Teaching English Paths – a Never Ending Story

Alexandra Sobral e Costa, Portugal

Alexandra Sobral e Costa, an ESL teacher for more than 18 years in secondary schools in the Algarve, Portugal. Currently, teaching in Marbella, at III, a private languages school of great renown in Costa del Sol. E-mail: alexandrasobralcosta@gmail.com

“(…) I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in "Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.”

Pat Convoy

Education has as main purpose students’ personal growth and the maximum development of their capacities. Teachers are catalysts of this metamorphosis, which is experienced by each pupil. So, a teacher is successful when he can activate a full expansion of each student’s intellect. However, affection cannot be left behind because through a relationship based in trust and friendship, a teacher and a student are able to establish a bond that will last beyond the classroom’s walls and it not only will help the student to discover success, but also ignite a desire to build a responsible and proactive life path.

Education has been through different stages throughout the Humankind’s evolution. In the past, only the wealthiest could go to school or have a teacher at home. At that time, education was a luxury that only a few could afford to. Now everything is different. Education is compulsory, available to all students, not only the ones who embrace the learning process as a privilege, but also many who see it as a burden.

Since I remember, I had a dream: I’ve always wanted to be an ESL teacher because I had excellent ESL teachers who opened my mind to a new language: English. Throughout my student’s years in Portugal I have experienced many diverse educational reforms. Students were, many times, the “guinea pigs” of different teaching pedagogies, but always with the unchanged motivation and enthusiasm reveled on a daily basis by my English teachers. As students, we’ve never questioned if those pedagogies were right or wrong, we assumed them as the most accurate to learn a foreign language. Now as an ESL teacher with more than 18 years of experience, I know better!

As an ESL student, I remember that first I needed to be focused on grammatical rules and syntactic structures. For me, studying English was frequently a boring task because there was no space for speaking, it was all about repetition! I spend little time with songs, listening comprehension, exercising my speaking skills. When I did all that, my peers and I cherished those moments of true and meaningful learning. The language wasn’t taught with a communicative purpose, I studied it as an abstract corpus. We had to memorize a huge list of irregular verbs, vocabulary or phrasal verbs without understanding their purpose. We repeated everything as parrots without a clear perception of what we were saying or even worse, we translated everything to our native language! This still occurs in Spain, where students learn English vocabulary by translating it into Spanish and there is little time or none to listening and speaking drills. Another problem in this country is the nonexistent connection to the English accent/sounds/pronunciation on a daily basis because all motion pictures and TV shows are dubbed and not subtitled.

Another problem that teachers faced and still subsist is a big syllabus and little time to teach it. Even now, when everyone acknowledged the importance of English, this important subject is disregarded since English subject has only a 90 minutes or even 45 minutes’ slot per week in a student’s school timetable. This isn’t enough. If ESL teachers have a huge syllabus, they will consequently spend less time with oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language. However, the European Framework of Reference for Languages changed the way teachers perceive English! CFR provides to all language teachers throughout Europe, a unique method of learning, teaching and assessing.

As an experienced teacher, I believe that English is the subject whose teaching methodologies have changed for the better. I personally defend that affection and a positive interpersonal relationship between the teacher and students are vital for their success and for the learning process. Not only that, I defend that every student is unique and learns differently. Probably this is obvious, but, despite this evidence many teachers overlook it because they face crowded classrooms every day. 4 years ago, I embarked on a teaching experience: to test the Gardner’s multiple intelligence’s theory in a classroom full of teenagers. I gave to each one a Gardner’s test to identify their intelligence. After the results, I was able to teach accordingly to each student’s intelligence: I gave more grammar exercises to students with a logical-mathematical intelligence; the listening/reading comprehension exercises were the best for the verbal-linguistic students; songs/videos/films were good learning tools for students with a musical-rhythmic intelligence; the pair and group’s work were a must-have tool for students who loved to talk, with an interpersonal intelligence. All this combined with a task-based class. Now I work at a private languages school where all classes are task-based. I’m not only trying to develop my students’ autonomy, but also trying to lose the custom of explaining everything. The learners should be the ones who discover the answers and keys for the success of their learning process; the teacher is only an important catalyst!

The English language teaching has gone through a mammoth evolution and it will still develop because it is alive. The success is a combination of internal and external factors: first, the teachers should be motivated, which is now hard due to economical, political and social reasons. Classrooms must have fewer students. Learning a foreign language isn’t the same as geography or biology; fewer students in class will allow a constant and successful speaking and listening learning/assessment. So, governments should see teachers as vital for the evolution of a country and money can be a way to reward the teachers’ work. Secondly, the existence of a continuous teacher’s training program: a teacher who isn’t willing to learn new methodologies shouldn’t expect to have motivated students. Teachers should attend seminars; workshops to learn updated teaching pedagogies and top-notch tools. Last but not least, the perfect combination of what a teacher should be: affectionate, but strict! I have been demanding, but at the same time I’ve always loved my students and above all inspired them! These have been my keys to be a successful English teacher!

References

The Common Reference Framework for Languages
www.englishclub.com/.../history-english-language-teaching.htm

Please check the Teachers as Leaders course at Pilgrims website.