English Teacher: An Integral Entity of English Language
by Aadhi Ramesh Babu, Asst. Professor in English, Kamala Institute of Technology and Sciences, Huzurabad, Karimnagar.
In every profession it is important to keep current with new ideas, methods, technologies, research findings etc. Teachers should study, and like all other professional people, should try and stay current. No doubt English is the most important language in the world; therefore having great English skills will bring numerous advantages to a teacher, especially keeping with the demands of the emerging global market where English is seen as a tool of progress and success.
Who is an English Teacher? Should he know English or any other languages also? Who will teach better whether native English teacher or non-native English teacher? We know that good teachers are not born, nor are they made by tutors. They make themselves. Research shows that there is no personality type that makes a good teacher. There are many logical research can inquire into the word ‘teacher’ and it needs closer scrutiny has made pedagogical assumptions that are no longer valid in the English Language teaching world. All academic research uses the word “teacher” as if there were one clear and indisputable idea as to what is a “teacher.” This is philosophical and research, models, ideas and proposals will flounder at the outset unless clear emphasis is given to just what is “a teacher.” Crookes and Chaudron suggest, “Our conception of the teacher is someone faced with a great number of decisions to be made at every moment of classroom instruction.”1 Peck says,” Teachers should individualize ESL instruction so that they teach in the ways in which students learn.”2
A good and qualified teacher is an ideally a native or non-native speaker but he should know how to teach a language to the students. However it is one of the isolated references to the fact and realization that ‘teachers’ of ESL do not need to be qualified at the outset. Pennington says “the ‘quality’ of teaching must be considered and taken into account in determining what results can be expected, but again offers no cues as to how to determine that quality, especially in a market place the size of the EFL world”3 We have a doubt that formal instruction really makes a difference in foreign language learning, like English? And that is depending on the teacher who motivates his pupils to learn English.
Three or four year degrees and one year post graduate degree courses are offered by the universities and colleges around the world to enable students of that country to qualify for a teaching certificate or license. Indian schools are offering English from the Elementary Level. Some teach English within the Elementary curriculum, while teachers who have majored in English are gradually becoming the norm. On the other hand the world of TEFL is vastly different. Most non-English speaking countries will give the opportunity to a native English speaker to “teach” English. The employers think that the person who presents any degree from his countries university can teach English.
That degree may range from Science and sometimes Commerce also. In other words, anyone with a university degree can travel to non-English speaking country and become a “teacher of English as a second/foreign/another language.” Stern says “The native speaker’s ‘competence’ or ‘proficiency’ or ‘knowledge of the language’ is a necessary point of reference for the second language proficiency concept used in language teaching” 4The best teacher is therefore a native speaker who can represent the target the students are trying to emulate.
Though some of the teachers have the PG degrees in English with them, they are not able to teach English. Of course there are many reasons that we find the lack of communication skills and no research in the universities. Pointing out the native English teachers, they teach English in a given foreign country do not have formal second language teaching qualifications. They, however, are English teachers by virtue of their contract and they teach English even though they may not have any idea or understanding of what it means to be a teacher. Of course native speakers assert power over their language and insist that they only can control its destiny. Unlike DNA, nobody has copyrighted a natural language
In India, we should need English teachers who completed their graduation or post graduation in English. He should be trained in English otherwise he does not get the choice to teach, but in Greece it is different. The only qualification by the Greek government for the native speaker of English is that he/she has ‘any’ university degree. This teacher will then be responsible for teaching classes ranging from elementary level to the ultimate proficiency level. Proficiency level exams are conducted by Cambridge University and administered by that institution. The successful candidates can go on to either open private language schools or teach in them. If we look at the Czech Republic, there any native English speaker will qualify as a teacher. Like Greece, a degree is desirable, but the difficulty in finding a native teacher to work in the Czech Republic where wages are minimal means that the requirement of presenting a degree can be overlooked. A correspondence course TEFL certificate will do just fine. And the native English teacher in that country will be expected to give lessons from both primary and supplementary materials. The Korean system is more rigid in that the native English teacher must present a degree to receive his work visa as a teacher. However, it is known that private schools employ non-degreed teachers as often no others can be found.
Even if I mention teachers in ‘foreign countries’ are normally untrained, consider the American school system, there the teachers though they are not trained, they are facing with the challenge of educating children with limited English skills. Many of these teachers, on the other hand, have had little or no training in second language development and need guidelines to help them understand the process young children undergo as they learn a second language. Most of the times many teachers think that native teachers of English will be referred to as “qualified teachers,” but I think that it is not true in all the aspects because they know the language but all the native teachers do not know the teaching methods. They too should have the equivalent to a teaching degree/license in their native country and having had at least one year minimum foreign teaching experience of the English language. But another query is that if they have the certificates like Teaching English Language or the other certificates, do they teach effectively. We know they can not. This is not to say the certificate is not useful, but I can argue that the possession of such a certificate does not entitle the holder to call himself as a qualified English teacher. But the certificates will help them to teach in a proper way.
It is very difficult to teach English as a foreign language. When the teachers are good at English and the local language, it is very easy to teach. He should know the two languages and their pronunciations that will enable to the students learning. Most of the English teachers are, in other countries, asked that they should have a degree certificate and if we look in “A comparative study of the EPIK and JET program,” it was found in a survey of teachers, “only 26% of the native English teachers in Korea had a teaching certificate, At that stage of the report, the teachers the subject of the report were employed to teach in middle and high schools alongside Korean or Japanese teachers in a team-teaching situation.”5 The report from the different countries said that their teachers have difficulties in controlling the class when they teach alone because they are not professionally trained teachers. But Indian English teachers have had prior teaching experience or hold teaching certificates. They lack professionalism as teachers. English teacher is the soul of the English class room. He should develop student’s understanding of key aspects of linguistics and learning theory and they should influence the students to speak in English and make informed professional decisions regarding language teaching in the workplace and also he should teach the aspects of language appropriate to the students’ anticipated uses and regard them as successes when they can carry them out, not as failures for still having a foreign accent.
The salaries in India are very less for the teachers and that is the reason I think most of the teachers want to go abroad to teach English. Nowadays there has been a shift towards recruiting the more professional or experienced teacher. However, although studies are non-existent, those native English speakers who teach second languages may fall into one of the following categories.
a) Those seeking a one or two year adventure away from their homeland.
b) Those who can’t find a job in their homeland Interestingly, most second language teachers in Asia seem to be Canadian, where unemployment runs high, whilst in Europe the teachers are predominantly from the United Kingdom, however this has more to do with European Union law than any other factor, whilst in the former soviet satellites, the predominant teacher is from the United States.
c) Those qualified and professional teachers who have made their target country their second home and accept local conditions.
The teachers those who teach English as a second language in another country have to accept that countries system of payment. However, when compared to the major English speaking countries, U.S. U.K or Australia, salaries in the second language teaching country are far below what a professional can get at home, but not in the case of all the teachers. Hence this raises questions about just what professional will leave his well paid job with benefits and go and teach in another country. The answer is patently obvious. No one!
But it is unrealistic for the second language country to expect or demand teachers with high qualifications when they offer benefits far below what can be obtained home. What they can demand is that the teachers have a minimum of applicable qualifications at the least. However, it must be asserted forcefully that the quality of teaching of second languages in countries where English is not the native language will fall far below the levels that that country would ideally desire, as language teachers are not rightfully language teachers in the majority of circumstances. One alternative to worrying about the native English speaker’s competence would be, if that teacher was a nonprofessional teacher, then his sole duty would be to facilitate ‘communication classes.’ As Ellis comments, “…three functions of foreigner talk can be identified,
(1) to promote communication,
(2) to signal implicitly or explicitly, speakers attitudes towards their interlocutors,
(3) to teach the target language implicitly.”6
We know that the conversation class is something of a puzzle in language teaching. In some language programs it is an opportunity for untrained native speakers to get students to talk for the duration of a class period using whatever resources and techniques the teacher can think of. According to Hatch, “Though the teacher, trained or untrained, must learn to adjust his speech to the student, namely by simplifying and clarifying his responses in accordance with the feedback he receives from the communication learner.”7 What about the students, and what kind of teachers they want and Pickert suggests that “good language learner wants a teacher who is systematic, and logical, and easy to understand, but rather take charge of their own learning than have the teacher control this aspect, thus treating them as ‘informants’ rather than a stereotypical teacher.”8 It places a serious burden on a teacher to self evaluate his style and his subject and also a teacher needs his personality development.
To teach a second language, teacher has to face many hurdles. Teaching the second language means teaching for the situations that L2 users encounter, and modeling L2 roles and situations. In this point Klein suggests “there is much more to do even before we can successfully begin to teach teachers how to teach a second language. Research on second language acquisition has too short a history to supply conclusive evidence on any important question…in some areas there are the indications of a firm foundation upon which we can build.”9 The number of language learners, the number of schools, and the number of ‘teachers’ are entering the market place, much greater consideration and emphasis will be placed on the qualities of the teacher, not only by the teaching institutions, but also by the students themselves.
The other point is that the difference between the non-native teacher and visiting native English teacher will be that the non-native English teacher will have received his/her qualification from an institution of higher learning. This immediately places that teacher as a professional teacher, and undoubtedly there can be feelings of quiet discontent between the two teachers, for the nonnative English teacher sees themselves as qualified whereas their counterpart, the native English speaker is probably not. However the non-native teacher may naturally feel ‘inferior,’ for his/ her pronunciation/ fluency will not meet the standards of the native English speaker. And undoubtedly some non-native English teachers will not enjoy speaking in English and conduct their classes with as minimal spoken English as possible. We find many English lecturers in India who do not speak properly and sometimes they are unable to teach with native pronunciation, which means Received Pronunciation of England.
But the non-native’s knowledge of English grammar will most likely be perfect, some times it is superior to the native speaker for the native English speaker rarely studies grammar during schooling or university, unless training specifically for that. All that can be suggested for non-native English teachers is that there is no substitute for oral practice, no matter how good or bad their perceived level of English is. Indeed, one of the clear psychological factors present in many non-native English teachers is a belief that their ‘pronunciation’ of English is bad, when in fact it is not. It is suggested that those who hold this belief indeed show their acute awareness of the depth and intensity of ‘pronunciation’ and are well on the road to speaking with what can only be termed, ‘a very satisfactory level’ of English pronunciation.
The English Teacher’s Goals.
The English teacher should teach the following things to the students.
a) Language: vocabulary, grammar, phonology (sounds)
b) Ideas: content or subject matter (rules, instructions, history)
c) Skill: fluency, accuracy, strategies (paraphrasing, dictionary use), process skills (speed reading, note-taking, essay writing)
d) Text: discourse rules (use of connectives, pronouns), text types (narrative, problem-solution, instructions, inquiry)
Language makes up the building blocks essential for any form of communication. Teacher’s knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and phonology help the students to speak in fluency and accuracy. A good English teacher gives many activities to the students for example vocabulary – in a reading exercise, or a combination of goals e.g., ideas, text type, accuracy – in an essay-writing activity. The activities should be seen to be suitable and that the teacher is prepared to give assistance in achieving that goal. Teachers have to pose the question, “What am I trying to teach my learners?” the teacher of English often has no such choice to make as he follows a set text that may or may not achieve something useful and real things.
Notes:
1. Crookes.G. and Chaudron. C. “Guidelines for Classroom Language Teaching”
Teaching English Celce-Murcia (Ed), Heinle and Heinle (1998): 46-66.
2. Peck. S. “Second Language Acquisition” Teaching English Celce-Murcia. (Ed). Heinle & Heinle (1991):364
3. Pennington. M. Teaching Pronunciation from the Top Down. RELC Journal 20:1 (1989): 21-38.
4. Stern, H. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP (1983):341.
5. Ahn. Soo wong. (et.al.) A Comparative Study of the EPIK and JET Program. English Teaching. 53:3 (1986): 241-267.
6. Ellis. R. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: OU Press. 1996.
7. Hatch. E. Discourse Analysis and Second Language learning. Newberry House Publishers, 1978.
8. Pickett. G The Foreign Language Learning Process London. The British Council, 1978.
9. Klein.W. Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (1996): 167.
Aadhi Ramesh Babu, Assistant Professor of English in Kamala Institute of Technology and Sciences, Huzurabad, Karimnagar, Andra Predesh, has been teaching English to undergraduate students for the last 10 years. Besides being a seasoned teacher, he conducts spoken English classes for rural students. He did M.A. English and M.Phil from Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andra predesh. He has also done P.G.C.T.E. and P.G.D.T.E. from CIEFL. He has presented many research papers at National Conferences. Currently he is pursuing Ph.D in English.
**ELTWeekly Team would like to thank Aadhi Ramesh Babu for contributing this article.