Wed, Apr 07, 2010 page8

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  Teaching functional English

  The state of TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) in Taiwan continues to languish.

  The recent test results of English as a foreign language (TOEFL) among Taiwanese nationals and the writing skills of high school students have recently shown significant declines.

  The decline points to one major culprit: A lack of analytical abilities spawned by an educational system that relies heavily on memorization and mechanical learning.

  The TOEFL test results started to hit a severe decline after the spoken English component was introduced, which indicates that the problem basically lies in a skill that requires the creative production of meaningful utterances (the same applies to writing), unlike the listening and reading components.

  The latter are passive skills as the materials in the exams are already provided. This is a clever strategy and cramming could help the test taker in listening, reading and grammar structure, but not in the speaking and writing components, because in this case the materials are not provided, and the examinees are expected to create meaningful materials — a daunting task for learners who have spent years consumed learning by rote.

  From kindergarten all the way to college, the craze to spell correctly, memorize vocabulary and acquire “good” pronunciation is almost always the be-all and end-all of English language teaching.

  Learning how to grow, socialize and meaningfully communicate using English is more foreign than the language itself. English is phonics, vocabulary-building, pronunciation (and tongue twisters), prescriptive grammar rules, idiomatic expressions and proverbs.

  So-called English courses are often an invitation to meaninglessness, irrelevance and the artificial delivery of the materials taught. Kids are asked to mechanically repeat words or phrases out of context. High school students are required to memorize between 5,000 to 7,000 words — in most cases out of context.

  In many institutions of higher learning, students continue to be exposed to materials that are nothing but an extension to the materials taught in high school, materials that are barely conducive to independent thinking — the core skill required of a college student.

  Far-fetched sentences, adages, and famous quotes (that bear no hallmarks of meaningful interconnectivity) dot hallways and bathrooms in every school in the country. These sentences are given only eye service — and rightly so.

  Further, since the target is to teach phonics, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, idioms, proverbs — and more tongue twisters, the semantic component of language is usually not factored in, which gives rise to boredom and/or frustration — which could, in turn, lead to an aversion and probably hatred of the language and the agent that doles out this “language.”

  Finally, what is the purpose behind learning a language if language does not create knowledge? Vocabulary out of context does not create knowledge; vocabulary in utterances that bear no homogeneity, coherence and cohesion will not create knowledge — and will only garner very low scores in achievement tests, especially in speaking and writing.

  Knowledge, however, creates useful and frequently used vocabulary. When students learn prescriptive grammar rules, they are in fact not learning language, they are — as William Moulton, a prominent ESL educator, put it — learning about language, and learning about language is obviously not learning that language. The language is stripped of its essence, and the culture that is attached to it is extracted, rendering it non-functional lingo.

  A need for a significant change in how language is taught is warranted. However, the hurdles that could hamper this change are too many to overcome: Adopting a novel approach to the teaching of English would necessitate an overhaul of the whole educational system.

  The change would be met with resistance from teachers who find convenience in lecturing and spoon feeding. It would be met with resistance from those who advocate the preservation of traditional cultural values through the teaching of English in the mother tongue. It would also be met with resistance from prospective employers who could see a future empowered work force as a threat to the smoothness in employer-employee dynamics, and ultimately to productivity.

  Additionally, potential local teachers of English who are very proficient in English would look elsewhere before they give the slightest thought to taking up teaching English as a profession.

  As an MOE task force is set up to put Taiwan’s educational system under the chisel in the near future, let us hope that the state of TEFL is given some credence, and while we cannot expect drastic changes, a positive change — though small — should act as a springboard for better things to come — a new TEFL: Teaching English as Functional Language.

  MO REDDAD

  I-Shou University,

  Kaohsiung County
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