Jim Walsh has responded (Letters, April 2, page 8) to letters by me and Eileen Han on teaching English writing in Taiwan (Letters, March 29 and March 27, page 8).
Unfortunately, Walsh's letter added nothing but confusion, and was typical of the attitude of self-professed experts to which my earlier letter referred.
Walsh felt "obliged to add a touch of reality to the discussion." His stance is arrogant and condescending and hardly a good basis for intelligent debate. Swift reminded us that opinions are like watches: Every man's is different and every man believes that his own is accurate.
Walsh states that test pressure is a logical result of government subsidization of all levels of education. This view is patently ridiculous because governments around the world subsidize education, yet there is no similar exam pressure and mania in, say, Canada. Logic dictates that other factors are involved.
Walsh claims, "The nation provides free public education up to and including graduate school," then contradicts himself, saying that it is "not provided to everyone."
This free education "for all," then "for a few," depends on "high test scores." Scholarships benefit very few. The logic is worthy of Lewis Carroll.
"Nobody knows of a better way to fairly place students," Walsh says.
Testing grammar and memorized vocabulary is the only way to determine student placement? Walsh means that he does not know. There are many other ways, but none as easy and cheap.
Walsh thinks we should simply ask students "to be creative," whatever that means, without explaining why any alternative would be worse than memorizing rules and vocabulary, which are soon forgotten.
He feels that the pressure would remain: Parents would keep paying for cram schools. He doesn't tell us why, or why the situation is different elsewhere. His brilliant conclusion: "The existence of bushibans is not evidence that the public schools are bad."
Parents fully satisfied with their children's education would continue paying for cram schools? Too few universities? Contradicting himself, he admits: "Bushiban teachers are just as likely to be bad as public school teachers."
Then why should parents pay? It is difficult to get rid of teachers, but very easy to do so in cram schools, so why is the problem the same? Walsh's final point: "Native teachers of English do not do a better job teaching English than Taiwanese teachers."
We were discussing writing. Does Walsh mean qualified, certified native speaking teachers, or white faces in cram schools?
Native speakers apparently have no advantages in teaching writing, so if Walsh is correct, would Taiwanese parents let foreigners teach their children Mandarin?
Since students in Taiwan cannot write English, why would it hurt to have experts do the correcting? Why would making the same mistakes help? No answer!
I agree about reading a lot, but not with Walsh's abrupt dismissal of assigned reading. He enjoys Shakespeare, but feels that for students in Taiwan Harry Potter will do. He does not explain how reading books at or below grade level can raise a student's ability. A student understanding 5 percent of a Shakespeare play will get more than 100 percent of Harry Potter.
Walsh claims: "it is nonsense to call the English here `pathetic.'" Following Walsh's letter was one by Andrew Crosthwaite, who said: "A good many bushiban classes are a complete waste of time."
I have visited schools where children who had been learning for two or more years couldn't readily answer or ask: "What's your name?"
Sounds pretty pathetic to me. According to a survey by the 104 tutor Web site "76 percent of kids spend nine hours a week in cram schools at an average of NT$7,000 per month ... [The] survey results show a clear indication of parents' lack of confidence in the school system."
Then Walsh finally admits that he owns a bushiban himself. Clarity at last.
Chaim Melamed
Pingtung
Debate between Eileen Han, Chaim Melamed, Jim Walsh and Andrew Crosthwaite has identified crucial problems in our students' misled approach to developing English writing skills.
To many of our students, both in high school and college, the art of English writing is tantamount to a mission impossible -- although the formidable task can be converted into a rewarding learning experience, depending on how the English teacher employs instructional strategies in a near-immersion environment.
English teachers in schools of all levels and the designers of the entrance examination should be held accountable for the undesirable learning outcomes of our students' English writing. Instead of lamenting that our students fail to write or speak English acceptably, we should ask: "How about the linguistic performance of the English teachers?"
Are the English teachers certified, and have they participated in in-service training programs or workshops on a regular basis to upgrade teaching methodologies? On this point, Melamed is right that the government should be held accountable. This requirement should be applied to both Taiwanese English teachers and native speakers of English who are teaching in this country.
It is imperative that integration of reading, listening, speaking and writing be simultaneously implemented in the process of teaching English in secondary schools, colleges and bushibans. Students are receptive to linguistic data provided by their teachers and the learning resources available to them.
To write English well, students should read both extensively and intensively under the guidance and instruction of their English teachers. This is a point shared by Walsh and Crosthwaite's letters in how to empower students.
Experienced and knowledgeable English teachers can then help students to write strategically and creatively through a communicative approach, even employing the Internet as a tool for online discussion to foster desirable learning outcomes.
In this manner, students will learn to appreciate the English language functionally instead of being coerced to blindly memorize English vocabulary and grammatical rules, as Han pointed out.
The same strategy can also be employed in learning how to speak.
As for reading materials, the skill of writing and "free voluntary reading" proposed by Steven Krashen are of vital importance.
Most of my students in elite colleges have found reading classic and modern online texts I retrieve and recommend from newspapers and news magazines informative and entertaining. In the long run, they develop good morale from "free voluntary writing" and "free voluntary reading." Informative and entertaining reading materials are helpful for learning vocabulary and grammatical rules.
Thanks to the rapid development of technology, the Internet has allowed teachers to retrieve updated and innovative English reading materials from both traditional publications and user-friendly sources online.
They can be easily downloaded for reading, discussing and converting into vivid writing materials under the innovative strategies of well-trained English teachers.
Students can thus learn to be creative and knowledgeable through the interaction of the four skills of "reading" diverse and updated materials, "listening" to English teachers for comprehension, "speaking" with accurate pronunciation and intonation and, above all, "writing" with grammatical and rhetorical accuracy.
One way or another, no one can learn to write desirable and acceptable English without sufficient reading.
This argument is compatible with what Marguerite Ann Snow proposed in her article "Content-Based and Immersion Models for Second and Foreign Language Teaching."
It goes without saying that qualified English teachers are crucial to enabling students to write English. Successful English education in schools of all levels should start from the instructor's holistic integration of EFL (English as a foreign language) skills.
Student potential can be generated and subsequently enhanced in a near-total immersion environment. This can start from simultaneous reading/listening and writing/speaking.
With the instructor's successful inculcation of listening, reading, writing and speaking skills, plus possibly translation, the student can then cross borders through reading and exploring the productive skills of writing and speaking cognitively.
By challenging and then transcending boundaries in EFL teaching, both instructors and students will be able to build substantial English language skills.
Li Chen-ching
Taipei
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