Success in English Teaching. Paul Davies

of time or the large number of learners in a class make this goal seem difficult or impossible to reach. When time is short, one common response is to limit the goal to what is considered most important for the learners. For example, in 2 the goal has been intentionally limited to reading technical publications. In higher education, reading is often considered the most important skill to master.

      In very difficult conditions, for example large, unmotivated groups with little time, a common response is to work towards a goal like that in 3. The goal in the official syllabus may be more like that in 1 or 2, but in practice teachers find it easier to explain English grammar and give rules and formulas for learners to memorize. However, we believe it is possible to work towards communicative goals like those in 1 or 2, even in quite difficult teaching contexts. With a group of fifteen motivated learners for five hours a week, you can easily work towards the goals in 1. With a group, or many groups, of forty initially unmotivated learners for two hours a week, goals like those in 1 will present a much greater challenge and results will inevitably be modest. But we have seen many teachers working communicatively with groups of forty or more secondary-school learners – those notorious ‘difficult’ adolescents – and achieving good results.

      What are ‘good results’? Well, when you observe a class, the first sign of good teaching is the attention and interest shown by the learners. If they are voluntarily paying attention, something good is probably happening. If they are showing clear interest – listening eagerly, following instructions, asking and answering questions, mostly in English – something very good is probably happening. Holding the learners’ attention, getting their interest and their active participation, are essential in English language teaching, as in all teaching. If you do not achieve these immediate objectives in each lesson, you are unlikely to reach the long-term goals of getting learners to master the elements and systems of English and use them in communication.

      Last, but not least, your teaching goals and objectives should be apparent to the learners. They should feel that every activity you do with them is worthwhile, and that the whole course is worthwhile. They should never feel that you are just filling time until the bell rings to end the class, or that you are going mechanically through the book or syllabus. Not all short-term objectives will be directly related to communicating in English. For example, you may decide that it is useful to get the learners to memorize some irregular verb forms, or find and underline all the conjunctions in a reading text. But this kind of short-term objective is really worthwhile only when it contributes towards achieving the main goal of teaching English – to develop an active repertoire of English for use outside the classroom. If you or the learners lose sight of this main goal, their motivation for learning English as a foreign language is likely to weaken.

      Questions

      What was the best foreign language course you have ever taken?

      Why was it better than other courses (think about the teacher, the group, the book, and the activities)?

      Did you feel that you were really learning to communicate in the language?

       Communication first and last

      If communication in English is to be perceived by the learners as the main goal of the course, English should be used for real communication in the classroom as much as possible. This means introducing some of the English needed for genuine communication early in the course, for example, that needed for routine greetings, instructions, and requests. And, depending on the overall objectives of the course, as much time as possible should also be given to realistic work on the language skills that the learners need to master, for example, conversation, reading comprehension, or written composition.

      This may mean seeing your course syllabus in a new way. It may seem on the surface that the most important element in the syllabus is a sequence of new language items. However, if you look more carefully, you will probably find that you are also expected to enable the learners to communicate in real situations. You may also find that you are expected to run the class mostly in English, avoiding complicated discussion of the new language items in the learners’ native language.

      To do this successfully, especially with beginners, you will need techniques that allow you to focus on new language items without using the learners’ first language much. We will be looking at some of these in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. You will also need techniques for establishing and developing English as the main classroom language, for if you simply ‘speak English all the time’ you will quickly drive beginners, and even more advanced learners, to despair!

       English as the main classroom language

      Among the many possible uses of English in the classroom are:

      – greetings and farewells, for example: ‘Good morning. How are you?’; ‘See you tomorrow.’

      – instructions, for example: ‘Open your books at page sixty-two. Look at the picture.’