Results for the English part of the competency test held in May for junior high school graduates this year were distributed over a curve with two peaks, to the great surprise of the designers of the test. The authorities in charge point out that if the second test in June still shows the same distribution, it would be evidence of students' English competency being polarized.
Without waiting for the authorities in charge to make their findings public, I do not hesitate to predict that the results from the second test will show the same polarization. The reason for this is perfectly simple. Since the joint entrance examination system of senior vocational and high schools first started using computers for result statistics in 1981, the test results show that even though differences between high and low scores occur, results are usually normally distributed in most subjects. In English alone, however, the results without exception have been distributed over twin-peak curves for the past 20 years, irrespective of which county or city the students were from, and whether they were taken by boys or girls.
The polarization of English test results is significant in at least two ways. First, it means those who've got the talent, English is an easy subject, and for students that cannot easily grasp the essential points, English is an extremely difficult subject. Second, in either the previous joint entrance exam or the current basic competency test, senior high school entrance exams often include multiple choice test items where one out of four given options is correct, with no deduction for a wrong answer. Therefore, in the twin-peak distribution of results, the group with the lower results (on average a score of between 20 and 30 points) has completely given up on their English studies and obtained their score completely by relying on guess work. The experiences of junior high school teachers show that these students make up about one third, and in some areas as much as one half, of all students.
All English teachers in Taiwan should feel ashamed over the fact that almost half of our students have given up on the study of English right before our eyes. As English teachers, how can we tolerate the fact that so many students under our direction have forfeited their future studies?
The most fundamental reason for the polarization of English test results is this: The competitive pressures for promotion to a higher level of education make teachers and parents actually harm their students and children through their excessively eager and overly enthusiastic methods for helping them.
The clearly stated goal of junior high school English curricula is to give students basic communication skills in English. The test items in both the past senior high school joint entrance exam and the current competency test strictly follow the curriculum standard. If all teachers were willing to adapt their teaching to the prescribed curricular goals instead of blindly using cramming techniques, I believe that most students would be able to keep up. And even if not all students were able to learn outstanding English, the situation would at least not be so bad that one half of all students give up on their studies.
Maybe some people will feverishly advocate the importance and urgency of introducing English studies at an earlier age. Special attention should be given to the fact that the proportion of students that have studied English at an earlier stage and students that have not are almost identical within both peaks in the distribution of English results among junior high school graduates. The conclusion reached in research that I completed in 1989 shows that whether or not students have studied English prior to school studies will not have any obvious effect on their results after junior high school graduation. Just as Professor Wu Wu-tien (
Wu suggests that the standard mixed-grouping system for class division (
I have recently observed a quite worrying phenomenon. When encountering novel educational theories such as the whole language pedagogy and the natural and communicative approaches, or Chinese translations of foreign teaching materials, many teachers do not hesitate to try these theories out. However, they ignore the ability of students to absorb the language and neglect to follow a proper systematic teaching order. If past English teaching delved too much into grammar explanations and neglected practical communication, the risks with the current enthusiasm for everyone in Taiwan to study English are that it only looks to quick results and empty and unsubstantial knowledge.
English teachers have to constantly strengthen their teaching skills, always remember to focus on the students, choose the teaching materials most suitable for the majority of students, adjust their teaching intensity and progress to the students' abilities to absorb vocabulary and sentence patterns, and gradually improve the English results of all the students. This is the only chance to eliminate the twin-peak phenomenon and the great difference between good and bad results.
Chou Chung-tien is professor of English at National Taiwan Normal University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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