise and produce more than just three chords. Likewise, the brain stores meanings and their sounds in a multi-sensory and emotionally literate filing and retrieval system, not as words on a page.
