How Effective Can An English Language Training Be?

Max de Lotbinière
Friday January 19, 2007
Guardian Weekly

The sun set on the British Empire half a century ago, but it took a lot longer for Britain’s ELT training empire to lose its dominion over the rest of the world. A decade ago Britain was still seen as the font of ELT expertise and the ambition of any serious teacher was to travel to the “mother country” to perfect their British English and sit at the feet of her instructors and academics, preferably in the corridors of academe.

Much has changed, and many of those currently involved in ELT training in Britain would be the first to welcome the redrawing of the ELT map. The world they now work in is a very different place, English is being learnt in many different contexts and there is no longer a place for a one-theory-fits-all approach.

The challenge facing Britain’s course providers is to deliver training that will have lasting impact for the people who access it. So does it make sense any more to base that training in Britain, far removed, very often, from where teachers work?

A recent study by a Japanese postgraduate researcher suggests that the study abroad option is still valuable. Last year Chizuyo Kojima explored the experiences of a small group of secondary school English language teachers from Japan who had been sent to Britain to improve their English and to get ELT skills training.

She wanted to find out whether the teachers changed their beliefs about their role in the classroom as a result of their training. Other literature on this subject claims that teachers do not easily change beliefs that many have formed even before they first began their training. Yet the group Kojima questioned all said that the experience of training in Britain had helped them to change their views, particularly about teaching.

Kojima says that the special “closed-group” course designed for them by a British university not only taught them skills which they were keen to put into practice, but also gave them confidence.

“One participant realised he could and should use English to teach with in class. The British tutor advised the teacher to use English even if it was not native-like English. In Japan a lot of teachers hesitate to use English if they think they are not perfect.”

Kojima thinks that the location of the course was a positive factor and helped them to appreciate that teachers’ abilities and attitudes affect the process of learning. “Taking lessons from several teachers in Britain – both good models and bad models – made participants aware of the role of a teacher,” she says.

Kojima’s research does not show how long these changes in belief stayed with the teachers once they returned to their classrooms, and this is the challenge facing providers of closed-group training in Britain.

Dr Simon Gieve, of the University of Leicester’s Centre for English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, says that the research into the long-term effectiveness of training once teachers return to their home countries is slim. He thinks that courses delivered in Britain need to be carefully researched and designed in order to have lasting impact, but that resources for this kind of preparation are scarce.

Instead of simply demonstrating new skills, teachers need to be taught how to “recontextualise”, he says. “They need to learn how to take the knowledge, ideas and skills and make them work in their contexts.”

Dr Malcolm MacDonald, who runs the University of Exeter’s doctor of education Tesol course, predicts that the internet will make it possible for teachers to access more training without leaving home and that this will improve effectiveness.

“More materials and training is being delivered on the web, which allows students to engage with problems in their context. In 10 to 20 years we are going to see a major change in mode of delivery.” says MacDonald.

Dave Allen has been providing in-service teacher training for more than 30 years and is head of the Norwich Institute of Language Education. He says that this change is already happening with more courses offered as a mix of face-to-face training in the teachers’ country, online training and short courses in Britain.

But Allen also believes that changing attitudes through training is a long-term process. “It has taken 25 years of communicative teaching training in Bavaria to get the education authorities to change their attitudes,” says Allen. “But we achieved it last year when they started teaching and assessing spoken language.”

David Hng

First Language A Contributor For Better English as Second Language?

By Andrew Pickholtz
Contributing Writer
University of San Francisco Synapse [Student Newspaper]

One of the first Mandarin immersion programs in the United States recently began its inaugural school year near the UCSF Mission Bay campus. The K-5 elementary school program offers students of all backgrounds the opportunity to become bilingual and bi-literate in Mandarin and English. Immersion programs are the fastest growing and most effective type of foreign language program available in U.S. schools, and Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world.

The new program at Starr King Elementary in Potrero Hill opened in September with two dozen kindergarten students in two classrooms. Each year, an additional grade will be added up, to the fifth grade. Eighty percent of class-time in the early years and 50% in the later years will be in Mandarin. Few of the students or their parents had any formal or sustained exposure to Chinese prior to the beginning of the school year.

The program is modeled after the pioneering French immersion programs developed in Canada in the 1960s. In immersion education, students don’t just “learn” a second language; they are taught and communicate on a daily basis “in” the second language. Young children have a unique ability to learn languages, so the acquisition of the second language appears almost effortless. Research has shown that the immersion experience actually advances English language development. In addition to the social and professional advantages of learning a second language, immersion students appear to benefit cognitively, likely because of the educational process itself. The students have to concentrate closely on their teachers, who use pantomime and other techniques to communicate in the first days and weeks of the program.

After three-and-a-half months of school, the kindergarteners in the Starr King program are now clearly understanding their teachers, writing Chinese characters and occasionally speaking in Mandarin on their own. Of course, they’re also doing things that other kindergarteners do: learning to read, write and do arithmetic, making friends, singing songs in Mandarin and English, creating their own artwork and having fun. Meanwhile, the parents of students in the new program are collaborating on after-school enrichment activities, arranging transportation from all over the city and contributing to school promotion.

San Francisco has a strong track record in immersion education. The city’s two public Cantonese immersion programs are consistently among the best performing schools statewide, in math and English as well as Cantonese. San Francisco’s Spanish immersion schools are similarly well regarded, with some schools getting 10 Kindergarten applications for each available seat. In the private sector, the Chinese American International School (CAIS) in the Lower Haight was at the forefront of Chinese immersion education 25 years ago. Families now move to the San Francisco Bay Area specifically to have their children attend CAIS. Other private immersion schools in San Francisco include the French American International School and Lycee Francais.

Researchers in the recently created academic discipline of “educational neuroscience” have been studying how the brain adapts to bilingualism and immersion education. Studies at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire are using traditional techniques of cognitive psychology as well as newer technologies, such as Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), to answer important questions relating to these new educational methods. NIRS can measure changes in the brain’s oxygen level density. The research is confirming that young children are easily capable of learning two languages “as if they had two monolingual brains in one.” Indeed, Professor Laura Ann Pettito of Dartmouth, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Department of Education, has said researchers have “found no evidence that the human being is biologically programmed to be monolingual.” Based on this research, she has proposed “an ironic and daring idea … that, perhaps, the human species is biologically set to acquire multiple languages, and the contemporary pockets of civilization where one language is spoken are the aberrant deviation; in other words, perhaps our brains were neurologically set to be multilingual!”

The new Starr King program is focused on Mandarin, which is alternately considered a dialect of the Chinese language or one of the languages in the family of Chinese languages. As a separate language, it is the most widely spoken in the world, with almost 1 billion native speakers worldwide. Because of the growing financial, political and strategic importance of China, the U.S. government recently included Mandarin on a short-list of “critical-need” languages that it is encouraging more Americans to learn. But besides the practical value of Mandarin, it is a rich language spoke in countries with interesting histories and cultures. Just as children across America have learned French, Spanish and German for decades whether or not their families had a prior history with those languages, so too Mandarin is gaining in popularity among families of all backgrounds who want their children to have a broad educational background.

Applications for next years’ kindergarten class are due Friday, January 19, 2007. Children must be 5 years old by December 2, 2007 to be eligible for the 2007-08 school year. Tours can be arranged by calling the school at 415-695-5797. The school is located at 1215 Carolina Street, San Francisco.

David Hng

English Is Equally Important in Lebanese Society

By Mirella Hodeib
Daily Star staff
Friday, January 19, 2007

BEIRUT: The Lebanese have a much-touted turn of phrase to greet each other that mixes three languages within the same expression: “Hi. Keefak? Ca va?”

Lebanese Arabic contains many instances in which these three languages – English, Arabic and French – are mashed together in the same sentence. For example, Lebanese youth make plans for the night by asking, “Shou, rayhin clubbing ce soir?” (So, what, are we going clubbing tonight?), and mothers tuck their children in at night with a “yalla dodo, nighty night.”

Switching between three languages has always been a characteristic of the Lebanese dialect. In fact, linguistic plurality has been an esteemed tradition throughout the country’s history.

Lebanon’s contact with the West is not a recent development; the tiny country’s strategic position between East and West has contributed through the ages to its multicultural and multilingual nature.

In modern-day Lebanon, French is considered the language of culture and maintains a vital link with France and other francophone countries. English, on the other hand, is seen as the language of business, technology and communications with the non-Arab world.

“Lebanon’s familiarity with Western-style education, since the bourgeoning of missionary schools in the 19th century, set the foundations for a tradition of bilingualism that has proven its viability over the years and become entrenched in the Lebanese psyche and the Lebanese educational system,” said Kassim Shaaban, a linguistics professor at the American University of Beirut.

Nevertheless, English is increasingly gaining status within what had been thought to be a francophone fortress. However, unlike in Algeria and Morocco, the issue here is not one of primary language but rather that of the second language.

Recently, the English language section at Librarie Antoine, Lebanon’s bookstore “par excellence,” was moved to a more visible corner.

While the head of the Anglophone books section at Antoine, Hala Shaftari, denies that the section was moved to cater to a growing numbers of English readers, she admits that English book sales at the Hamra branch are on the rise.

“However, this does not mean the francophone bookshop will change its name to Anthony’s Bookshop,” she says.

Shaftari adds that the branch of the bookshop in Achrafieh is still entirely francophone.

The rising sales of English books at the Hamra branch are likely due to the fact the store is surrounded by English-language universities and schools, she says. “Therefore a lot of university students visit us looking for English sources and textbooks.”

The government’s policies concerning language and various reports on the subject suggest a shift from Arabic/French bilingualism to Arabic/French/English “trilingualism.”

In fact, the Constitution says that “at the end of their intermediate education, students can take official examinations in mathematics and sciences in Arabic or in a foreign language (French or English).”

Mishka M. Mourani, senior vice president of the International College, says the number of students enrolled in French studies is the same as the number of those enrolled in English.

“Being an international school, we put a lot of emphasis on multilingualism,” Mourani says, adding that the school has begun teaching second languages in its pre-school.

“This stems from our belief that the sooner students are exposed to a language the better they will be able to acquire it,” she adds.

Mourani says the problems English-educated students face while learning French have to do with differences in the “essence” of both languages.

“While English is an easy language with which to communicate because it is an international language with many dialects, the French language’s grammar, on the other hand, does not allow for flexibility in pronunciation or word usage,” she explains. “Let me put it this way, it’s true that English is gaining ground, but not at the expense of French.”

A mother of four and a graduate student in linguistics, Nathalie Shehadeh says she chose to enroll her children in IC’s French program because she wanted them to learn more than one language and thought French would provide a strong foundation for other languages, such as Spanish or Italian.

Shehadeh compares young learners to “sponges.”

“I want my kids to learn both English and French with a local accent, but this wealth of linguistic information could only be absorbed if it is done at a younger age,” she says.

However, Shehadeh agrees that the ability to learn a new language was affected by the first language learned.

“It’s easier to acquire English when you are French-educated, and not vice versa,” she says.

Shaaban says such beliefs are a common misconception.

“Lebanese students from English-medium backgrounds are much less likely to be motivated to learn French than their counterparts who have attended at French-medium schools because French lacks international status,” he says.

Ray Abdel-Karim, who attended one of Lebanon’s most prestigious French schools, says: “Nowadays English is more important than French, especially as my major, nutrition, requires me to be competent in English since nutrition majors are very well paid in the United States, as well as in the Arab Gulf.”

But “I feel more comfortable speaking in French than in English since I’ve been in a French school for 15 years,” she says.

Abdel-Karim’s arguments for choosing to study at an English-medium university seem to have been heard by many traditionally French schools.

“As an economics major I think English as foreign language courses I took during my undergraduate years were indispensable,” says Tarek Borgi, a graduate student at the Universite Saint Joseph (USJ).

Many French-medium universities, such as USJ and the Universite du Saint Esprit de Kaslik, have begun to see a need for English courses within their curriculum.

“It’s inconceivable that an economist, an engineer or a film director would not master English,” says Henri Awaiss, director of the Languages and Translation Center at USJ. “Additionally, it seems quite erroneous to claim that in USJ only French is spoken. We have long sought to be a multilingual institution. In fact, more than five languages are taught at USJ.”

Awaiss notes that USJ has recently signed an agreement with the Confucius Institute, whereby Chinese-language courses will be offered in the spring since “nowadays English is losing ground to Chinese.”

However, he denies claims that some of the university’s most prominent deans are opposed to the incorporation of English courses in the curriculum. English is a must for students today, he says, if for no other reason than that the majority of international academic journals are written in English.

“They oppose English in the sense that they don’t want administrative interactions to be conducted in English so as to preserve the francophone nature and ancestry of the institution,” Awaiss explains.

While agreeing with Awaiss, Shaaban says the Lebanese have come to realize that in today’s globalized world even knowing two languages is no longer enough.

Mourani says France has always been active in marketing its language in Lebanon.

The French Embassy and the French Cultural Center organize a series of events each year aimed at promoting French language and culture.

Francophone book fairs, television programs broadcast from Beirut and spelling contests are all held to promote French, and have come to be a yearly tradition.

A seeming “linguistic status quo” could therefore be the result of the global pre-eminence of English as “lingua franca,” meshed with lasting effects and an enduring reverence for French culture.

“These two ideologies wrestle together in Lebanon and create a sort of a linguistic balance,” Mourani says.

Shaaban sums up the discussion by saying the languages in use in the Lebanese context have specifically assigned functions.

Thus, Arabic is the official language of the state and the national culture, French is the language of communication, institution (and a specific culture), and English is the language of international business, communication and information.

“Foreign-language use in Lebanon, namely French and English, is strictly utilitarian; each language fits a certain category and serves a certain purpose in differing contexts,” he adds.

David Hng