Many that are involved in language – teachers and learners both - are hung up on the pronunciation aspects of things. Most of these people focus on the learner and how to improve their accent in their target language, and this is something that a lot of people are interested in. It’s the old ultimate attainment argument. Everyone dreams of sounding like a native!
You can umm and arr all you want about this, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. And if asked candidly, many a learner (I focus on Asian Englishes remember) will tell you that they want to disguise their origins and sound like a native. No amount of persuasive debate can change their mind, even if we are to consider that English speakers from different countries are likely to have markers that identify them as being from there and not only that, but these markers are accepted in the English-speaking world… And shock-horror… even native speakers have these same markers… Click here to read more.. »
Culture in the classroom.. is this something that the students need or want? This argument can very much go both ways and much of it relies on what exactly your students want, but one model for the classroom isn’t likely to please everyone… as you’re not doubt aware.
On the one hand we have the ongoing debates of English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) being strictly language as a tool – devoid of culture… I’ll come back to this later. The other hand has the Native English Speaker (NES) as the teacher, and he relies greatly on emploring his students with his culture… Whether this is American, British, Australian, etc. depends on the NES’s origins of course. Click here to read more.. »
I’m sure as language teachers that this thought goes through our head a fair bit. It’s not a difficult decision for most languages since there is the standard. And yes, while there are varying dialects and accents, there is typically the one golden standard that we can revert to. Let our students fall back on if they want to work their new tongue in a familiar and intelligible style.
The problem here is that English doesn’t have this golden standard. There are just too many standards to count. The powerhouses are British English (BE) and General American English (GAE), with some others gaining popularity and credibility – Canadian English, Australian English, Irish English, and so on. On top of these we also have the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) that has some momentum thanks to linguists. Click here to read more.. »
I’m sure if you’ve been a teacher for any length of time you will have stumbled more than once at creating a valid and reliable test for your classroom. The question is, why are we always struggling along attempting to reinvent the wheel? Countless people before us have researched and implemented successful assessments for the classroom… the problem is, many of these are for the L1 setting.
If you’re following me, I’m talking about tests like Informal Prose Inventory (IPI), Early Names and Names Tests, St Lucia Graded Word Reading Test and so on and so forth. Assuming you’re familiar with any of these then you’ll know they tend to focus on reading skill primarily. And correct me if I’m wrong… but our L2 students still read don’t they? Click here to read more.. »
As a teacher it is ultimately up to us to decide what our students should be learning… but on the other hand, it’s also up to the student to let the their teachers know what they could be learning. This is where needs analysis comes into play.
Teachers aren’t mind readers as much as we pretend to be and we will quite often need a kick in the right direction when it comes to understanding our students’ wants and needs. This is particularly the case when it comes to English for Specific Purpose (ESP) classes. It’s fine to teach engineering English, but which engineering? This is one of the things we need to find out and getting that information doesn’t need to be a complicated process. Click here to read more.. »
