There are two things that are considered standard operating procedure in foreign language classrooms that I just can’t accept. I really believe, and so must state that as my truth, that some, many, teachers are getting away with ineffective practices in their classrooms and nobody is calling them on it, in two ways specifically.
First, these teachers speak English to teach another language. Isn’t it a bit odd that AIM, TPRS, and other CI methods which use only the target language in the classroom get results – clear results with happy students – but when English is used the results are not there and tests have to be written to camoflouge that fact, and students quit?
Does anyone agree with me that the assessment instruments designed by traditional teachers who frequently use English in the classroom are deleteriously flawed? Or am I alone on this point? If you actually ask a fourth year traditionally trained kid to understand or speak (vs. do grammar exercises) the target language, or go to the target culture and function, they can’t. This is suspicious to me.
Yet nobody seems to be talking about it. Too many jobs are at stake I guess. Too many egos are there to assuage. There are maybe too many friends in the department who do it the same way. This summer, however, I met a VERY bright kid from the West Coast who had just finished four years of French and yet had, at best, basic skills around the level of Novice Mid, yet A’s in all four years. When is someone going to call bullshit on that?
The other thing that I cannot accept is the fact that teachers who largely use English in the classroom are often evaluated as at par with teachers who only use the target language when teaching. Kids in English based classrooms hear the language exponentially less over the course of the year and yet, due to testing instruments designed by the foxes guarding the hen house, come out looking as if they have learned as much language as those who actually did. This is just so bizarre. Even the kids know it, and talk about it, but nothing is done about it. This is administrative ignorance.
Perfectly intelligent administrators walk into classrooms for observations five or six times a year, and they hear the foreign language teacher using English, and it just seems normal to them, perhaps because they themselves were taught that way. But doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious that a teacher is doing that?
The ruse is perpetuated, as indicated above, by testing that really doesn’t test for acquisition, and by long standing idées reçues that one can actually learn a language by not hearing it spoken in the classroom. How ridiculous!
Plus, there is the complicity piece. So many teachers earn salaries, respect in the community, health benefits, etc. for basically not doing anything, but, since everyone is doing it, and no one is complaining (loudly enough), things remain the same through each new year – great excitement among the kids in the first weeks leads quickly to boredom. I can’t accept that. I challenge all teachers to look again at what they are doing. And don’t get your buns in an uproar about this – this is a blog. Make a comment and prove me wrong.
If you are using English to teach another language, if it is boring for the kids, and if you are covering that with tests that really don’t honestly test to see if any real language was actually learned, being aided in this by clueless administrators, and, especially, if you are having a visceral reaction to what I am writing here, then maybe you may want to look at methods that are built on speaking only the target language in the classroom, and learn that not only is it possible, but it is fun and can change what has to be for you, at this point, a boring job that everyone knows on some level is a sham.