Editorial
This article is a report on the ICELT conference, ‘Teaching English as a Performing Art’, held in Malaysia in September 2011.

From Stale Custom to Infinite Variety

Andrew Wright and Alan Maley, Hungary and UK

Andrew Wright lives in Godollo, Hungary, near Budapest. Andrew and his wife Julia run a private language school in Godollo and Budapest doing mainly company teaching. Julia is the director of the company. Andrew spends most of his time writing books and travelling in order to work with teachers. Andrew’s books include: ‘Games for Language Learning’. CUP, ‘Creating Stories with Children’. OUP, ‘1000 Pictures for Teachers to Copy’. Longman Pearson, ‘Writing Stories’. Helbling Languages. E-mail: andrew@ili.hu

www.andrewarticlesandstories.wordpress.com
www.teachertraining.hu

Alan Maley has been involved in ELT for over 40 years. He has lived and worked in 10 countries, including China, India, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. He is series editor for the Oxford Resource Books for Teachers, and has published over 30 books and numerous articles. E-mail: yelamuk@yahoo.co.uk

Why is it that most institutional systems of education develop such narrow and unadventurous teaching procedures? How is it that joyful learning somehow gets overwhelmed by institutional rituals: the worship of the syllabus, the obsession with ‘covering’ the textbook, the manic preoccupation with the exam, the compulsion to conform? It seems that only in rare cases, through the determination of individual teachers, is joyful learning achieved. In most other cases the language is reduced to drumming in material as if it were a set of mathematical formulae in preparation for the exam, after which it can safely be discarded. Small wonder that many students simply switch off and develop a lifelong aversion to the language in question. What they learn is neither enjoyable nor perceived as useful in the ‘real’ world outside the classroom.

Of course, every country has its own specific set of issues to deal with. In the case of Malaysia, English was, until the 1970’s, the language of instruction in most schools. Its replacement by Bahasa Melayu, was a necessary part of the nation-building process after Independence. However, the change in status of English from a language of everyday life to a school subject inevitably had consequences. One of these is that English became just another subject to be examined rather than an active tool for use. In recent years, the Government has made some efforts to reinstate English as a major vehicle of communication, especially for commercial and financial purposes in a globalised world. But while there is a widespread public recognition of the need for English (and repeated public lamentation about the ‘falling standards’), there is also a residual official ambivalence towards English as the language of the former colonial power. This has sometimes led to stop-go policies which leave teachers, parents and students in a state of uncertainty.

It is against this background that we report on the UPM conference ICELT held in Damai Laut near Lumut in September 2011. Dr Jayakaran Mukundan of the UPM, Universiti Putra Malaysia, who conceived and ran the conference, is one of those invaluable people who can make things happen. He had the vision, the creative energy, the social skills and the sheer courageous determination to create a conference with over 300 presenters and one thousand participants drawn from over 20 countries. And this was in a venue well away from any major urban centre.

Research in education is unarguably important but equally important is the ability to inspire, to create momentum and to offer creative practical methods and techniques which can be used in the classroom. Dr Mukundan’s conference made a major contribution to this necessary endeavour. This was not a dry conference of exchanges between educational researchers! The title alone gives a clear signal: Teaching English as a Performing Art.

If the aim is for Malaysians (and others) to be able to use English effectively rather than merely to ‘get the grammar right’, then what better focus could have been chosen? Performance is so often used to mean doing well in the accuracy-focussed examination. In this conference performance was used to mean ‘how to engage other people’ through creative, artistic activities.

Dr Mukundan had invited a number of truly extraordinary ‘performers’, making this conference a world first! To offer participants a real taste of the utter commitment of top professional performers, Dr Mukundan had invited Jan Blake, the international storyteller, who can hold a thousand people in total silence or inspire them to take part in the story with everything they have got. There were also the performance poets Paul Cookson and Adisa. There was the mime and clown, Vivian Gladwell. There were the co-authors of stories and poems for young people, Steve Skidmore and Steve Barlow, and Carolyn Graham, the inventor of jazz chants.

Each of these performers not only performed in plenary sessions but then led workshops and helped teachers to adapt the ideas to their own performance and to the needs of their own classes.

Other internationally-established speakers included Judith Dillon, Brian Tomlinson and Hitomi Masuhara, Diana Schwinge, Lucia Buttaro and the two writers of this report. Amongst the well known Malaysian ‘performers ‘ were Dr Mukundan himself, who spoke about the video project he conducted with his students and Lee Su Kim, who presented a fascinating study of the Peranakan minority group in Malaysian society and showed how stories from a local community can be brought to life through English.

The conference was international: there were many speakers and participants from over 20 other countries, including neighbouring countries but also teachers from Iran to the west and China to the east. For example, speakers from Nepal, Motikala Subba Dewan and Sarita Dewan presented their work on applying the American street poetry movement SLAM to their Nepalese classrooms. This was most important because it showed the potential for the students to be performers and not just the teacher. Surely, THAT is our goal? The only justification for placing a focus on teacher performance is that it can be demonstrated that this is the best way of developing student performance too.

In all, at least 135 sessions were devoted to many aspects of performance: dance (including Bharatnatyam!), opera, wayang kulit (shadow plays), drama, story-telling, folktales, games, pantomime, role-play, art, voice-work, readers’ theatre, magic, video and film, music, songs, and even cooking! A real feast, and important in showing just how much individual teachers can do to break out of the straitjacket of institutional routine. This sharing of experiences will undoubtedly help reinforce teachers’ resolve in trying out more performance-oriented activities. The feeling that ‘I am not alone’ is a powerful form of support.

How influential will the conference be? Well, most of the one thousand participants were classroom teachers. If we calculate that each teacher works with 250 children in total, then that is a quarter of a million children who may well benefit from the conference...a quarter of a million now and millions more as the teachers embed these techniques into their everyday teaching in the years to come.

The conference also forms part of what may be a rising trend. In 2010, FAAPI (Federacion Argentina de Associaciones de Professores de Ingles) ran its annual conference in Cordoba. The theme was ‘EFL and Art – Learning English with all our Senses’. In 2010, the JALT (Japan Association of Language Teachers) annual conference in Nagoya took as its theme, ‘Think Out of the Box’. Dr Mukundan’s concept was far more radical than either of them but perhaps they are straws in the wind, and indicate an increasing willingness to adopt more creative approaches. The Malaysian Ministry of Education has also reintroduced English literature recently, and has plans to introduce language arts programmes in schools. In Korea, even the Ministry of Education is now critical of the super-heated extra tuition provided by the private evening classes (hakwons).

The conference was supported by the Vice-Chancellor of UPM. ELS Language Centres and Pearson were among the key financial sponsors, and the main publishers had stands in the book display area. Unfortunately, representatives from the Ministry of Education and the British Council were notable for their absence. Was their absence ominous? Without government-led determination to change the narrow focus of the examinations, significant change in the classroom cannot be achieved. Exams will then continue to wag the dog of learning. The MARA Junior Science Colleges were however strongly represented, with over 150 of their English Language Teachers present, as well as key officers from MARA Headquarters.

The place chosen for the conference was the Swiss Garden Hotel, Damai Laut near Lumut in Perak State - a wonderful hotel in an idyllic, tropical seaside setting with views over the offshore islands. What better setting for this great celebration of performance?

Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.