[The importance of English]
English as a Second language or a foreign language
The preparation of the Foreign Language Teacher
The Characteristics of A good Teacher
The characteristics of a good learner
Today, it is internationally acknowledged that English has become the world’s most important language that is used as a medium for international communication. Quirk et al (1985) think that the importance of English stems from four factors. First, the number of native speakers of English is more than 300 million. Second, English is spoken over geographically dispersed areas about 1500 million people-- over a third of the world’s population-- live in countries where English is either the native language of the country or one of the native languages. Third, English is the language of great literatures and a primary means for the twentieth century science and technology. Fourth, English is the language of the United States of America, which has an enormous economic and political impact all over the world.
The demand for English is great. Good jobs require candidates capable of speaking English fluently because it has become the international language of trade and business. English is needed for access to the world of computing worldwide. Most of the information stored in computers is in English. It is also the language of international aviation, shipping, sport and public communication. English is an assigned subject within the educational system of most Arab countries. English learners at the secondary school level are considerably increasing due to the rapid increase of the population. in the developing countries. Many students from different parts of the world travel to English-speaking countries to continue their higher education where English is the medium for their studies.
With such importance attached to the English language, we should take into consideration, as teachers of English, its great advantages to our students both at school and university levels in Qatar. A moment’s reflection shows that students have not yet realized the importance and the impact of this language on other cultures. The researcher thinks that very few have realized the need to learn English for communicative purposes outside the classroom. They learn English, simply because the school system demands it as a settled subject in the curriculum. That is why they feel less motivated and less committed to learning it. University students are probably more willing to learn it for their academic purposes.
English as a Second Language or a Foreign Language.
In fact, a large number of teachers do not have a clear-cut distinction between the two terms mentioned above: English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL). As a second language, English is used for various functions. Some socio-linguists list five functions: (1) instrumental, for formal education; (2) regulative for governmental administration and law courts; (3) communicative for interpersonal communication between individuals speaking different native languages; (4) occupational, for commercial, scientific and technological purposes at the intranational and international levels; (5) creative, for non-technical writings (fiction and political works). Thus, the people whose mother tongue is not English will use it for certain governmental, commercial, social or educational activities either in a country in which the majority are native speakers of English (e.g. America, the British Isles) or in a country in which a small proportion of people have English as their native language and in which English is used as an official language (e.g. Nigeria, India)
As a foreign language, English does not play an important role in social life: the average person does not need English for his everyday life, or sometimes even for his professional life. English is taught only in schools or institutions. In such situations, learners of English have instrumental motivation, i.e. they learn it for operational purposes: read books, communicate with native speakers of English, listen to broadcasts and engage in commerce or travel. These aims have led to the development of teaching English for specific purposes (ESP). Thus, courses were designed to teach English for science, medicine, agriculture, trade, tourism and so on.
As a foreign language, English does not play an important role in social life: the average person does not need English for his everyday life, or sometimes even for his professional life. English is taught only in schools or institutions. In such situations, learners of English have instrumental motivation, i.e. they learn it for operational purposes: read books, communicate with native speakers of English, listen to broadcasts and engage in commerce or travel. These aims have led to the development of teaching English for specific purposes (ESP). Thus, courses were designed to teach English for science, medicine, agriculture, trade, tourism and so on.
The Preparation of the Foreign Language Teacher.
It is not a difficult matter to realize that the majority of our preparatory and secondary school students in Syria fail to reach a satisfactory level in English after learning it for nine years or thereabouts. Why is it so? Why is it that a very large proportion of our students fail in English? The main reasons, to the best of my belief, are due to some inadequate syllabuses, the wrong use of teaching methods, the teachers’ dissatisfaction with the conditions of their schools, in particular the overcrowded classrooms, the general problems pertinent to their jobs, the hurly-burly of some naughty students, their disagreement of the syllabus distribution which is often inconsistent with the statutory holidays, which might,to the best of my belief affect the teacher’s productivity and performance negatively, and most importantly, the insufficient training of the teachers of English both in their academic studies and in service. Do you agree with me?
Frankly speaking, these problems are shocking and daunting. The physical conditions of the classrooms and the lack of resources can make language teaching a very difficult process; the huge numbers of students in classrooms daunt teachers. I am one of those teachers who feel a bit shocked when entering an overlarge class. In some distant villages, we feel that our classrooms are so spacious that we can run, walk and play comfortably when presenting, for instance, the verbs of movement to our students. I have seen classrooms with more than 55 students. Teaching this enormous number of students is, definitely, more tiresome and more difficult than teaching 15 ones at the maximum.
All these factors might lead to a big failure in the educational process. But, I dare to say that the most important factor that leads to the students’ failure relates to the insufficient training of teachers of English. We are likely to expect good results if we have highly well- trained teachers, for a well-trained teacher is able to get over most of the problems mentioned above. A trained teacher knows how to get the best results from a congested class. He is capable of making the most of the worst textbooks: he can avoid their defects and add what is necessary. Furthermore, he is acquainted with and aware of the various methods of teaching. He has also the ability to choose the most appropriate methods for his own students. Thus, most of the problems, then, will be removed if we have well- trained teachers. So, all teachers, have to stop complaining right away. Do you agree with me? Maybe, no.
Since teacher training is such a vital and a fundamental element in the language teaching process, this necessitates that teacher education programmes be planned by psychologists, educators, socio-linguists, psycho-linguists, veteran grammarians and other professionals. The characteristics (such as patience, tolerance, warmth and love), which make good teachers, are to be taken into consideration when selecting those teachers to be in the profession. The teachers under training have to sit as observers in schools under the supervision of teacher trainers and have to be helped identify the characteristics which make good teachers of English and adopt them. But what are these characteristics?
The Characteristics of A good Teacher.
The characteristics of a good teacher can be presented from the students’ point of view. Of course, much research has been done on the characteristics of a good teacher, but I have conducted an empirical study about such characteristics and have written down some of my third preparatory class students’ observations at Dukhan School for Boys in the state of Qatar. Here are some:
· A good teacher ought to come to his class on time.
· A good teacher should not shout in our faces when we commit mistakes.
· He should be competent in his subject.
· He should have a strong personality to be able to control his students.
· He should be tolerant, especially with the hard working students.
· He should organize his lessons on the blackboard.
· He should feel interested in what we say or write.
· He should love teaching us. It is easy to tell if he does not.
· He should pay attention to his appearance. He should not look unkempt with shaggy hair. He should not speak uncouthly.
These notes about the characteristics of a good teacher are empirical and some of them were really uttered and written down by the students themselves in a questionnaire in the native language of the students in the classroom. From my down-to-earth experience in the field of teaching, I would like to add to above-mentioned characteristics three more characteristics:
A good teacher is the one who prepares all his lessons in advance. This preparation should have a mental form and a written one, but it should not necessarily be a previously imposed format set by any governmental or nongovernmental circle because the mental preparation is more important than the written one in the sense that no teacher in the world can expect what the response(s) of his students will be during the class. The students might behave in a way that is diametrically different from what is written in the teacher’s preparation. He should design his own preparation format that suits his teaching-learning environment. That is why most teachers write certain steps of their lesson and perform other completely different ones; depending on the situation they find themselves in. Upon asking the teachers in my school about the reason for writing down these steps in their Teacher’s Notebooks, they justified that they just want to avoid the scolding of their supervisors when checking these Notebooks.
· A good teacher is to be frank with himself, his headmaster, his supervisor, his students and his colleagues. This frankness creates an atmosphere of credibility and trust in/between his students and the members of the administrative staff of the school he is teaching in.
· A good teacher, in my view, should instil in the minds of his students the importance of learning English as a primary medium for spreading our Islamic principles all over world and for defending our religion against all those who castigate and reprimand our Prophet Mohammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.) This characteristic, of course, will be objected to /criticized by non-Muslim teachers as it is specific to Muslim teachers only. But, nobody can deny its vital role in stimulating our students to learn the foreign language, as we are all Muslims living in a Muslim community.
In a computer-based and internet-based society, the teacher of today has an easy access to the whole world; so a good teacher should have a good knowledge of the computer and its useful programmes that may enrich his communicative competence with the teachers of the world.
To be fair in his arguments, I have devised some characteristics of a good learner from the teachers’ viewpoint at Dukhan School at request of the teachers of the School themselves who explicitly expressed that the vital role played by the good learner in the class is to be taken into consideration. As a matter of fact, the society always lays the blame on teachers, neglecting consciously or subconsciously the fact that a good learner has a very essential role in making the teaching process a success. A lot of research has been done on this issue. What makes a learner a good learner? The following characteristics are empirically discerned by the teachers of the School themselves:
The characteristics of a good learner.
· A good learner should be, to some degree, tolerant with his teachers who are, after all, human beings subject to getting angry when provoked intentionally by some ill-bred or naughty students.
· A good learner should be attentive to and interested in what his teachers say during the lesson.
· A good learner should have a certain degree of respect and love for his teacher who does his best to educate and enlighten the student’s mind.
· A good learner should not absent himself from lessons unless legally excused for some reason(s) out of his control.
· A good learner should try to work hard during the lesson and cooperate with his teacher and his peers.
· A good learner should review and study the lessons he had at home.
· A good learner should do all the homework assigned by the teacher at school when he comes back home.
· A good learner should develop simple strategies that will help him digest the content of his lessons (i.e. organize his time, organize his copybooks, avoid memorization, mark certain key words or sentences that may help him remember what he has read…etc.)
· A good learner should be inquisitive inside and outside the classroom (i.e. ask many questions, ask the parents to help him when coming across some difficult points)
· A good learner can get the best of his summer holidays by reading some short stories, magazines and newspapers in English or Arabic because this will broaden the horizons of his thinking.
Having discussed the characteristics of a good teacher and a good learner, it is clear for everybody that the demand for preparing foreign language teachers and creating certain environments of good learners are very pivotal. Despite the fact that practical work seems more useful and rewarding to trainees than theoretical information, teachers under training and teachers in general must be made aware of some theories behind the teaching-learning process. They need to be acquainted with a theoretical knowledge of the impact of linguistics and methodology on language teaching.
Developing communicative abilities in our students is a major aim in communicative language teaching at present. Yet many teachers regrettably fail to teach language as communication. Many young teachers tend to make their classes teacher-centred: they dominate the classroom interaction, depriving their students of opportunities to use the language in the classroom. They need to be guided to make their classroom lessons student- centred rather than teacher-centred in which a greater chance is given for the students to participate informally in classroom activities. In addition, many teachers still use the grammar-translation method, which fosters accuracy rather than fluency in learners. Therefore, teachers need to trace the development of methods and approaches to language teaching. In particular, they should be made aware of the influence of the communicative approach, which is adopted in Qatari schools, in teaching the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing in an integrated way. They also need to teach grammar for communicative purposes.
Finally, teachers with little or no training in English, teachers who lack a deep knowledge of linguistics with all its branches, teachers who themselves have a vague idea of the syntax, the phonetics, and the semantics of the language they are teaching, teachers who are not trained at the hands of professionals in applied linguistics, psycho-linguistics and socio-linguistics, are unable to produce good learners and fluent speakers of the language they are teaching. They are also unable to abide by / stick to most of the characteristics of a good teacher discerned in this research in their practical work inside the classroom.
Hassan, Ali, S Methodology of English. Damascus University. 1993
Broughton, G. et al Teaching English as a Foreign language London: Rutledge & Kegan Paul 1978