How to Teach English

Teaching mixed ability classes

david — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:48:47 +0000

Most, if not all, language classes contain students of mixed abilities. This happens for a number of reasons, but mainly because of different learning styles, different learning speeds, variations in motivation and, very frequently, as a result of logistic decisions. Very often the teacher is faced with a class with two or more distinct levels of ability and has to tackle the problem of how to meet the needs of everyone in the class. Naturally, this is not an easy problem to solve and it would be wrong to suggest that there are any simple solutions. A fundamental step, however, is to talk to the class about the situation and to present it to them as a normal situation and one that the class as a whole has to deal with. This is probably best done in the mother tongue of the students. As most of the solutions to the problem depend on cooperation between the members of the class, it is essential to stress the need for teamwork and for the class to use English whenever possible in classroom communication.

The use of pair and group work is essential if you are to involve all the members of the class. A fundamental technique here is the use of questionnaires and interviews. By pairing off weaker and stronger students and involving both in the preparation and implementation of the questionnaire you should ensure maximum participation of all the students. You can then get the weaker students to interview the stronger ones and vice-versa. Of course, this may be frustrating for the stronger ones, but if they are able to see their role as that of “helper” or even mentor, it may also have a positive effect.

A second area of activity that can be productive in mixed ability classes is project work. Again, this can work successfully using mixed groups where the stronger help the weaker, but another approach is to form groups that are at approximately the same level and assign different tasks that are appropriate to the level of each group. By adjusting the complexity of the task, you can ensure that each group has a task that it can carry out successfully, thereby providing the correct level of challenge for the higher level students and not demotivating the weaker ones.

A third area is that of homework. If you set the whole class the same homework task irrespective of level, then you will have to expect very mixed results. As with progress tests, the purpose of homework should be to consolidate class work. To this end, giving weaker students less demanding tasks can help both to motivate them and to give them further practice in areas of the language which they have not yet mastered. Assigning more challenging tasks to the stronger students in the group should ensure that they remain motivated and continue to make progress. It is more work for the teacher but, ultimately, it should produce results.

Choral drilling can be an effective way of involving weaker or shy students. If applied judiciously (in other words not all the time), it can give excellent practice in rhythm and intonation, as well as reinforcing word order and grammatical structure.

Finally, be diplomatic in your questioning techniques. Try to avoid putting weaker students “on the spot” by nominating them to be the first to answer a question in open class. Instead, try to encourage a culture of attentive listening in the classroom so that you ask a stronger student first and then ask a weaker student to repeat the answer. It may take time but, once this style of interaction becomes habitual, it can be very productive in terms of class dynamics.

What is academic tenure?

david — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:41:49 +0000

Under the tenure systems adopted as internal policy by many universities and colleges, especially in the United States and Canada, tenure is associated with more senior job titles such as Professor and Associate Professor. A junior professor will not be promoted to such a tenured position without demonstrating a strong record of published research, teaching, and administrative service. Typical systems (such as the Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure) allow only a limited period to establish such a record, by limiting the number of years that any employee can hold a junior title such as Assistant Professor. (An institution may also offer other academic titles that are not time-limited, such as Lecturer, Adjunct Professor, or Research Professor, but these positions do not carry the possibility of tenure and are said to be “off the tenure track.”)

Academic tenure is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: it protects teachers and researchers when they dissent from prevailing opinion, openly disagree with authorities of any sort, or spend time on unfashionable topics. Thus academic tenure is similar to the lifetime tenure that protects some judges from external pressure. Without job security, the scholarly community as a whole might favor “safe” lines of inquiry. The intent of tenure is to allow original ideas to be more likely to arise, by giving scholars the intellectual autonomy to investigate the problems and solutions about which they are most passionate, and to report their honest conclusions. In economies where higher education is provided by the private sector, tenure also has the effect of helping to ensure the integrity of the grading system. Absent tenure, professors could be pressured by administrators to issue higher grades for attracting and keeping a greater number of students.

Universities also have economic rationales for adopting tenure systems. First, job security and the accompanying autonomy are significant employee benefits; without them, universities might have to pay higher salaries or take other measures to attract and retain talented or well-known scholars. Second, junior faculty are driven to establish themselves by the high stakes of the tenure decision (i.e., lifetime tenure vs. job loss), arguably helping to create a culture of excellence within the university. Finally, tenured faculty may be more likely to invest time in improving the universities where they expect to remain for life; they may also be more willing to hire, mentor and promote talented junior colleagues who could otherwise threaten their positions. Many of these rationales resemble those for senior partner positions in law and accounting firms.

One cost of a tenure system is that some tenured professors may not use their freedom for the common good. Tenure has been criticized for allowing senior professors to become unproductive, shoddy, or irrelevant. Universities themselves bear this risk: they pay dearly whenever they guarantee lifetime employment to an individual who proves unworthy of it. Universities therefore exercise great care in offering tenured positions, first requiring an intensive formal review of the candidate’s record of research, teaching, and service. This review typically takes several months and includes the solicitation of confidential letters of assessment from highly regarded scholars in the candidate’s research area. Some colleges and universities also solicit letters from students about the candidate’s teaching. A tenured position is offered only if both senior faculty and senior administrators judge that the candidate is likely to remain a productive scholar and teacher for life.

It has also been suggested that tenure may have the effect of diminishing political and academic freedom among those seeking it – that they must appear to conform to the political or academic views of the field or the institution where they seek tenure. For example, in The Trouble with Physics, the theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin says “… it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field of string theory. …”. It is certainly possible to view the tenure track as a long-term demonstration of the candidate’s political and academic conformity. Patrick J. Michaels, a controversial part-time research professor at the University of Virginia, wrote: “…tenure has had the exact opposite effect as to its stated goal of diversifying free expression. Instead, it stifles free speech in the formative years of a scientist’s academic career, and all but requires a track record in support of paradigms that might have outgrown their usefulness.”

In North American universities and colleges, the tenure track has long been a defining feature of employment. However, it is becoming less than universal. In North American universities, positions that carry tenure, or the opportunity to attain tenure, have grown more slowly than non-tenure-track positions, leading to a large “academic underclass”. For example, most U.S. universities currently supplement the work of tenured professors with the services of non-tenured adjunct professors, academics who teach classes for lower wages and fewer employment benefits under relatively short-term contracts.

For these, and other reasons, academic tenure was officially restructured in public universities in the United Kingdom by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. It is no longer offered in Australia, New Zealand and in most of Europe. Note that most European university systems do not allow any teaching by young researchers, postgraduates, post doctoral fellows, or residents. This is especially the case in Germany, where practice in universities (but not advanced technical colleges) often differs from theory. In principle, teaching duties in German universities are restricted to tenured faculty and a few non-tenured staff members paid for research and teaching. In reality, much teaching is done by non-tenured research students and adjunct faculty. In France, tenure is granted early in academic ranks as well as to CNRS and other researchers. In Italy tenure is granted in early academic ranks as well as to Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche researchers.

Outside the United States and Canada, it is still common to offer a long contract to candidates who pass a less stringent review or confirmation, but with somewhat less job security than in lifetime tenure systems. Moreover, tenure is under attack in state universities in the United States. New Zealand offers “Confirmation” which is similar in effect to tenure, except that all university lecturers in New Zealand have a duty, enshrined in law, to act as a critic and conscience of society, whether their position is permanent or not.

‘Suggestopedia’ for dummies

david — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:09:05 +0000

Often considered to be the oddest of the so-called humanistic approaches, suggestopedia was originally developed in the 1970s by the Bulgarian educator Georgi Lozanov. Extravagant claims were initially made for the approach with Lozanov himself declaring that memorization in learning through suggestopedia would be accelerated by up to 25 times over that in conventional learning methods. The approach attracted both wild enthusiasm in some quarters and open scorn in others. On balance, it is pretty fair to say that suggestopedia has had its day, although certain elements of the approach do survive in today’s good practice.

The approach was based on the power of suggestion in learning, the notion being that positive suggestion would make the learner more receptive and, in turn, stimulate learning. Lozanov holds that a relaxed but focused state is the optimum state for learning. In order to create this relaxed state in the learner and to promote positive suggestion, suggestopedia makes use of music, a comfortable and relaxing environment, and a relationship between the teacher and the student that is akin to the parent-child relationship. Music, in particular, is central to the approach. Unlike other methods and approaches, there is no apparent theory of language in suggestopedia and no obvious order in which items of language are presented.

The original form of suggestopedia presented by Lozanov consisted of the use of extended dialogues, often several pages in length, accompanied by vocabulary lists and observations on grammatical points. Typically these dialogues would be read aloud to the students to the accompaniment of music. The most formal of these readings, known as the “concert reading”, would typically employ a memorable piece of classical music such as a Beethoven symphony. This would not be in the form of background music but would be the main focus of the reading, with the teacher’s voice acting as a counterpoint to the music. Thus the “concert reading” could be seen as a kind of pleasurable event, with the learners free to focus on the music, the text or a combination of the two. The rhythm and intonation of the reading would be exaggerated in order to fit in with the rhythm of the music.

A second, less formal reading would employ a lighter, less striking piece of music, such as a piece of Baroque music, and this would take a less prominent role. During both types of reading, the learners would sit in comfortable seats, armchairs rather than classroom chairs, in a suitably stimulating environment in terms of décor and lighting. After the readings of these long dialogues to the accompaniment of music, the teacher would then make use of the dialogues for more conventional language work. In theory at least, large chunks of the dialogues would be internalized by the learners during the readings due both to the relaxed and receptive state of the learners and to the positive suggestion created by the music.

There is, however, little evidence to support the extravagant claims of success. The more obvious criticisms lie in the fact that many people find classical music irritating rather than stimulating (to some cultures Western music may sound discordant), the length of the dialogues and the lack of a coherent theory of language may serve to confuse rather than to motivate, and, for purely logistic reasons, the provision of comfortable armchairs and a relaxing environment will probably be beyond the means of most educational establishments.

In addition the idea of a teacher reading a long (and often clearly inauthentic) dialogue aloud, with exaggerated rhythm and intonation, to the accompaniment of Beethoven or Mozart may well seem ridiculous to many people.

This is not to say, however, that certain elements of the approach cannot be taken and incorporated into the more eclectic approach to language teaching widely in evidence today. The use of music both in the background and as an accompaniment to certain activities can be motivating and relaxing. Attention to factors such as décor, lighting and furniture is surely not a bad thing. Dialogues too have their uses. Perhaps most importantly of all the ideas, creating conditions in which learners are alert and receptive can only have a positive effect on motivation. Whether these conditions are best created by the use of classical music and the reading of dialogues is open to questions but there is no doubt that suggestopedia has raised some interesting questions in the areas of both learning and memory.

The ‘Silent Way’ for Dummies

david — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:09:31 +0000

There are three basic tenets of this approach;

that learning is facilitated if the learner discovers rather than remembers or repeats;
that learning is aided by material objects; and
that problem-solving is fundamental to learning.

The Silent Way started off in the early 1970s and was the innovation of the late Caleb Gattegno. The use of the word silent is also noteworthy, as the Silent Way is based on the premise that the teacher should be as silent as possible in the classroom in order to motivate the learner to produce as much language as feasibly possible. As far as the presentation of language is concerned, the Silent Way adopts a decidedly structural approach, with language taught through sentences in a progression based highly on grammatical complexity; this is described by some as a building-block approach.

In the Silent Way, the structural patterns of the target language are presented by the teacher and the grammar conventions of the language are learnt inductively by the learners. Tools such as Cuisenaire rods are often used to illustrate meaning (being an example of the material objects mentioned previously). New items are added in moderation by the teacher, with learners taking these as far as they can in their communication until the need for the next new item becomes apparent. The teacher then provides this new item by modeling it very plainly only once. The learners are then left to make use of the new item and to integrate it into their existing stock of language, again taking it as far as they can until the next item is needed and so on.

OK, for example, let’s say that the teacher has introduced the idea of pronouns as in “Give me a green rod”. The class will then use this structure until it is clearly assimilated, using, in addition, all the other colours. One member of the class would now like to ask another to pass a rod to a third student but she does not know the word “her”, only that it cannot be “me”. At this point the teacher would intervene and supply the new item: “Give her the green rod” and the learners will continue until the next new item is needed (probably “him”).

This minimalist role of the teacher has led some critics to describe Silent Way teachers as coming across as aloof and, in reality, this apparently excessive degree of self-restraint can be seen as such. However, the role of the teacher in the Silent Way can be more fairly seen as ‘teach, test, and get out of the way’. The perceptible lack of real communication in the approach has also been criticized, with some arguing that it is easier said than done to take the approach beyond the very basics of the language, with only highly motivated learners being able to produce real communication from the unbending structures illustrated by the rods. The fact that, for logistical reasons, it is limited to relatively small groups of learners is also seen as a key weakness of this approach.

As with other methods and approaches, however, some aspects of the Silent Way can be observed in many lessons in the contemporary classroom. Indeed, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, for instance, it became trendy in some quarters to argue that excessive teacher talking time was something to be discouraged. Cuisenaire rods are also popular with some teachers and can be used tremendously creatively for a variety of purposes, from teaching pronunciation to story-telling.

The notion of only modeling a new structure or item of vocabulary once may also have some validation because it encourages learners to firstly listen more carefully and then to experiment with their own construction of the statement. Last but not least, this problem-solving trait of Silent Way may well prove to be its most enduring legacy as it has led in a roundabout way both to the inspiration of Task Based Learning and to the prevalent use of problem-solving activities in language classrooms.

Learning EFL by Bengali Speaking Learners: Major Linguistic Problems and Possible Solutions

david — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:36:30 +0000

Introduction

Foreign language learning occurs in the formal situation of a classroom, and the learner has hardly any access to the target language beyond the classroom door (Brown 2001). And in this formal situation, he/she receives instruction and practises in the items entirely related to the basic skills of the target language– listening, speaking, reading and writing. That is, the items taught and learned are linguistically related to and considered at different levels– phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. While learning the foreign language, the learner usually encounters varied linguistic problems that evidently handicap and hamper his/her learning and eventually negatively affect his/her general proficiency as well. This phenomenon is also found in the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) by the Bengali speaking learner.

Both as a learner and a teacher-researcher of EFL, I have had first-hand experience and the opportunity to observe that the Bengali speaking learner confronts difficulty in learning English pronunciation including sounds, stress and intonation related to the phonetic and phonological level. He/she often finds English word formation and sentence construction, respectively concerned with the morphological and syntactic level, quite problematic. Moreover, the learner suffers problems in learning vocabulary items and to convey meanings through and/or receive meanings of words, phrases, clauses, sentences/utterances, discourse, and so forth related to the semantic and pragmatic level. Such problems obviously seriously retard the learning of EFL by the Bengali speaking learner.

Therefore, it seems reasonable to take account of and identify what linguistic problems the Bengali speaking EFL learner encounters and why. The consideration and interpretation of the issue in question are completely based on my practical experience as a learner and on my observation as a teacher-researcher of EFL. Finally, a number of suggestions have been made so as to address and lessen the problems, on the one hand, and ensure the smooth and optimal learning of EFL on the other.

Phonetic and phonological problems

Since English is a non-phonetic language and there is no one-to-one correspondence between the graphemes (the letters of the alphabet) and the sounds actually produced and realized, at the phonetic and phonological level, the Bengali speaking EFL learner usually faces difficulties in, firstly, ‘speech production’ encompassing which articulator(s) to use how to pronounce which speech sound and how to pattern speech sounds to convey meaning and, secondly, in ‘speech perception’ covering how to receive which speech sound(s) to perceive meaning. It is commonly found in the elementary learner that he/she endeavours to learn pronunciations of words by looking at their spellings, and consequently learns mispronunciations of many of them, for example, adjective, adjustment, future, knee, knowledge, lamb, comb, lieutenant, calm, palm, pneumonia, psychology, Wednesday, etc. This mainly happens due to faults in teaching, indifference of the teacher to how the learner learns pronunciations of difficult words/expressions and the teacher’s lack of training. Let us now identify the problems that the Bengali speaking EFL learner confronts at the phonetic and phonological level and explain the causes of the problems under some sub-headings.

Monophthongs and diphthongs

The Bengali speaking EFL learner generally finds the five long monophthongs /¡: u: a: ?: ?/ of the English language seriously problematic since these simple vowels are not available in his/her mother tongue and he/she is not accustomed to differentiating between short and long monophthongs. To emphasize a point or express various emotional effects, Bengali vowels are lengthened to some degree. But vowel length in the Bengali language is phonetic, not phonological. Besides, the Bengali speaker cannot easily and authentically pronounce schwa /?/ since this phoneme is absent from their first language. Moreover, he/she can hardly differentiate between /e/ and /æ/ as in ‘men’ and ‘man’ respectively because this differentiation is not that much exercised in Bengali. In addition, the Bengali speaking learner is used to nasalization of vowels without any nasal consonant in his/her mother tongue, for instance, the first vowel in the word ‘kada’ /k?nð?/(weeping) or the only vowel in the word ‘chad’ /??nd/ (moon) being clearly nasalized. This factor occasionally affects his/her pronunciation of English vowels devoid of nasalization.

The learner also suffers difficulty in pronouncing English diphthongs due to his/her mother tongue interference. The English language has eight diphthongs, each of which is a combination of two monophthongs one gliding into the other and naturally longer than a pure vowel. On the other hand, the Bengali language possesses eighteen regular diphthongs which are characteristically different from and shorter than English ones. As a consequence, the Bengali speaking learner pronounces only the first part of a diphthong and makes it identical with a monophthong, for example, ‘late’ being pronounced like ‘let’. Hasan (2000: 66) rightly holds –

They mispronounce most of the English diphthongs; they fail to give these sounds their due length as they often pronounce only the first element of the sound and pay no heed to the second, thus the English diphthongs cease to be gliding sounds in their pronunciation, e.g. for English /e?/ and /?U/, they generally use the Bangla pure vowels /e/ and /?/ respectively.

This type of replacement of phonemes in the English language certainly results in huge confusion and misunderstanding.

The problems that the Bengali speaking EFL learner confronts in the pronunciation of English monophthongs and diphthongs evidently affect his/her auditory and perceptive ability and hence reduce his/her capability of listening.

Consonant phonemes

As the Bengali speaking learner is naturally trained to articulate Bengali consonants and as there are a lot of differences between Bengali and English consonants, he/she finds the pronunciations of a number of English consonants difficult in both production and perception.

Firstly, while the Bengali language has as many as twenty plosives, the English language possesses six /p b t d k g/. The Bengali speaking learner is used to using both aspirated and unaspirated sounds in his/her mother tongue as it has separate aspirated and unaspirated phonemes producing meaning difference. Unlike Bengali, the English language has no corresponding aspirated plosives, and the voiceless plosives /p t k/are aspirated in the initial position of the stressed syllable but unaspirated in other positions. As a result, the Bengali speaking learner cannot exactly pronounce the aspirated allophones of English voiceless plosives /p t k/.

Secondly, the Bengali speaking EFL learner cannot exactly articulate and even perceive English inter-dental fricatives /? ð/ since there is no inter-dental fricatives in the Bengali language. Rather, he/she uses Bengali dental stops instead of English inter-dental fricatives. Likewise, he/she generally uses Bengali aspirated bilabial stops /ph/ and /bh/ in place of English labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ respectively because the Bengali language lacks labio-dental fricatives.

Thirdly, the learner is usually unable to differentiate between English voiced alveolar fricative /z/, voiced palato-alveolar affricate /d? / and voiced palato-alveolar fricative /? / since these sounds are not available in the Bengali language. Consequently, on the one hand, his/her pronunciation appears to be non-English, and on the other, he/she often fails to understand a speaker producing the sounds correctly.

Fourthly, the Bengali speaking learner is generally found to pronounce Bengali alveolar retroflex stops in place of English alveolar plosives /t /and /d/. This happens owing to the absence of alveolar plosives like English /t /and /d/in his/her first language.

Fifthly, the English approximants /w/ and /j / are problematic to the Bengali speaking EFL learner. He/she cannot correctly articulate them as they are not present in his/her first language.

Thus the English consonants which are absent from the Bengali language are difficult to the Bengali speaking learner and substantially negatively affect his/her pronunciation as well as perception.

Stress and intonation

Stress and intonation are two essential aspects of the pronunciation of English words and utterances. Stress means prominence in pronunciation usually resulting from four factors? loudness, length, pitch and quality operating individually or in combination (Roach 2000). English words in isolation or in connected speech receive stress that results in intonation. Intonation is used to carry information over and above that which is expressed by the words in the utterance. Hence, English is a stress-timed language possessing a speech rhythm in which the stressed syllables recur at equal intervals of time (Richards et al. 1985). On the contrary, the Bengali language is a syllable-timed language having a speech rhythm in which all the syllables recur at equal intervals of time. This difference between the two languages causes many a problem to the Bengali speaking EFL learner.
The Bengali speaking learner faces difficulties in the stress placement in English words because, on the one hand, English stress placement varies according to grammatical categories, for example, ‘abstract, conduct, contract, contrast, import, incline, insult, perfect, present, produce, rebel, etc’ as verbs receiving stress on the second syllables and as nouns on the first, and on the other, he/she is used to assigning stress almost invariably on the first syllable of every word in his/her first language.
Unlike the Bengali language, the English language has strong and weak forms, such as articles, pronouns, auxiliaries, prepositions, etc which are usually unstressed in connected speech. The Bengali speaking learner can hardly use them appropriately because he/she is not accustomed to the practice in his/her mother tongue.

Intonation basically resulting from the rising and falling of the tone accompanied by relatively greater degree of loudness and length plays varied unavoidable functions in the English language, such as attitudinal, accentual, grammatical and discourse functions which have limited importance in the Bengali language. Due to mother tongue interference and inadequate training, the Bengali speaking learner of EFL can hardly master English intonation, and his/her speech therefore sounds unnatural and even unintelligible.

Morphological and syntactic problems

An English word may consist of one or more morphemes, each of which is defined as the smallest, meaningful and indivisible syntactic unit (of a given language) and bears no partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form (Palmer 1983). On the other hand, an English sentence, the basic syntactic unit, is composed of one or more words belonging to different parts of speech, such as nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections, and governed by varied grammatical categories/rules, such as tenses, aspects, persons, numbers, voice, mood, and so on. However, Bengali speaking learners generally face problems with different types of morpheme, especially grammatical morphemes, inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes in forming words to be used as well as with different grammatical categories and rules needed to frame sentences/utterances.

The Bengali speaking EFL learner, particularly one at elementary and intermediate level finds affixation, especially the addition of prefixes and suffixes problematic, and this hampers his/her learning to a considerable extent. Firstly, he/she struggles to learn the use of prefixes which are affixed before stems, for example, whether to affix ‘in’- or ‘un-’ before the stem ‘complete’, ‘in-’, ‘un-’ or ‘im-’ before ‘perfect’ to make adjectives with a negative property. Secondly, the derivational suffixes, such as ‘-ment’, ‘-able’, ‘-less’, ‘-ful’, and so forth that allow further affixation cause a lot of difficulties to the learners. Thirdly, the inflectional suffixes, such as ‘-s’, ‘-es’, ‘-er’, ‘-est’, and others which are terminal and do not allow further affixation are also difficult to the learners. For example, to pluralize nouns, the learner often gets confused about whether to add ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ to the end of nouns. Though the Bengali speaking learner is naturally used to using such morphemes in his/her mother tongue, he/she has to consciously learn the uses of English morphemes in the classroom situation. But inappropriate treatment of and inadequate emphasis on the functions and uses of the morphemes in the teaching result in problems to the learner and thus hinder his/her learning.

Likewise, English syntax causes serious difficulty to the Bengali speaking EFL learner due to two major factors? (a) differences between the L1 and the L2, and (b) problems in teaching material, method and syllabus, and consequently negatively affects his/her learning.

Firstly, while the basic sentence structure in the English language is ‘subject plus verb plus object’ (SVO), for example, ‘I learn English.’, that in the Bengali language is ‘subject plus object plus verb’ (SOV), for example, ‘Aami ingregi shikhi.’. This difference between the basic sentence structures creates problems for the Bengali speaking learner, especially the beginner because of his/her mother tongue interference. That is, the learner often thinks of things and forms ideas in his/her mother tongue, and then translates the ideas into the target language words sometimes arranged according to the structures in his/her first language. Further, literal translations do not always help convey or receive the intended information.

Secondly, the Bengali speaking learner faces difficulty with the forms, functions and uses of different parts of speech and their interchange according to the demand of the sentence, for instance, where to use an adverb or an adjective why in a sentence, how to change a noun into an adjective, and the like. Besides, an English word can function as different parts of speech in different positions in the sentence according to the context. For example, the word ‘round’ functions as five different parts of speech? adjective, adverb, preposition, noun and verb in five environments ( Hornby 2000); the stray word ‘university’ functions as a noun but in the sentence ‘She is a university student.’ as an adjective; the adjective ‘loud’ has two adverbs? ‘loud’ and ‘loudly’, and so on. Moreover, the Bengali speaking learner is used to using normally one word for one meaning, whereas in the English language a word can give more than one meaning, for instance, the word ‘father’ meaning a male parent, a person’s ancestor, the first person to introduce a new way of thinking about/doing something, God to Christians, to become the father of a child by making its mother pregnant, or to create new ideas/ a new way of doing something, the word ‘sun’ meaning the star that shines in the sky during the day and gives the earth heat and light, the light and heat from the sun, any star around which planets move, or to lie or sit in a place where the sun shines, and the like ( Hornby 2000). These problems evidently result from the differences between the L1 and the L2 as well as the syllabus, and the teaching method and material which hardly consider what the learner lacks and needs, how he/she will better receive and/or react to what is taught how, and so forth.

Thirdly, the construction of wh-questions, e.g. ‘Why do you learn English?’ and compound and complex sentences, e. g. ‘He needs to learn English, but does not learn.’ and ‘Though he needs to learn English, he does not learn.’ respectively poses difficulty and retards EFL learning by the Bengali speaking learner because these structures are neither the same in the learner’s mother tongue nor taught in the manner suitable and useful for the learner.

Fourthly, the uses and functions of English determiners, particularly fractions? two-thirds, one-fifth, multipliers? double, two times, articles? a, an the, demonstratives? this, these, that, those, genitives? Rafit’s, girls’ Socrates’, quantifiers? any, some, few, little, either, neither, much, several, and general ordinals? next, further, etc are difficult to the learner and certainly hamper his/her learning since these items are not properly taken into consideration in the appropriate and effective teaching material, method and classroom activity.

Fifthly, the functions and uses of English modals? shall, will, may, might, must, can, could, should, ought to, would, need, dare, have to, be to, etc in different tenses and different situations often pose difficulty to the Bengali speaking EFL learner as the learner’s mother tongue does not possess them and the teaching is not optimally helpful.

Sixthly, different types of verbs, such as transitive, intransitive, causative, linking, dynamic, state, etc as well as the tenses are often problematic to the Bengali speaking learner due to the differences between the L1 and the L2, and the ineffective teaching as well.

Seventhly, the use of prepositions, particularly after nouns, e.g. complaint against, confidence in, interest in, exception to, doubt about, etc, after verbs, e.g. aim at, believe in, arrive at/in, congratulate on, conform to, etc and after adjectives, e.g. angry with/at, afraid of, confident of, proud of, related to, deprived of, dependent on/upon/for, etc is a great problem to the Bengali speaking learner since he/she simply gets them by heart and hardly practises in authentic situations.

Eighthly, the Bengali speaking EFL learner suffers a lot of problems with subject-verb agreement, for example, in ‘Shoilee as well as her parents is/(are) going to London to spend the vacation.’ which receives inadequate treatment in the teaching.
Ninthly, the formation and use of passive sentences, e.g. ‘My pen is lost.’ and reported speeches ‘She said she would learn Bengali’ are difficult to the Bengali speaking learner as he/she is neither adequately and properly exposed to the rules nor offered opportunity of taking practice in some authentic situations.

To be brief, the learner confronts problems with almost all the grammatical categories of the English language since he/she is actually taught about the items, but not the items themselves (Richards and Rodgers 1986) in the way these are used in real life situations. Moreover, the difficulty of English sentence structures to Bengali speaking EFL learners can also considerably be attributed to the differences between the L1 and the L2.

Semantic and pragmatic problems
To perceive meanings of and to produce meanings by using English words/phrases and utterances/sentences in isolation or with reference to the context of situation often pose serious problems to the Bengali speaking EFL learner since he/she has to mostly depend on his/her mechanical memorization of meanings of isolated words as they are mainly non-contextually and unscientifically designed in the lesson and presented by the teacher in the classroom.

In other words, the learner evidently encounters semantic and pragmatic difficulty in learning vocabulary items and using them for effective communication in the real life situation. In the Bangladeshi classroom, the learner is usually instructed to learn English words/phrases including synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, homonyms, etc and their meanings mainly through non-contextualized ways, such as memorizing isolated words/phrases and their meanings, translating from the mother tongue to the target language, and vice versa. As a result, his/her stock of words/phrases is very limited, on the one hand, and on the other, he/she cannot effectively and efficiently use even the limited number of words/phrases that he/she retains in his/her day-to-day life communication.

Moreover, English phrasal verbs being constituted of ‘verb plus particle’, e.g. carryout, get into, lay by, look up, make up with, put up, set forth, take after, etc and idiomatic expressions, e.g. by the by, on the whole, cats and dogs, blue blood, a storm in a tea pot, etc having special meanings and functions often pose serious problems to the learner and substantially hamper his/her learning. In this connection, Roza (2005: 95) maintains -
Words that are different in form and represent meanings that are ‘strange’ to speakers of a particular native language, that is, meanings that represent a different grasp of reality, are classified as difficult. In English, ‘first floor’ is different in form from Bengali ‘prothom tala’ because European houses have an extra floor in the ground.
The difficulty in learning and using these items can be mainly attributed to their characteristic peculiarities as well as the learner’s entire dependence on his/her memorization and the non-contextualized reproduction. Besides, the consideration of literal meanings of these items may cause confusion and misunderstanding. For example, if an office peon is ordered to ‘put up’ (meaning ‘display’) a notice and he/she considers the literal meaning of ‘put and up’, he/she will simply put the notice in a higher position where others cannot easily reach and see the notice.

In short, semantic and pragmatic problems seriously hamper the learning of the target language by Bengali speaking EFL learner since he/she is exposed to a limited number of isolated words/phrases and utterances/sentences and not made accustomed to using them in performing actual speech acts in real life situations.

Conclusions and possible solutions

The foregoing explication, exemplification, analysis and interpretation have made it clear that the Bengali speaking EFL learner encounters phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic problems due to two fundamental causes? one resulting from the differences between the mother tongue and the target language and the other from the teaching process basically constituted of the syllabus, the teacher, the teaching method, material, equipment and testing. To address and lessen the problems, on the one hand, and to ensure the smooth and optimal learning of EFL on the other, proper measures have to be taken to reduce the causes to a substantial extent.

The difficulties created by the differences between the first language and the target language and/or by the mother tongue interference are natural and can be mitigated by only appropriately treating them in the teaching process which explicitly deals with linguistic elements. The learner’s needs and wants therefore have a conspicuously direct relation to syllabus construction, the teacher’s qualification and training, materials development, use of equipment and the testing instrument as Haque and Maniruzzaman (1994: 79) contend –

…the learners’ needs and wants tremendously control the whole package of teaching materials, aids and equipment and the application of teaching techniques and strategies, the employment of classroom activities and most importantly, the method of teaching and the construction of the syllabus.

That is, the teaching process has to take into account of what linguistic items the learner needs to learn when and why, how he/she can easily learn what he/she wants to learn, and how he/she can be used to using what he/she has learned in his/her real life situations.
It is inevitable that the syllabus has to contain the linguistic items the learner lacks and wants in the sequence in which he/she will best learn and internalize them in order to use them correctly, appropriately and spontaneously in his/her real life communication. Corder (1973: 296) postulates –

A finished syllabus is the overall plan for the learning process. It, too, must specify what components, or learning items, must be available, or learned by a certain time; what is the most efficient sequence in which they are learned; what items can be learned “simultaneously”; what items are available from stock, i.e. already known; and the whole process is determined by considerations of how long it takes to produce or learn a component or item. The process is under continual scrutiny by means of stock checks, or tests and examinations.

In other words, the syllabus first specifies the linguistic items according to the learner’s needs and wants. It then orders the items as per their difficulty level and priorities in communication. It is specially recommended that the items which pose serious problems to the learner should be given more emphasis and sufficient treatment in the syllabus.
The learner him/herself cannot automatically take the responsibility of the learning task. The teacher is then the right person to equip the learner with the capability of taking the responsibility of his/her own learning. And to do that, the teacher has to have adequate qualification coupled with proper and perfect training. More specifically, the teacher has to have a thorough knowledge of the linguistic elements and a solid command of all the skills of the target language, on the one hand, and adequate expertise in and experience of contrastive analysis, needs analysis, syllabus design, material construction, adaptation and adoption, teaching methods, use of equipment and testing on the other. To specify the teacher’s competence and role, Maniruzzaman (1998: 98) propounds -

Therefore, the teacher has to be appropriately and adequately trained in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pedagogy and the target language in order to meet what the individual learner demands in the classroom.

Thus the teacher has to have sufficient knowledge of his/her area as well as the learner’s psychological, socio-cultural and pragmatic factors and act as a facilitator of learning through his/her skills, methods, instruction, strategies, materials, equipment, and so on.
The materials to be constructed, adapted and/or adopted so as to teach the necessary and problematic aspects of EFL have to conform to the learner’s level, needs and interest. Firstly, they should be relevant and useful, and help the learner to feel at ease and develop confidence. Secondly, they should be friendly and related to the learner’s culture and real life activities. Thirdly, they should achieve impact through novelty of topics, illustrations and activities, variety of activities and sources, attractive presentation and appealing content, and thus have a noticeable effect on the learner (Tomlinson 1998). Fourthly, they should consider the learner’s individual factors, such as age, aptitude, attitude, motivation, personality, learning style, intelligence, and so forth. Fifthly, they should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement that stimulates both right and left brain activities. Sixthly, they should require and facilitate learner self-investment, and provide the learner with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes. And the learner should be provided with and exposed to the materials by exploiting attractive and useful means and equipment, such as well-written books, colourful posters, charts and handouts, audio-visual aids, OHP, and the like in a congenial and democratic classroom atmosphere.
The learner should be taught in the manner in which he/she best learns what he/she has to learn. Hence is the importance of choosing and employing the right teaching method encompassing relevant materials, proper teaching techniques and exciting classroom activities. Having come to the realization that each learner has his/her own style, personality, needs, and so forth, it follows that a single teaching method might not be appropriate and adequate for all the learners in the classroom. As a consequence, the recent tendency has been towards eclecticism, choosing materials, techniques and classroom activities from various sources (Maniruzzaman 1998).

With a view to achieving the end, both controlled practice and communicative practice as being complementary (Maniruzzaman 2004) can be exploited in the classroom. To conduct controlled practice in teaching the linguistic elements, such as phonemes, word formation, sentence construction, etc, activities can be organized rulewise and implemented in a process possessing different stages. For example, to teach some particular phonemes, first of all, we have to exhibit the phonemes and explain how are articulated by which speech organs. To give the explanation up to the learner’s satisfaction, we can even judiciously use the learner’s mother tongue (Maniruzzaman 2003) as Tang (2002: 41) puts forward –

… that limited and judicious use of the mother tongue in the English classroom does not reduce students’ exposure to English, but rather can assist in the teaching and learning processes.

Afterwards, interesting and appropriate drills (as in Baker 1981) can be exploited for helping the learner take sufficient practice. However, as controlled practice having mechanical drills may sometimes be boring and as this type of practice cannot ensure the learner’s communicative ability, we should involve the learner in some meaningful, purposive and communicative activities, such as role-play, pair work, group work, etc to make learning interesting and motivating.

Different aspects of the language teaching programme including the learner’s level and progress, the teacher’s efficiency, the effectiveness of the material and method, etc are assessed and determined by employing testing tools possessing reliability, validity and practicality. This is why, the testing instrument has to be constructed and employed in such a way that the learner will neither lose motivation nor suffer any phobia, and the purpose will be served satisfactorily. Before the commencement of the EFL teaching programme, a placement test can be given to sort out and put the learners into some homogeneous groups, or to place them at the stage of the teaching programme most appropriate to their abilities (Hughes 1989). Then achievement tests can be administered to accumulate evidence during, or at the end of, the programme in order to determine whether and where progress has been made in terms of the goals of learning (McNamara 2000). In addition, diagnostic tests can be used during the programme so as to review the progress of learning, efficiency of teaching and effectiveness of the materials and equipment, and hence to identify their strengths and weaknesses and bring modification to them if needed. Finally, a general proficiency test has to be given to ascertain how far the learner is able to use what he/she has learned to communicate in his/her real life situations.

Last but not least, syllabus designers, materials developers and test constructors play a vital role in the successful implementation of a second/foreign language teaching programme. Notwithstanding, to teach EFL especially at the primary, secondary and higher secondary levels in our country, foreign experts are often invited and appointed as syllabus designers, materials developers, and the like, but the outcome is usually disappointing for the policy makers, the teachers, the students and for the nation as a whole. This is because the experts have little experience of the learner’s needs, psychological factors, socio-economic condition and cultural aspects; and, as a result, while designing the syllabus, developing the material or constructing the test, they fail to meet the learner’s needs as well as the national demand. Therefore, it would be better to appoint local experts, members of the learner’s speech community and culture, as syllabus designers, materials developers and test constructors.

Acknowledgements

I am profoundly grateful to Professor Abu Taher Mojumder, my learned colleague and Chairman of the Department of English at BUBT, who gave generously of his time, experience and expertise whenever I needed. He proved again to me how helpful it is for a writer to have friends who listen, read, and give suggestions.

References

Baker, A. 1981. Ship or Sheep?: An Intermediate Pronunciation Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, E. 2001. Teaching by Principles. New York: Longman.
Corder, S. P. 1973. Introducing Applied Linguistics. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
Haque, S. M. F. and M. Maniruzzaman. 1994. ‘Needs analysis: problems and consideration’. Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 12: 79-88.
Hasan, A. D. 2000. ‘Problems of teaching English sound system’. ELT: Directions and Orientations. Rajshahi University: Department of English: 63 – 69.
Hornby, A. S. 2000.Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Sixth edition by Sally Wehmeier. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hughes, A. 1989. Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McNamara, T. 2000. Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maniruzzaman, M. 1998. ‘The SL/FL classroom and the individual learner ’. Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 14: 87-102.
Maniruzzaman, M. 2003. ‘The use of the mother tongue in the EFL classroom: learners’ reaction ’. Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 18: 43-58.
Maniruzzaman, M. 2004. ‘Teaching stress placement within the English word ’. Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 19: 55-65.
Palmer, F. 1983. Grammar. Harmodsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin.
Richards, J. C. and T. Rodgers. 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University press.
Richards, J., J. Platt and H. Weber. 1985. Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics. England: Longman Group Limited.
Roach, P. 2000. English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roza, G. M. 2005. ‘Problems of learners’ difficulties in acquisition of Bengali as a foreign language’. The Bangla Academy Journal 2-1: 90 – 104.
Tang, J. 2002. ‘Using L1 in the English classroom’. English Teaching Forum, 40, 1: 36-43.
Tomlinson, B. 1998. Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

About the author

Dr. M. Maniruzzaman, MA in English Language and PhD in Applied Linguistics & ELT, is currently Associate Professor in the Department of English, Jahangirnagar University, interested in phonetics, phonology, syntax, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, teaching methodologies, syllabus/materials design, and testing, and published 41 books and papers.

How do you get into TEFL?

david — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:20:03 +0000

By TEFLTrainingWorld.com

TEFL – what does it mean? TEFL simply means Teaching English as a Foreign Language. This acronym describes everything to do with teaching English as a foreign language – the industry, the courses and qualifications and the profession.

Different types of people approach TEFL at different points in their lives. Some are on gap years, others on career breaks, others as a permanent career and yet others who see it as means to earn money and travel the world.

A lot of the people who start out doing TEFL on gap years or career breaks end up doing it permanently.

The next question must be ‘How do I become a TEFL teacher?’

How do I become a TEFL teacher?

The days of just turning up in a foreign country and landing a TEFL job on the strength of being able to speak English are slowly becoming a thing of the past. As the market has matured, the need for qualifications has become essential.

Before you consider taking a TEFL course you might want to think about where you are going to teach. Different countries have different rules regarding minimum qualifications of teachers. Some countries accept just a TEFL qualification while other countries will only accept a TEFL qualification with a degree. Qualifications may differ depending on the type of school you are going to work in, an International school may require a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education).

Choosing a TEFL course

There are hundreds of different courses to choose from, ranging from 4 week full-time courses to short weekend courses to online courses. The choice is overwhelming!

Do some research before choosing your TEFL course. If you know where you are going to teach, check what qualifications are needed and accepted in the country (or countries) you are going to.

Let’s have a look at some of the different types of courses on offer.

4 week full-time courses

The most well-known courses available fall into this category: the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) and the Trinity CertTESOL (Trinity Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). These courses are generally offered full-time over a four week period (there are also options to take these courses part-time, for example at weekends, over a longer time period).

If you take one of the above mentioned courses, you fill find that they are recognised worldwide and nearly all language schools would employ you on the strength of one of these qualifications.

There are other four week courses available with a similar structure and syllabus. As long as these courses are 120 hours long and contain six hours of teaching practice, then they will probably secure you work in most language schools.

A typical day on a training courses of this nature would look something like this:

Morning session 1 – input (language analysis), break,

Morning session 2 – input (phonology), lunch, afternoon session 1 – teaching practice, break, afternoon session 2 – feedback.

The rest of the day would be spent lesson planning or completing written assignments.

Four week courses are intensive (hard work) but, if you are willing to put in the effort, worth it.

Short courses

If for any reason you can’t take a four week course, then a shorter course might be the option for you.

People choose the shorter courses for a number of reasons but primarily because of the shorter duration (usually a weekend, 2 or 3 days long or a week) and the cheaper cost. Although in the short term the savings on time and money might seem like a good idea, if you are going to teach for any length of time you will eventually have to take one of the longer courses.

Shorter courses are a great introduction to TEFL and some even give you some form of teaching practice. Generally, you can’t fail these courses but will receive a certificate of completion which can be used in making job applications.

If you are planning to use TEFL as a means to keep travelling, then a shorter course might be the one for you.

Online courses

A third option would be an online TEFL course. These courses can give you an introduction to TEFL. Online TEFL courses are generally the cheapest way of getting a TEFL qualification and usually you can complete them without giving up your current job.

The downside is that online courses don’t offer any real classroom experience (no teaching practice and no observation of other teachers). Online courses might not be recognised in the country or countries you are going to teach in.

Online courses can offer modules on areas like teaching English to young learners and teaching business English. If you plan to specialize in any of these areas, then an online course might be a good starting point.

Starting points

Search for information on TEFL courses:

www.cambridge-efl.org

www.trinitycollege.co.uk

www.cactusefl.com

About the Author

TEFLTrainingWorld.com is dedicated to getting those interested in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) the information they need to know.

Teaching EFL Pronunciation: Why, What and How?

david — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:56:40 +0000

Introduction

Pronunciation is an integrated and integral part of second/foreign language learning since it directly affects learners’ communicative competence as well as performance to a substantial extent. Notwithstanding, the teaching of EFL pronunciation has received varied treatment from having no room in the synthetic syllabus and the grammar-translation method to being the cardinal focus in the situational syllabus and the audio-lingual method in which emphasis is put on the traditional notions of pronunciation, minimal pairs, drills and mini-conversations. And with the advent of communicative language teaching in the late 1960s (Richards and Rodgers, 1986), the role of pronunciation in the EFL curriculum started facing questions: whether the focus of the programmes and the instructional methods were effective or not. Teaching pronunciation until then was ‘viewed as meaningless non-communicative drill-and-exercise gambits’ (Morley, 1991: 485-6). However, with a shift from specific linguistic competencies to broader communicative competencies as goals for both the teacher and the learner (Morley, 1991), the need for the integration of pronunciation with oral communication is clearly realized.

Until very recently, the teaching of English as a foreign language in many territories of the world including Bangladesh would give primary emphasis on the reading and writing skills and secondary and/or little emphasis on listening and speaking skills. But, particularly in Bangladesh, since the introduction of communicative language teaching a few years back to different levels of education, especially primary, secondary and higher secondary levels where English is taught as a compulsory subject, the listening and speaking skills have started enjoying some sort of status alongside the reading and writing skills, although the former ones are neither seriously taught nor formally tested. That is, it is now evidently understood that the learner’s communicative competence as well as performance is dependent on his/her command of all the basic skills of the target language encompassing listening and speaking. Though pronunciation is overlooked in the syllabus, material and even classroom activities, it does have an inseparable link to communication through listening and speaking (Gilbert, 1984, Celce-Muria, 1987).

Both as a learner and a teacher-researcher of English as a foreign language, I am aware of the syllabuses, materials and classroom activities at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels in Bangladesh and in many other EFL settings as well, which unfortunately scarcely have any room for pronunciation teaching. Therefore, based on my experience and a number of existing studies in varied EFL settings, this paper examines and addresses four major issues concerning teaching EFL pronunciation to learners at different levels.

Firstly, I have explored and uncovered the reasons for overlooking teaching pronunciation.

Secondly, I have endeavoured to justify the teaching of pronunciation together with the other skills of the target language.

Thirdly, I have tried to ascertain a level or variety and the aspects of EFL pronunciation that should be taught.

Finally, I have discussed some pronunciation teaching approaches and advocated a variety of techniques/ activities for teaching EFL pronunciation in the classroom.

Search for more articles on pronunciation

Why is EFL pronunciation teaching ignored?

Teaching English pronunciation is still surprisingly and shockingly neglected and/or ignored in many EFL settings including Bangladesh, although the listening and speaking skills are now somewhat included in the syllabus and taught to equip the learner with adequate communicative competence. At the primary, secondary and tertiary level in Bangladesh, an English pronunciation course or English pronunciation as a component in the English course is hardly given any considerable place at all. In China, an English phonetics course is simply left to chance or given no room (Cheng, 1998). As in Bangladesh, some teachers in Taiwan might argue that English pronunciation is not important at all, for very few tests would require students to show abilities related to pronunciation or speaking (Lin, Fan and Chen, 1995). Similarly, English pronunciation is arbitrarily overlooked in Thailand (Wei and Zhou, 2002). In Mexico, pronunciation is described as “the Cinderella of language teaching”; that means an often low level of emphasis is placed on this very important language skill (Dalton, 2002). It is then conspicuous that teaching EFL pronunciation has little room in the syllabus, material and classroom. But why?

Though very few studies are found to have been carried out to reveal the reasons for neglecting the teaching of EFL pronunciation, based on my experience as a learner as well as a teacher-researcher of English as a foreign language, I would endeavour to disclose the secrets of the peripheral position of EFL pronunciation.

Firstly, the absence or exclusion of EFL pronunciation from the curriculum/ syllabus is indicative of the fact that the curriculum/ syllabus designer has deliberately or ignorantly overlooked its significance. Hence, the curriculum/ syllabus designer’s qualifications, expertise and honesty could be seriously questioned.

Secondly, the locally produced materials and/or the imported overseas ones used to teach/ learn EFL do not usually embody pronunciation components and lessons. This indicates that the local materials developers are either unaware of the importance of pronunciation or not capable of designing pronunciation materials or just blindly confined to the syllabus devoid of pronunciation components. Besides, the overseas materials incorporating no pronunciation tips and lessons attract our teachers and others concerned because very many of them do not have any formal and adequate training in English phonetics and phonology as well as EFL pronunciation teaching.

Thirdly, as most teachers do not have useful strategies or techniques for teaching EFL pronunciation and as they do not know what strategies are appropriate when they meet a specific problem, they simply avoid pronunciation instruction in the classroom by employing shrewd tricks. Dalton (2002) rightly says:

We are comfortable teaching reading, writing, listening and to a degree, general oral skills, but when it comes to pronunciation we often lack the basic knowledge of articulatory phonetics (not difficult to acquire) to offer our students anything more than rudimentary (and often unhelpful) advice such as, ‘it sounds like this: uuuh.

Finally, it is a fact that a substantial number of persons (of course more than fifty percent in Bangladesh) currently working as English curriculum/ syllabus designers, materials developers, educators, classroom teachers and test writers/ question setters in EFL settings have either literature background or insufficient training in ELT and hence tactfully avoid and/or consciously exclude EFL pronunciation items from the syllabus, lessons from the material and instruction from the classroom activities.

Why should EFL pronunciation be taught?

The usefulness of teaching second/foreign language pronunciation is a widely debated issue in the language teaching world. Purcell and Suter (1980:286) hold that pronunciation practice in the class has little effect on the learner’s pronunciation skills and, moreover ‘that the attainment of accurate pronunciation in a second language is a matter substantially beyond the control of educators’. Contrariwise, Pennington (1989) questions the validity of Purcell and Suter’s findings, and states that there is no firm basis for asserting categorically that pronunciation is not teachable or it is not worth spending time on teaching pronunciation. However, Stern (1992: 112) maintains ‘there is no convincing empirical evidence which could help us sort out the various positions on the merits of pronunciation training’.

Nonetheless, pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when a person is speaking. Let us look at an anecdote:

Whenever I spoke to a person in America, they kept asking me “What? What?”. I would repeat my sentence again and again. Finally they would say “Ah-ha!” and then say my sentence, using exactly my words! It was very humiliating. I knew my words and grammar were good, but nobody would understand me, just because of my pronunciation (Antimoon.com).

Hence, Gilbert (1995: 1) believes that the skills of listening comprehension and pronunciation are interdependent, and contends ‘if they (learners) cannot hear well, they are cut off from language. If they (learners) cannot be understood easily, they are cut off from conversation with native speakers.” Likewise, Nooteboom (1983) suggests that speech production is affected by speech perception, and stresses the need of pronunciation in both listening and speaking. Wong (1987) points out that even when the non-native speakers’ vocabulary and grammar are excellent, if their pronunciation falls below a certain threshold level, they are unable to communicate efficiently and effectively. Tench (1981:1) rightly maintains-

Pronunciation is not an optional extra for the language learner, any more than grammar, vocabulary or any other aspect of language is. If a learner’s general aim is to talk intelligibly to others in another language, a reasonable pronunciation in important.

Varonis and Gass (1982) examine the factors affecting listening comprehension in native speakers of English exposed to L2 accents, and conclude that grammar and pronunciation interact to influence intelligibility.

Moreover, Wong (1993) argues that the importance of pronunciation is even more distinct when the connection between pronunciation and listening comprehension is taken into account. Wong (1993) also demonstrates that a lack of knowledge of pronunciation could even affect learners’ reading and spelling. According to Baker (1992), pronunciation is very important and learners should pay close attention to pronunciation as early as possible. Otherwise, the result will be that advanced learners find that they can improve all aspects of their proficiency in English except their pronunciation, and mistakes which have been repeated for years are impossible to eradicate. Scarcella and Oxford (1994) similarly postulate that pronunciation should be taught in all second (/foreign) language classes through a variety of activities. With the emphasis on meaningful communication and Morley’s (1991: 488) premise, that ‘intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communication competence’, teachers should include pronunciation in their courses and expect their learners to do well in them.

Therefore, we should countenance what Morley (1991) puts forward: The question is not whether pronunciation should be taught, but instead what should be taught in a pronunciation class and how it should be taught.

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What should be taught?

The question ‘What should be taught?’ encompasses two different points: (a) the level, variety or accent of EFL pronunciation and (b) the aspects, components or features of EFL pronunciation.

The level, variety or accent of EFL pronunciation

It has long been believed and accepted that ESL/EFL learners have to try to get as close as possible in their pronunciation to one of the dominant native-speaker accents, such as Received Pronunciation (RP), the USA equivalent. However, the time covering the last fifteen years or so with the trend of globalization has brought about such a significant change in the role of the English language throughout the world that it is unavoidable to reexamine and rethink this situation. English is currently the world’s most widely used and principal international language, as a result of which there are now more exchanges between non-native speakers of English than between non-native speakers and native speakers. It is, moreover, predictable that in the near future at least this situation is not going to change in favour of the minority of native speakers, and so suddenly the hegemony of their specific accents is under fire (Walker, 2001). Macaulay (1988) and Crystal (1995) also question the idea of a native-speaker accent as a model or norm for ESL/EFL learners.

What accent of English should the learner be exposed to then? Kenworthy (1987) puts forward the concept of “comfortableintelligibility’ as a suitable goal for the majority of learners. Morley (1991: 496) supports Kenworthy’s view and advocates that the goal of pronunciation should be changed from the attainment of ‘perfect’ pronunciation to the more realistic goals of developing functional intelligibility, communicability, increased self-confidence, the development of speech monitoring abilities and speech modification strategies for use beyond the classroom. The overall aim of these goals is for the learner to develop awareness and monitoring skills that will allow learning opportunities outside the classroom environment. Robertson (2003:4) quotes Morley (1991) in saying that ‘intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence’.

Influenced by both the strands stated above, I am in favour of both a dominant native-speaker ascent, such as BBC English or standard American accent and an intelligible accent, but in a practical, convenient and useful manner. I, of course, advocate an intelligible accent; but to acquire that the learner has to be exposed to appropriate and adequate input being constituted of a standard or dominant accent, for instance, the Queen’s English, or a locally produced variety like Indian Accent, never an amalgamation of two or more dominant accents. However, the ultimate target of both the teaching and the learning of EFL pronunciation would be an intelligible accent.

The aspects, components or features of EFL pronunciation

EFL pronunciation teaching should cover both the segmentals and the suprasegmentals as well as the training of the speech organs, such as lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, tongue, vocal folds, ears, etc.

The segmentals embody vowel and consonant sounds, preferably phonemes, as well as syllables. A phoneme is a set of similar sounds showing meaning differences or differentiating between words. And a syllable consists of a vowel as a compulsory element and one or more consonants at the onset and/or in the termination as optional elements, which is pronounced with a single contraction of the lungs. The English language has twenty vowel phonemes (twelve monophthongs and eight diphthongs) and twenty four consonant phonemes. While the vowels are articulated without any obstacle in the vocal tract, the consonants are produced with some blockage of the air passage. The treatment of the segmentals basically includes sound contrast in words, pronunciation of vowel and consonant phonemes. The phonemes which are not available in the learner’s mother tongue and problematic to him/her should receive special treatment in the teaching material and methodology and sufficient room in the learner’s practice.

The suprasegmentals are comprised of stress in words and connected speech, rhythm, pitch, loudness, length, quality, tone and intonation that play an essential and natural role in English speech production and perception. As the Bengali speaking learner’s mother tongue is syllable timed whereas English is stress timed, he/she inevitably finds mastering EFL pronunciation a very daunting task (Bell, 1996). Hence, the differences in suprasegmentals between the learner’s mother tongue and the target language are momentous topics that he/she should not only be aware of but should make a conscious effort to study and focus on (Thompson and Gaddes, 2005).

Moreover, the learner should be helped to retrain his/her speech organs which have so long been trained naturally and used to articulate the sounds in his/her L1. This tremendously helps him/her to comfortably and sufficiently use his/her articulators so as to produce the sounds of the target language in an intelligible manner.

How can EFL pronunciation be taught?

The question ‘How can EFL pronunciation be taught?’ comprises axiomatic, procedural and implemetational issues related to pronunciation teaching: teaching approaches and classroom techniques/activities.

Teaching approaches

In recent years, with the renewed professional support to enable learners to be effective and efficient speakers of English as an L2, there has been an incessant progress to bring pronunciation back on stage since, as a large number of prominent theorists and researchers uncover, it should be given preferential treatment. However, researchers and teachers are not yet completely convinced of which models, goals, approaches and methodology are more helpful for leaning and teaching pronunciation alike.

To have a look at the various approaches to pronunciation teaching, the ‘bottom-up approach’ begins with the articulation of individual sounds or phonemes and works up towards stress, rhythm, tone and intonation. On the other hand, the ‘top-down approach’ starts with patterns of intonation and brings separate sounds or phonemes into sharper focus as and when required. According to Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994), the former is based on the idea that if the segmentals are taught first, the suprasegmentals will subsequently be acquired without the need of formal instruction whereas the latter rests on the assumption that once the suprasegmentals features are in place, the necessary segmental discriminations will follow accordingly. The bottom-up approach and the top-down approach respectively correspond to the traditional approach and the research-based approach propounded by Scarcella and Oxford (1994). While the traditional approach is concerned with isolated sounds and native like pronunciation, the research-based approach deals with suprasegmental features and targets at communication.

However, based on existing studies, the top-down or research approach appears to be more effective in teaching L2 pronunciation. Jenkins (2002) maintains that starting holistically from voice quality and then moving to work on segmentals imply that the learner is pushed to adapt and use the target language articulatory settings with their articulators still geared towards the pronunciation of the sounds of his/her mother tongue. That is, teaching EFL pronunciation should commence from the suprasegmentals that are more indispensable and contribute more to intelligibility and accent than segmentals do.

Classroom techniques/activities

Due to pedagogical reasons, it might be helpful to think about the teachability-learnability scale as introduced by Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) which suggests that there are certain aspects of the English pronunciation which appear to be easily taught; namely, phonemes, stress while others, such as intonation, are extremely dependent on individual circumstances and thus practically impossible to separate out for direct teaching. Therefore, it could then be sensible to think that instead of pushing learners to strive for perfect pronunciation, a focus on pedagogic attention to those items which are teachable and learnable and also essential in terms of intelligible pronunciation appears to be a more reasonable goal. Based on the exploration and critical analysis of the different approaches to teaching pronunciation and what seems to be teachable and learnable for EFL classroom settings, I will now propose ten techniques and activities that, according to influential pronunciation researchers (e.g. Morley, 1991, Scarcella and Oxford, 1994, Fraser, 1999, Thompson, Taylor and Gray, 2001) and my own experience, appear to be useful for learners and teachers alike:

a. Utilization of known sounds: In the early stage of learning, the learner, especially the young one can be helped to compare the sounds of the target language with those of his/her mother tongue. This eventually helps the learner produce the EFL sound pattern to a considerable extent.

b. Explanation: Explanation of how to produce sounds or use pronunciation patterns appropriately should be kept to a minimum through directions about what to do with the vocal organs can help some young and adult EFL learners in some circumstances.

c. Communication activities: The teacher can design communicative tasks, such as dialogues or mini-conversations for both young and adult EFL learners according to their linguistic level to practise particular sounds, especially those which are not available in their mother tongue, for example, / I ?: f v ? ? ð/in case of Bengali speaking learners. Besides, the learner can be taught some useful communication strategies, such as retrieval strategies, rehearsal strategies, cover strategies which will help him/her give the impression that his/her pronunciation is better than it really is (Oxford, 2000).

d. Written versions of oral presentations: At the more advanced levels, learners can be given strategies for analyzing the written versions of their oral presentations. This helps them detect, identify and correct errors or mistakes committed in their oral presentations.

e. Modelling and individual correction: In this technique, the teacher reports the results of analyses of learner speech sample individually. The young or adult learner gets feedback from the analyses and stop repeating previous errors or mistakes.

f. Incorporation of novel elements: The instructor can add novel pronunciation elements, such as sounds, stress placement, tones to the old ones with the use of directions. This helps both the young and the adult learner get his/her EFL pronunciation further improved.

g. Tutorial sessions and self-study: Tutorial sessions commence with a diagnostic analysis of each learner’s spoken English, and an individualized programme is designed for each learner. This technique can be used for both young and adult learners

h. Self-monitoring and self-correction: Self-monitoring is the conscious action of listening to one’s own speech in order to find out errors and mistakes. This action is followed by self-correction standing for the process of fixing one’s errors and mistakes after they have occurred by repeating the word or phrase correctly. By teaching our adult learners to self-monitor and self-correct, we enable them to make their learning of EFL pronunciation more personal, more meaningful and more effective.

i. Computer-assisted language learning: Computer-assisted language learning or CALL can be an important tool when attempting to help the learner become more autonomous by allowing him/her to hear his/her own errors and mistakes and see both segmental and suprasegmental graphic representations. CALL benefits the learner by letting him/her study at his/her own pace in a semi-private environment as well as allowing him/her to build profiles that enable the teacher to monitor the learner’s improvement in EFL pronunciation. In addition, the teacher can exploit visual displays of speech patterns to teach intonation, stress and phonemes to individuals and small groups of learners. This tool can be used for both young and adult learners, but in an adjusted manner.

j. Reading aloud: The learner can be given a piece of spoken text to read out loudly. Here the teacher’s job is to identify pronunciation the errors and mistakes made by the learner, and then give feedback that will help the learner improve his/her EFL pronunciation.

Finally, these classroom techniques/activities for teaching EFL pronunciation are in no way exhaustive, but substantially useful when they are used on the basis of feasibility and suitability in a particular environment having particular learners. Moreover, according to Morley (1991: 507), the teacher can perform the role of a ‘speech coach’ or ‘pronunciation coach’ who, rather than just correcting the learner’s errors and mistakes, supplies information, gives models, offers cues, suggestions and constructive feedback about the performance, sets high standards, provides a wide variety of practice opportunities, and overall supports and encourages the learner.

Conclusion

It is evident that our teachers, syllabus designers, materials developers and policy makers consciously or indifferently avoid pronunciation teaching/learning because of diverse limitations indicating the lack of qualifications and expertise of the persons concerned.

However, EFL pronunciation should be viewed in the same light as the other facets and skills of the English language, such as vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, and so on, since it is a crucial part of communication, especially through listening and speaking. Therefore, pronunciation components have to be incorporated in the materials, classroom activities and testing tools; and the teachers have to be trained in EFL pronunciation as well as EFL pronunciation teaching.

The teaching of EFL pronunciation has to aim at intelligible pronunciation considered as an essential component of communicative competence (Morley, 1991). And to help the learner acquire intelligible pronunciation, he/she can be exposed to a model, such as BBC English, Standard American English, or a locally produced variety like Indian Accent through some suitable and effective techniques/activities presented above.

References

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About the author

Teaching Listening as an English Language Skill

david — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:21:04 +0000

Introduction:

English as a foreign language has the greatest motion in Bangladesh. Status of English as the “library language” and the increased “international inter-dependence” are the two reasons of this which led to a greater focus on face-to-face language usage crossing the margin of pen and paper exercise. As the decline of Grammar-Translation method in 1960s proved that language learning might not be limited to “reading and writing” or ‘literacy’, the provisional continuation of Direct Method confirmed too that ‘listening and speaking’ that is ‘oracy’ is not all that is language. Language must be taught in an integrative way where all four skills are focused.

But most often, even in the modern methods of SL teaching, quite surprisingly, listening skill is ignored in a way or another! David Nunan (1997) commented that listening is the “Cinderella Skill” which is overlooked by its elder sister “speaking” in SL learning. As ‘to expertise the productive skills like speaking and writing’ has become the standard of the knowledge of second language, listening and reading have been turned to be the secondary ones. Besides, in our schools, colleges and even in the higher levels, instructors direct how to read and write, not how to speak or listen. It is believed that these would be mastered by the learners automatically. Although listening had a boost up in 1960s (direct method) and in 1980s (Krashen’s input hypothesis, 1981; James Asher’s Total physical response, 1988 and Gillian Brown, 1988), it turned a fashion in most cases!

In this article, I have tried to show how listening helps EFL learners to develop language skill. Despite the fact that it is not a research article, a small scale survey has been done at Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh in order to demonstrate that listening practice is insisted by the learners and they find it functional in language learning.

What is listening?

Listening is a skill in a sense that it’s a related but distinct process than hearing which involves merely perceiving sound in a passive way while listening occupies an active and immediate analysis of the streams of sounds. This correlation is like that between seeing and reading. Seeing is a very ordinary and passive state while reading is a focused process requiring reader’s instrumental approach. Listening has a “volitional component”. Tomatis’ (2007) view is, while listening; the desire to listen, as well as the capability to listen (comprehension) must be present with the listener for the successful recognition and analysis of the sound.

What ‘listening’ really means is ‘listening and understanding what we hear at the same time’. So, two concurrent actions are demanded to take place in this process. Besides, according to Mecheal Rost (1991), listening comprises some component skills which are:

• discriminating between sounds,
• recognizing words,
• identifying grammatical groupings of words,
• identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning,
• connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues,
• using background knowledge to predict and later to confirm meaning and recalling important words and ides.

As McDonough and Shaw ( 1993) and Rost (1991) explain that a listener as a processor of language has to go through three processes using three types of skills:

a. Processing sound/ Perception skills:

As the complete perception doesn’t emerge from only the source of sound, listeners segment the stream of sound and detect word boundaries, contracted forms, vocabulary, sentence and clause boundaries, stress on longer words and effect on the rest of the words, the significance of intonation and other language-related features, changes in pitch, tone and speed of delivery, word order pattern, grammatical word classes, key words, basic syntactic patterns, cohesive devices etc.

b. Processing meaning/ Analysis skills:

It’s a very important stage in the sense, as researches show, that syntax is lost to memory within a very short time whereas meaning is retained for much longer. Richards (1985:191) says that, ‘memory works with propositions, not with sentences’. While listening, listeners categorize the received speech into meaningful sections, identify redundant material, keep hold of chunks of the sentences, think ahead and use language data to anticipate what a speaker may be going to say, accumulate information in the memory by organizing them and avoid too much immediate detail.

c. Processing knowledge and context/ Synthesis skills:

Here, ‘context’ refers to physical setting, the number of listener and speakers, their roles and their relationship to each other while ‘linguistic knowledge’ refers to their knowledge of the target language brought to the listening experience. Every context has its individual frame of reference, social attitude and topics. So, members of a particular culture have particular rules of spoken behavior and particular topic which instigate particular understanding. Listening is thought as ‘interplay’ between language and brain which requires the “activation of contextual information and previous knowledge” where listeners guess, organize and confirm meaning from the context.

However, none of these micro-skills is either used or effective in isolation or is called listening. Successful listening refers to ‘the integration of these component skills’ and listening is nothing but the ‘coordination of the component skills’.

Nature of listening as a skill:

Besides the division of the skills as ‘receptive’ and ‘productive’, another subdivision focuses on ‘one-way reception’ and ‘interactive reception’ in this age of active learning. Reading and writing are one-way skills where learners don’t get direct feedback. But in speaking and listening, learners may have their understanding and reproduction checked instantly. Thus active and self-learning takes place.

Moreover, there is a traditional labeling for reading and listening as “passive” skills. But linguists believe that a listener is involved in guessing, anticipating, checking, interpreting, interacting and organizing by associating and accommodating their prior knowledge of meaning and form. Rost (1990) thinks, listeners “co-author” the discourse and they construct it by their responses.

Even as a receptive skill, listening differs greatly with reading as reading materials are printed and permanent enough where the learners are required to interact with the next sentence using the knowledge of the previous one while listening involves continuous material presentation where they have to respond to the immediate expression. From the view point of “product” or “process”, listening is more a process than a product which instantly shapes the understanding and utterances of the learners.

Why listening?

No doubt, listening is the most common communicative activity in daily life. according to Morley (1991, p.82), “We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.”

So, listening, as a skill, is assuming more and more weight in SL or FL classrooms than ever before. Rost (1994, p. 141-142), points out, “listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin. Listening is thus fundamental to speaking.”

Limited listening input fails to promote face-to-face communication by shaping their social development, confidence and self-image. Adequate listening practice could give the learners essential contact with handy input that might trigger their utterances. Teacher talk or peer- interaction might be the options for this. But according to Rod Ellis (1990), it’s not only the exposure to L2 that is enough, and learners need L2 data suited to the accurate stage of their development. If the learners don’t have “optimal” exposure in the target language, they can’t transmit the “comprehensible input” into “intake” through “production strategies” where learners attempt to use L2 knowledge. Krashen’s (1981) view is that “acquisition” takes place as a result of the learner having understood input that is a little beyond the current level of his competence that is ‘the i+1 level’. We must take into account that the level of listening input must be higher than the level of language production of the target learners. So, language teaching pedagogy must incorporate academic and designed listening practice.
Obviously listening influences other skills. A theory of Tomatis shows that “the quality of an individual’s listening ability will affect the quality of both their spoken and written language development”. He also views that if the sounds of the target language are presented to the learners before presenting them in written form, the ease with which they integrate those sound will be reflected in their understanding and production of the language. However, a pre-exposure or a following-exposure to listening input is a must on the part of a learner.

It is widely known that individual’s ability to process and analyze the sounds influence their ability to translate the sounds of language into their written form. We know, reading is not only a visual process rather involves the rapid analysis of letters and words that represents sounds and it is sound which gives the words meaning. A learner can decode the graphic images or recognize their meaning efficiently if their auditory processing skills are well developed. In a similar way, sounds are translated into graphic form in writing and if the sounds are poorly integrated their graphic representation will be hampered and problems like spelling mistakes may arise. So, we see the foundation on which reading and writing skills are built is spoken language again listening is the fundamental to spoken language as without listening anything we can’t reproduce or reply.

In a learner-centered approach, it is deducted that listening provides the learners with the following features of the target language:

• How the language is organized
• How native speakers use the language
• How to communicate in the language

Strategies for Listening:

Two types of strategies for listening have been in practice. They are defined so according to the ways of processing the text while listening:

a. In Bottom up processing, like reading, learners utilize their linguistic knowledge to identify linguistic elements in an order from the smallest linguistic unit like phonemes (bottom) to the largest one like complete texts (top). They link the smaller units of the language together to form the larger parts and it’s a linear process where meaning is derived automatically at the last stage. It is absolutely “text based” process where learners rely on the sounds, words and grammar in the message in order to create meaning.

b. Top- down interpretation, on the other hand, requires learners to go to the listening with their prior knowledge of topic, context, and type of text as well as knowledge of language to reconstruct the meaning using the sounds as clues. “This back ground knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next.”

It is assumed that bottom up process is applied while practicing minimal pairs, taking pronunciation tests, listening for specific details, recognizing cognates and word-order pattern but top-down interpretation is used in the activities like listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, and summarizing where learners relate what they know and what they hear through listening comprehension.

According to the types of situation where the understanding takes place, listening is divided into:

a. Reciprocal or interactive Listening where the listener is required to take part in the interaction and alternately listens and speaks. Interactive listening situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls in which listener has a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from conversation partner.

b. Non-reciprocal or non-interactive Listening where the listener is engaged in listening passively to a monologue or speech or even conversation. Some non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures etc. and here listener usually doesn’t have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition.

We believe, this type of listening is not totally non- interactive too. The interaction takes place here is the ‘cognitive’ one where students respond through understanding and creating the meaning. On the other hand, this might be turn to semi- reciprocal if the instructor makes them responding while checking their understanding through question-answer or discussion and clarification in the class or lab.

Methodology:

Methods applied for the survey included questionnaire and group interviews taken with 40 students who attend listening classes in the language lab regularly and it has been observed by the author that they do better in speaking and reading than others. The subjects are the students of 1st year 1st term from the department of Pharmacy and CSTE, ACCT, and FIMS. Although they are really not beginners and have learnt English at their secondary and higher secondary level, they have no exposure to authentic English speaking and listening. Here they have been practicing listening in a language lab using headphone using audio and video for three months. The purpose of the survey was convincingly explained to them and they took 30 minutes to think on the questions and to answer them.

Findings:

30 students claim that listening practice has raised their confidence by throwing away their fear, hesitations, inertia and shyness that they had before to speak in English.

• All of the 40 students have told that watching video clippings and movie while listening enables to identify the right responses, styles, expressions, behaviors, attitudes and emotions in particular situations through concentrating on gesture, body language, non- linguistic cues, planning utterances, adjacency pairs, turn-taking, repairing utterances by asking for repetition, pre-closing and closing.
• 5 students have said that it has quickened their planning to respond as they listen to faster speaking than their own.
• 35 students opine that exposure to naturally spoken input by native speakers gives them practical experience of using language in target situations.
• 20 students who are highly motivated have found a change in their speaking style.
• 36 students think that listening to dialogues and conversation enriches their vocabulary and teaches how to use them appropriately.
• 10 students have found that intensive listening practice helps to remember the syntactic structures, spelling, accent and intonation.
• 19 students mention about learning of the cultures, feelings, reactions, trend and customs of the English speaking people that helps them feel motivated (integrative) to speak English.
• All of the 40 students opine that watching movie or video clippings draws more attention during the class and add to their learning.
• All of the 40 students believe that interaction with teachers for assessment or other purposes while listening help them greatly to remove confusion and use their newly gained knowledge immediately and make it regular in use.

Teaching listening:

Unfortunately, as I find a very diminutive effort in teaching listening in our country, this discussion may appear too much redundant to read to the language teachers! What we find in a traditional EFL classroom? Most of the classes complete their Language course without practice listening even for a day! Very few ELT trained teachers, now-a-days, in line with the flow of CLT; efforts for listening practice consisted of teacher reading aloud a written text slowly, once or more so that it is understood and than asking some comprehension questions. It seems the objective here is ‘to present the written language in an alternative way’ where characteristics of naturally spoken language is totally absent and listening practice is farther beyond. If the materials used for listening class comply with that in speaking class, it will, certainly, give a fully fledged input to the learners.

Teaching listening requires a bit more on the part of the teacher than that of the learners. One of the main principle of teaching listening, as I believe, should be “ Language material intended to used for training listening comprehension should never be presented visually first.” Good listening lessons go beyond the main listening task itself with related activities before and after the listening. The format may be like the following:

a. Pre-listening Stage: Some activities before listening may serve as preparation or warm-up for listening in several ways. These function as ‘reference’ and ‘framework’ by giving prior knowledge of listening activities. Some recommended per-listening activities include:

a. Introducing the topic and assessing their background knowledge of the topic or content of the material through commenting on a picture or photograph.
b. Activating their existing knowledge through discussion. Reading through comprehension questions in advance, working out own opinion on a topic, predicting content from the title etc. can be done.
c. Clarifying any necessary contextual information and vocabulary to comprehend the text. In this regard showing pictures maps or graphs and may be helpful.
d. Informing them of the type of text, their role, purposes of the listening etc. A short reading passage on a similar topic may help them.
b. While-Listening Stage: activities in this stage must follow the learners’ specific needs, instructional goal, listening purposes and learners’ proficiency level. While listening activities directly relate to the text and listeners are asked to do these during or immediately after listening.

. Some specific cares are required in designing while-listening activities. These are:

a. If the students are asked to give written information after listening, they should have chance to listen the text more than once which makes it easier for them to keep concentration while listening with specific purposes.
b. Writing activities should be to a minimum. As comprehension is the prime target, writing would make the listening more demanding. are samples of this.
c. Global activities like getting the main idea, topic, setting, summary that focus on the content and forms of the text should be given more so that listeners are guided through the text. Listening for the gist is such an activity.
d. More questions should be set up in order to focus student’s attention on the crucial elements that might help to comprehend the text. Following the rout on a map or searching for specific clues to meaning, or identify description of the given pictures might be appropriate here.
e. Attaching predicting activities before listening so that students can monitor their comprehension as they listen. Listening with visuals may serve here.
f. Giving immediate feedback to make the students examine their responses and how it was. Checking off items in a list, distinguishing between formal and informal registers conducted by teacher are examples here.

Listening activities here become varied according to their purposes and objectives. Four major distinctions include Attentive listening, Extensive listening, Intensive listening, Selective listening and Interactive listening.

Attentive listening:

Both of the ideas are true that attentiveness is a prior condition for understanding and listener often lapse attention for various reasons. Losing interest, inability to keep up with, losing track of goals, less confident are some of them. Teacher can help the listeners to hold their attention by personalizing the martial, using the target language while talking to them to keep flow, and lessening their stress and motivating by asking oral responses repeatedly. Activities in this stage would be interesting and easy including face to face interaction, using visual and tangible topics, clear description of the listening procedure, minimum use of written language, and immediate and ongoing responses etc so that learners can easily keep pace with the text and activity.
Listening to short chunks, music image, personal stories, teacher- talk, small question- answer, and interview etc may be applied in this stage.

Extensive listening:

This type of listening has also a greater ease than other types as it is concerned to promote overall comprehension of a text and never requires learners to follow every word and understand them. Learners need to comprehend the text as a whole which is called global understanding. Activities in this section must be chosen in terms with the proficiency level of the listeners.
At the lower level they may have problems to organize the information, so some non-verbal forms in responding might be given such as putting pictures in a right sequence, following directions on a map, checking of items in a photograph, completing a grid, chart or timetable etc.
At the developed stage, some language based tasks requiring constructing meaning, inferring decisions, interpreting text and understanding gist are usually recommended. Completing cloze exercises or giving one or two word answers, multiple choices, predicting the next utterances, forming connected sets of notes, inferring opinions, or interpreting parts of the text are some samples.

Intensive listening:

‘Hearing clearly’ is also a prime aspect of listening as it includes accurate perception without which the second phase of processing meaning becomes very difficult. Listening intensively is quite important to understand the language form of the text as we have to understand both the lexical and grammatical units that lead to form meaning. So, intensive listening requires attention to specific items of language, sound or factual detail such as words, phrase, grammatical units, pragmatic units, sound changes (vowel reduction and consonant assimilation), stress, intonation and pauses etc. Feedback on accuracy and repetition on the teacher’s part promote success here.
Paraphrasing, remembering specific words and sequences, filling gaps with missing words, identifying numbers and letters, picking out particular facts, discriminating the pronunciation of same phoneme in different positions, replacing words, finding stress and boundaries are some good intensive listening practice.

Selective listening:

It involves listening to selected part of a text, as it’s name suggests, to predict information and select ‘cues’ surrounding information. Thus, the listeners may have an assessment of their development in listening to authentic language. Here the focus is on the main parts of the discourse and by noticing these parts listener construct their understanding of the meaning of whole of the text through inferring. As the expectation on understanding is focused and has a purpose, in these activities, listeners have the chance of second listening to check understanding and have feedback repeatedly.
Listening to sound sequences, documentary, story maps, incomplete monologues, conversation cues and topic listening are examples of selective listening.

Interactive listening:

This is a very advanced stag of listening practice as it implies social interaction in small groups which is a ‘true test’ of listening. In interactive listening, learners, either in pairs or in groups, receive new information, identify them continuously. Besides, they have to work out the problems of understanding each other and formulate responses immediately as we are required to do in real life. So, in spite of calling ‘practice’, this goes beyond of it. As this phase involves both comprehension and production, it directly promotes speaking skill. Teachers have a central role in this stage. They have to set up specific goals so that learners can asses their own performance, observe learners’ language in order to provide immediate feedback on their interaction strategies.
Group survey, self introductions, short speeches, chatting and discussing, exchanging news and views, interviewing and being interviewed etc. might be appropriate here.

c. After-listening Stage: post listening activities can be used to check comprehension, valuate listening skill, use of listening strategies and use the knowledge gained to other contexts. So, these are called listening exercises at all and defined as ‘follow-up works.’ The features of these activities are:

a. Related to pre-listening activities, such as predicting.
b. May create a real life situation where students might be asked to use knowledge gained through listening.
c. May extend the topic and help the students remember new vocabulary.

Using notes made while listening in order to write a summary, reading a related text, doing a role play, writing on the same theme, studying new grammatical structures, practicing pronunciation, discussion group, craft project etc. are some post-listening activities.

Variables affecting and effecting successful listening:

Noise: Distractions and noise during the listening segment should be reduced and sound-proof language lab is perfect for this purpose.

Equipment: If the cassette player or CD player being used does not produce acceptable sound quality, it may harm developing skill or motivation.

Repetition: playing the text 2-3 times might be required in respect of the types of texts. In case of no chance of repetition, learners may become anxious about catching it all the first time and that will impede their actual performance.

Content: It is a strong variable to be able to make difference in developing skill. The material should be interesting and appropriate for the class level in topic, speed and vocabulary. Some guidelines for judging the relative ease or difficulty of a listening text for a particular purpose or particular group of students might be:

a. The selected material must be relevant to student’s real life; language of the text should be authentic and would vary in terms of learners’ interest and age group.
b. The storyline, narrative, or instruction should confirm common expectation in organization. It may contain main idea, details, and examples. An informative title might also be helpful.
c. Learners have to be familiar with the topic. They might feel major comprehension difficulties because of misapplication of background knowledge due to cultural differences.
d. At the beginner level of proficiency, the language of listening text should discard redundancy while in the higher proficiency level students may benefit from redundant language.
e. If the text involves more than one individual, the differences between them should be marked conspicuously which can make the comprehension easy.
f. Most texts should have visual supports like clippings, maps, diagrams, pictures or images in video that contextualize the listening input and provide clues to meaning in order to aid their interpretation.

Recording own tape: Any way, recording must be of an English speaker. Copying recording two to three times is preferred in order to avoid rewind which may discrete attention of the listeners.

Using video: Using video clippings with sound off and then asking students what dialogue is taking place is a good practice. Next, the teacher may play sound and check their understanding and interpret them about the discrepancy between their predictions and reality. It may also be done with the video first and giving only sound to guess what the context is can obviously effect comprehending.

Homework: In teaching listening, homework is a must. A listening task between two classes prevent them forgetting. Encouraging public listening and having notes on them is a free pave to walk in teaching listening which leads to success. Providing tape recording with questions, dictation, or a worksheet to complete may bring the expected results.

Using internet: If learners have opportunity to use a computer with internet access and headphones or speakers, teacher may direct them toward some listening practice sites and home works can also be assigned from these accesses

Limitations of this article:

This article doesn’t focus on every aspect of teaching or developing listening skill; rather it focuses mainly on the necessity and functions of listening input in learning a foreign or second language. The survey also reflects on the service of listening to the EFL learners who are instrumentally motivated. The context of the assay is this country though it reflects that of some other countries where the features don’t vary much.

Conclusion:

Definitely we have to admit that language learning depends on listening as we respond only after listening something. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the stimuli for language acquisition and make the learners interact in spoken communication. So, effective and ideal language instructors should help the learners to be introduced with native speaking, to be respondent to that both cognitively and orally. In order to do so, first, they should show the students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes.

Questionnaire

Name:
Role:
Department:

Q1: Does practice listening in the language lab help you to develop English skill?
Q2: How does it promote your learning?
Q3: Do watching movies or using video clippings add to your understanding?
Q4: How does interaction with teacher or interference of teacher while listening help you?

References:

Byrnes H. (1984). The role of listening comprehension: A theoretical base. Foreign Language Annals, 17: 317-329.

Coakley CG & Wolvin AD. (1986). Listening in the native language. In B. H. Wing (Ed.), Listening, reading, writing: Analysis and application (pp. 11-42). Middlebury, VT: Northeast Conference.

Gass SM.(1988). Integrating research areas: A framework for second language studies. Applied Linguistics. 9:198-217.

Lund RJ. (1990). A taxonomy for teaching second language listening. Foreign Language Annals, 23: 105-115.

Mendelsohn DJ & Rubin J. (1995). A guide for the teaching of second language listening. San Diego, CA: Dominie Press.

Morley J. (1991). Listening comprehension in second/foreign language instruction. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 81-106). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Nunan D & Miller L. (Eds.). (1995). New ways in teaching listening. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Omaggio-Hadley A. (1993). Teaching language in context (2nd Ed.). Boston. MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Peterson PW. (1991). A synthesis of methods for interactive listening. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 106- 122). Boston. MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Richards JC. (1983). Listening comprehension: Approach, design, procedure. TESOL Quarterly. 17: 219-240.

Rixon S.(1981).The design of materials to foster particular linguistic skills. The teaching of listening comprehension. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 258 465).

Rost M. (1990). Listening in language learning. London: Longman.

Rubin J. (1987). Learner strategies: Theoretical assumptions, research history and typology. In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner strategies in language learning (pp. 15-30). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Rubin J. (1995). The contribution of video to the development of competence in listening. In D.J. Mendelsohn & J. Rubin (Eds.), A guide for the teaching of second language listening (pp. 151-165). San Diego, CA: Dominie Press.
Underwood M. (1989). Teaching listening. London: Longman.

About the authors

Mili Saha & Ali Rezwan Talukdar are lecturers, Dept. of English, Noakhali Science & Technology University, Sonapur, Noakhali, Bangladesh.

The American Concept of EFL and its Invisible Visions in the Middle East Region

david — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:47:11 +0000

In this article, Amjad Owais discusses how the teaching of English is handled in the Middle East region.

Introduction:

In this paper I will discuss the phenomenon of using native English teachers in the Middle East region, precisely in United Arab Emirates in the context of EFL in the public primary schools. In this discussion I will examine the reasons beyond such a phenomenon. I will also examine the attitude of native and non-native speaker teachers who teach English language along with students’ parents’ attitudes. Moreover, I will link “communicative imperialism” (Phillipson, 2006) and the role of the media with the context of EFL in the Middle East region. Due to the natural of my paper, a “self reflective” (Pennycook, 2001: p.1) and previous experiences of other countries are expected to be present.

ELT in United Arab Emirates has witnessed an extraordinary revolution in the last 6 years. My interest of this issue emerged simultaneity with the appearance of a new type of schools which are gradually replacing the ordinary public schools in UAE. This type is called (Al-Ghad schools) which literally means “tomorrow schools” in Arabic. It clearly indicates the main purpose of these schools is to produce more sophisticated, moderated and competitive students. The vision of ministry of Education and Youth in UAE as what they declared is “to have a new generation who is more capable of English language and its vocabulary and grammar skills”, in other words “we need a generation who speaks English as it is his or her first language”, thus to achieve this goal teachers who “have a better command of fluent, idiomatically correct language forms, are more knowledgeable about the cultural connotations of the language” (Braine, 1999: p.xiv) are needed. In order to make this vision alive, a huge number of native English teachers had been brought from areas such as “North America, Britain, New Zealand and Australia which claim ownership over English”( Canagarajah, 1999: p.79). Furthermore, to support this vision, some authorized sources in the government argue that this new methodology of teaching is the best in teaching English which enables the students to acquire the language very easy and smoothly. Schiitz (2007) cites Krashen’s (1987) view that acquisition any language requires meaningful interaction in the target language (natural communication) thus, language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules because learners grow up learning the language as it is something very natural in their life without an effort, especially at the beginning levels of their life. Moreover, Boyle (1997) illustrates that native speaker teachers have a range of advantages over the non-native speaker teachers because (a) English learned from birth and developed through his/her life as primary language which been used in his/her life (b) the intricacies of the grammar of the language are learned instinctively and can be employed with speed and certainty (c) native speaker of English engages with other native speakers of English as something natural in his/her social context, so he/she uses the language all the time as the dominant language, thus it is better to use native speaker teachers of English to teach their first language. Additionally, McNeill (1994) in his study about the characteristics of native and non-native speaker teachers of English argues that native speaker teachers have the advantage when it comes to learners’ vocabulary needs. It is sensible to point here; the government is replacing non-native speaker teachers with native speaker teachers of English gradually in order to provide their students with the opportunity to hold conversations with teachers in English, and only in English.

On the other hand, Al-segair (2007) who works as a teacher in a prestigious university in the Middle East illustrates that in his investigation about native speaker teachers in the Middle East, “I found some of them used to work as dog-trainers back in Chicago” (paragraph, 2). He also pointed out that some teachers were “a bunch of former company employees and some had worked in western embassies” (paragraph, 2) who did not work as teachers before. Al-segair thus explains that not because you are a native speaker of a language qualifies you to teach it! Teaching a language requires “skills, competence, training and knowledge” (paragraph, 3). Going further in this issue, Al-Osaimi (2007) illustrates that some schools do not bother to recruit qualified English teachers, however, parents usually more impressed by where did teachers come from and the fact that their accent sounds more ‘American or British’ considered to be enough to convince them that they are the most suitable teachers to teach their children, regardless what they have of qualifications or experiences. Such criteria forced me to wonder why such thinking is dominant in the region.

America and its Politics play a major part in all of this. The American tenet that “the current educational systems in place in the Muslim world were partly responsible for motivating the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the pentagon. In June 2002” (Karmani, 2005:p.262), thus in order to change their attitude towards the western and the American culture, a new concept should be replaced with what is described as a “combination of intolerance, ignorance, anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Western views” (Karmani, 2005: p.262) by using native speaker teachers as means to apply this project. By importing native speaker teachers of English from what Kachru calls “inner circle countries” (Kachru & Nelson, 1996: p. 78) with westerns’ beliefs and values, a new Americanized generation would be the total outcome. In simple words, educational or mind colonialism and “linguistics imperialism” (Phillipson, 2006: p.346) are the main goals in such invasion of native speaker teachers at the Middle East region.

Searching for its alleged security:

Handley (2004) mentions that in the late 1700s, America was surrounded by great European superpowers, thus America was “economically and militarily disadvantaged” (Hadley, 2004). Therefore, to build a strong and superpower nation, America must expand its borders by negotiation or war. The American citizens had been convinced that the world and America’s national security always in danger, so in order to protect the world and America, any country that threats us should be attacked. Furthermore, “lack of expansion implies the possibility of defeat” thus, “American insecurity was an important factor in the invasions of Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines” (Hadley, 2004) in the past. Other form of such American fears is the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) which was a proposal by the American president Roland Reagan in March 23, 1983. The main goal of this proposal as what Wikipedia illustrates is “to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles”. This proposal carried the popular name “Star Wars” in 1977 after movie by George Lucas. According to Handley, the Star Wars program is an expansion of America’s continued need searching for its national safety “by now expanding its borders into outer space” (Handley, 2004 cited Mauk and Oakland, 154), moreover, the recent invasions on Iraq and Afghanistan interpreted by a large number of American citizens is they had been convinced that America’s national security was threatened. Thus, in order to assure that no one threats America’s security in the future, a new ways of domination and controlling should take place in areas such as Eastern Asia, Africa and the Middle East not only military, but also as media and academic occupation.

The role of Media in the Middle East:

No one can deny the strong role played by Media in any place in the world. America tries to impose its policies and its ideologies in the Middle East whether by using force or not. In order to dominate the region, the American beliefs should be promoted in the area. Phillipson (2006) argues that the development of communications networks has a basic relationship to the emergence of the new world order. He illustrates that “communication organizes the movement by multiplying and structuring interconnections through networks” (p. 352). Thus, in order to dominate a particular country and its culture, you must control its media and what is being showed to the people inside their homes. A controversially television network channels like MBC group (Middle East Broadcasting Center) and Alhurra (means the ‘free one’ in Arabic) had emerged in the Middle East and dedicate the lion’s share in Middle Easterners’ minds and homes. Such channels can be seen by some people as mediums to spread the American’s plans and principles in the region using another means beside tanks and rockets. Alhurra is a commercial-free Arabic language satellite television network for the Middle East operated and funded by the United States of America. This channel is financed by the American people using their taxes through the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the U.S. Congress. Many Arab political critics argue that this channel lunched to change the views of Arabs and Muslims around the world towards the west and America by showing football games, explaining the acetic dimensions of baseball and airing documentaries about the ‘fence’ in Palestine, along with doses of fashion. Alhurra in its official web site claims that:

“We are devoted primarily to news and information. In addition to reporting on regional and international events, the channel broadcasts discussion programs, current affairs magazines and features on a variety of subjects including health and personal fitness, entertainment, sports, fashion, and science and technology” (Alhurra official web site).

Give me a break! In order to facilitate TESOLers’ jobs who came from inner circle countries, an anesthetization of Middle Easterners’ hearts and minds must be done so people can accept these teachers with a positive attitude and a wide smile on their faces. People in the Middle East must be convinced that they are not proficient enough to teach English, thus teachers their first language is English must take over and teach English for your child’s own benefit. According to Phillipson (2006) media is not only organize production on a new scale and force a new structure sufficient to global space, but also make its justification inherent power, as it “produces, organizes, as it organizes, it speaks and expresses it self as authority” (p. 352). Why I would pay my good money to fund an Arabic channel such as Alhurra when I cannot earn money from it. Alhurra in its web site mentions that “Alhurra is operated by non-profit corporation, The Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. (MBN)” (Alhurra official web site). The Arabic satellite dish contains more than 300 free entertainment channels which can be accessed by Arabs from any place in the Middle East with more than 6 news channels such as Al-jazeera, CNN and BBC. Therefore, the purpose of such channels is that the American government can trade its citizen’s money with its future security by dominating and directing Arab youths’ minds and beliefs toward its own interest, by providing ‘a purely American Arabic speaker’ channel. The other case is MBC group channels which “started in London as the first satellite, free-to-air multi-channel media group of its kind in the Arab world” (MBC official web site). Al-Arabiya (means the ‘Arabian channel’ in Arabic) which is one channel from the MBC 6 free channels specialized with news and press. The reason behind the emergence of such channel has been declared by the people work there is to have a democratic channel which fights Aljazeera’s thoughts (an Arabic news channel) and its anti-democratic trends. Since Al-jazeera has been described by many Westerner politicians as anti-American bias, thus we need a channel against any anti-American thoughts in the Middle East region. According to Ryan (2005) Donald Rumsfeld has accused the station of persuading people that the US is an occupying force in Iraq, which he describes as a lie! On the contrary, the expansion into Iraq was to “brought freedom, economic growth, education and democracy to people who have suffered under years of oppression and mismanagement” (Hadley, 2004 quoted Assistance for Iraq). As a result, America is trying to Americanize the Arabic society the same way as she Americanized the Japanese society after the World War ll. Therefore, the road will be paved for native English teachers when they come to teach the ‘Western values’.

The world of TESOL and the native speaker teacher of English:

To impose the American ideologies in the Middle East, America promoted very well the teaching job for the native speaker teachers of English by promising them with “ good salaries and an exotic overseas adventure” (Hadley, 2004). According to Hadley many scholars such as Troike and Crystal have linked the expansion of TESOL to the expansion of former British and present American empire. Furthermore, native English teachers serve as “part of the educational aid packages exported to countries throughout South America, South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East” (Hadley, 2004) who work as colonial administrators. Handley in his paper cited Edge’s view that EFL teachers have become an academic army that satisfies intellectual conflict and occupies the linguistic dominions of an Anglophonic empire:

“…it is now possible to see us, EFL teachers, as a second wave of imperial troopers. Before the armoured divisions have withdrawn from the city limits, while the solders are still patrolling the streets, English teachers will be facilitating the policies that the tanks were sent to impose. And whether, and to whomsoever, I teach EFL, I am part of that overarching system” (Hadley, 2004 quoted from Edge, 10)

Karmani (2005) argues that an extraordinary pressure has been put on Muslim governments to reform their educational curricula. A very interesting article by Glasser (2003) who works for the Washington Post illustrates that many Arabic Gulf countries reshape their schools and put English over Islam, so in order to make way for more hours of English, classes in Islamic studies and Arabic are being reduced. A new stuff of native English speaker teachers has been brought into the schools of United Arab Emirates to teach the students from early ages. What is interesting is that the native speaker teachers are brought from inner countries as experts who do not need any preparing or training. They are who design the textbooks, monitoring the non-native speaker teachers and deciding who should stay and who should not stay in the school. However, American policies had succeeded in this country. Almost every non-native speaker teacher convinced that the native speaker teachers are better than non-native speaker teachers in English and this system is the best to teach the students this language even if they do not have the required qualifications, because English is their first language. This persuasion created negative outcomes with less positive results. In such schools a world full of racial discrimination in job opportunity, payment and respect has emerged. Non-native speaker teacher is no longer trusted by parents and his or her students. The native speaker teacher’s salary must be double than the non-native speaker teacher as one condition to import these teachers. Moreover, they must be provided with luxury accommodations, free transportations and first class annual flight tickets to their mother land. Of course, these conditions had been set by the American government to ensure that their citizens are treated well. Such conditions are imposed against governments’ wish in the Middle East region. What is ironic is that even if you have an American passport or you are a citizen from inner countries and you were not white or you were originally from Arabic country, you may not have these facilities! In some cases your contract might be cancelled even after you have signed the contract if your original identity has been discovered.

Conclusion:

In order to achieve the maximum domination on the Middle East and to make sure that no anti-American bases are exist in the region. Moreover, to insure that what happened in September 11, 2001 is not going to happen again, an American political equation must be applied, first, using the tank to impose the power. Second, programming youth’s minds and their views on what America ‘believes in’ is right. Third, teach the child what is against America is against you in the classrooms. It is not a coincidence that the emergence of (Al-Ghad) schools was after only one year from the dramatic events of September 11, 2001. It is not a coincidence that the reform of the educational curricula implemented after September 11, 2001. It is not also a coincidence that, channels like Alhurra and Al-Arabiya had been lunched after what happened in September 11 in 2001 which they are now based in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates. However, no one can disagree that Middle East countries need skilled and experienced workers and teachers from developed countries such as America, and Britain, but a direct supervising to those employees must be done by Middle Eastern countries that brought those experts and pay their salaries from their money for a preset goal. According to Fields (2005) who is a native speaker teacher of English works in Abu-Dhabi, UAE, teachers should be hired based on their qualifications to work in an atmosphere of fairness and respect, free from fear of discriminatory treatment or arbitrary dismissal because of their ethnicity, whether they were native or non-native speaker teachers of English.

Reference:

Alhurra, 2005, ‘About us’. Available from: http://www.alhurra.com/sub.aspx?id=266 [Accessed 12 Jun 2008]

Al-Osaimi, N., 2007. English Teachers Not Always Qualified [online]. Arab News. Available from:http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=104142&d=30&m=11&y=2007. [Accessed 17 May 2008]

Al-Segair, K., 2007. Only Native Speakers as English Teachers! [online]. Arab News. Available from: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=13§ion=0&article=101526&d=22&m=9&y=2007. [Accessed 17 May 2008]

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