Teach English in Wangcun Zhen - Zibo Shi

Introduction Czech educational system as we know it today has been historically shaping for the last 300 years and its traditional patterns, which stood at the beginning of the public schooling, are still visible in the modern state institutions. Overall emphasis on discipline, memorization and repetition of the learned material is widely prevailing even though the Velvet Revolution in 1989 brought about many changes as well as the renewed possibility of private education. Unfortunately, the state institutions proved to be quite inertial in their style of functioning and the revolution in education drags on slowly for twenty years with very little success. The gap between the state and private education especially in case of teaching languages grows bigger and bigger. I’d like to demonstrate the difference and effectivity of learning English in the state and private schools on the model of teaching English grammar which is probably the most obvious example. Teaching English grammar in the state institutions Learning foreign languages in former Czechoslovakia followed mostly the same pattern as traditional linguistic approach to Latin or Ancient Greek. It was heavily based on grammar and a great amount of vocabulary which had to be memorized without much connection to the context. English was not favored at that time and travel possibilities to the Western countries were limited so many English teachers never got exposed to the authentic, live language prior to their teaching. As a result, pronunciation and speaking skills used to be poor in many cases. When the country opened to the outside world in the 90s things slowly began to change. Teachers started to receive better training and their students finally shifted from grammar/vocabulary focus to communicative skills as well. Emerging private sector with its ESL courses has become a great challenge for the rigid state institutions and surprisingly it is still today. Effectivity of teaching and success of the students heavily depends on personality and teaching skills of the teacher and good teachers think twice before choosing their career in financially undervalued state institutions with little freedom of teaching style. Typical English lesson in the state school revolves around a textbook. The type of the textbook is not usually decided by the students (or their parents) nor the teachers but by the head of the institution itself. If they are lucky, teachers can choose the textbook or at least influence the choices. Sticking to the textbook is often limiting the flexibility of the teacher. On the other hand, it is much easier and less arduous for the teacher to prepare for the lesson. More active teachers prepare also occasional games and worksheets or add communicative activities. Children as young as 8 or 9 are trained to recognize many grammatical points such as past and perfect tenses, progressivity, lots of other grammatical rules and they are often tested and evaluated on their proper usage. Again, extensive vocabluary is being memorized and often individually or collectively tested, in worst cases in front of the whole class. Students are put under a lot of pressure to perform all the tasks, prepare for the tests, do plenty of homework in order to get a good grade at the end of the term (which is usually the average of the sum from the grades they get during the school year). What more, the tests are rather designed to find out what a student doesn’t know than to discover what can actually perform in the language. From what I mentioned above it is clear that the motivation to learn the language is doubtful. Students are either too stressed or bored, not interested or confident to communicate in the language. The prevailing motivation is to obtain a good grade at the end of the term as it can influence their chances for further studies. Language is presented as a set of rules and patterns which need to be filled in with words like a puzzle. For many students learning English is synonym of learning English grammar. Private schools and courses With emergence of private language schools in the 90s came a small revolution in methodology and approach to the students. Modern methods of teaching ESL were introduced, such as emphasis on motivation, communication, development of all the language skills, intensive exposure to authentic materials both spoken and written. As the motivation shifted from grades to actual communicative skills, the learning has become more fun and effectivity has been growing higher ever since. Most of the Czechs who can speak English haven’t learned the language in state schools but rather attended some English course or other type of private schooling. There are exceptions, of course, but it is more a question of luck with teacher than result of pedagogic conception. There is a variety of English courses available nowadays everyone can choose from. All of them teach grammar according to age or level of the students, but the methodology differs from state schools significantly. Smaller children learn to use grammar without too much linguistic explanation. (Often, they use the language without grammar knowledge.) Older students and adults focus on grammar description more as it is essential part of the language training, but it is always balanced with a good portion of practical and effective exercise using games, communicative activities, techniques enhancing listening and reading skills, etc. Teachers know very well that a friendly and inspiring atmosphere in the class helps the learning process enormously. Conclusion The difference between the students from state schools and private courses is painfully obvious. While the state students are often afraid to speak English and even after a few years of pursuing the language they have problems to communicate naturally (they lack motivation and suffer psychological blocks). The students from private courses are much more confident, don’t fear the grammar when communicating and pick up fairly good level of English after short time.