Overly slanted toward receptive skills in English class

- by Joanne (Cho seong yeon)

about 556 words

Look back on my middle and high school English class, we usually have 4 or 5 times English class a week. There were not enough listening and speaking time. When the new lesson introduced, only a small amount of minutes assigned to practice the dialogue. There are not any chances to use the language in a real situations. We just learned a certain patterns to prepare for the semester exam.

I have met many English teachers during my school days. One of them, I remember Mr. Cho. He was my high school English teacher, the third grade. His teaching style was the same to ordinary other English teachers, as a explainer with GTM method. But there was an unique points. He speaks only English in the class. At that time, we had a hard time to understand the lesson. Except explaining complicated grammar concepts. But that was an innovative approaches for our environment. And also another thing was that he gave some reading materials to us every week. We had to translate the text in Korean. That mission was not easy. Sometimes we were likely to postpone our homework. However, that homework let us to understand English precisely. And we could learn a lot of vocabulary from the text. Absolutely his teaching English in English and Translating the text are both helpful to receptive skills; listening and reading. Consequentially they contributed to the good results in listening and reading comprehension test for Korean SAT. A large majority of ordinary teachers rely on the textbook. We learn grammar, vocabulary and skills of solving selective problems for the test.

We can not learn English from the meaningful context, but just rote, repeat and memorize the separated individual lexis with a decontextualized way. So many students feel that English is one of the difficult subject. And we have to get an additional private education to get a higher marks than competitors. More seriously, English took confidence away for lower level students to get lower marks. English is not may as well an interesting but as a stressful trouble some in their school life.

After graduating secondary school I also feel that I face a challenge for communicating with foreigners. When I meet a foreigner on the street, I was embarrassed. He asked about the simple question for finding direction. At that moment, I really wanted to get out of that place. Although so much time spent studying, we don’t speak English freely. We need to more extra learning for coping with practical use, the productive skills for speaking and writing English. For example, We have to learn communication skills in English; phone and e-mail or order some items by on line shopping overseas. If an adult learner has not any practical purpose, he can’t be an active learner voluntarily. When we was a student, there were an urgent goals to pass the exam to a higher education. My high school English teacher, Mr. Cho’s method was effective in that sense. But his lesson was limited.

So now, I suggest some changes to be an effective way. First, I think that learners could learn more effectively in their interest fields. Although all learners have different experiences and background knowledge, teacher should find what learners interests related to the topics and materials. Second, teacher’s role should be an involver or enabler. Learners have an ability to learn English with a self-directed way. Teachers should try to actively involve their students to the activities. Too much explaining by teachers make students boring and helpless. Third, Teacher should change the teaching method to goal-oriented. In a TBI or CBI, students can involve a certain task or problem through the lesson procedure and they have to achieve the task goals. That process will be helpful to internalize language in a meaningful context. Lastly, teachers should consider learner’s learning style. Every learners can be taught different way. One student is sensitive in a visual way, others auditorily and the others kinesthetically.