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“The Bible as an effective source of teaching materials”

                        by Debora Pamplona, Universidade Federal do Ceara, Brazil

In a secularised world such as this we live in, you may be wondering why an article that has this title is ever in an ELT magazine.  Maybe you pressed the wrong keys in
your keyboard and ended up in another site!  No, you didn’t.  Somehow I’m starting
to get used to the strange faces people make when I start telling them what this is all
about.  Relax, it’s not about religion.  It’s not about the Bible.  It’s really about teaching English.

How the idea was conceived
I’m a member of an evangelical Christian church in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil and I’m 
also an English teacher at the Universidade Federal do Ceara.  My “brothers and sisters” (as we call each other in Christian communities) kept asking me to teach them English.  After some reluctance - my day was busy enough already - I got together with a group of about 12 and started to teach them from the regular textbook
I used at the university.  After a few classes I realised that the material I was using wasn’t suitable for the group, because they had quite a specific purpose in mind - they would ask me to translate Bible verses into English, to write the lyrics of gospel songs, and to teach them Bible-related vocabulary which had to do with their daily
lives.  The textbook as well as the contents of that course didn’t fulfil their expectation and that was a general feeling.  Meanwhile, I was attending an M.A. course at the State University of Ceara and it was time to hand in my project for qualification, so, after some reflection upon the experience I’ve just described, I started to write the first draft of the idea this article is about - teaching English from the Bible.

I had already carried out extensive work on the use of authentic materials for teaching
English, so it was easy to figure out that the Bible was a perfect source of authentic materials, since it contained different types of texts - stories (parables, biographies),
poems (the psalms), dialogues and proverbs, which are certainly included among the most celebrated literary records of human history.  Then I realised that biblical texts, just like any other text, could well be used for teaching a language.  Finally, I decided to investigate how a group of evangelical Christians would benefit from a material specially developed to teach them English from the biblical texts which they know so well in their mother tongue (in our case, Portuguese).

Theoretical Background
The research was based on three theories:
a) 	The Schema Theory - originally a theory applied to reading, it emphasises the fact
that “the reader brings information, knowledge, emotion, experience, and culture to the printed word”  (Brown: 1994).  It introduces the concept of schema or frame, blocks of background knowledge stored in the memory which, when activated, may intervene positively in the learning process.  In the case of Christians, their schemata are the biblical texts in their mother tongue, which serve as a connection between what they already know and what they will learn in English.

b) 	ESP (English for Specific Purposes) - ESP can be summarised as the teaching that takes into account individual needs or interests.  It differs from General English (GE) in that it involves a more strict set of aims according to the group to be taught.  In the case of this church group, they had other needs that regular textbooks could not cover.  For instance, when talking about daily routines, they needed to know how to say pray or go to church, lexical items which are part of their lives but which are never included in GE textbooks.

c) 	The use of authentic materials for teaching EFL - defined as texts that have been designed for native users with no pedagogical intentions in the mind of the author, authentic materials intend to bring the outside world into the language classroom.  Instead of making up characters and dialogues, the material developed in this research used the very people described in the Bible, their dialogues, and their experiences, from where the language was taught.  They did not have to learn about the people, but could really concentrate on the language they used.  A contemporary version of the Bible was used - the New International Version - to guarantee the authenticity of the language as well as of the information conveyed.

How the experiment was conducted

Step 1.  Needs Analysis
The first decision I had to make was related to the learners’ actual needs.  From the experience described above, I knew that they wanted to learn English for the following reasons:
a) 	as a tool for personal and/or professional development
b) 	to be able to read the Bible in English
c) 	to understand the lyrics of gospel songs in English
d) 	to share their faith with foreign “brothers and sisters”
e) 	to prepare for trans-cultural missions

The above list gave me an idea of where to start in the needs analysis, a necessary component in any ESP programme, and decided that I would design a material that:
a) 	covered the four skills
b) 	used only biblical texts in its contents
c) 	developed communicative abilities in the learners
d) 	would be appropriate for the beginning level (for this experiment)

With those principles in mind, a communicative syllabus was designed for twelve lessons divided into three units of four lessons each, which were linked by a wider frame: unit 1 was about personal information, unit 2 was about descriptions, and unit three was about routines.  The grammar topics as well as the language functions covered derived from a list of the 20 first grammar topics and functions taken from four different textbooks (Take 1, Look Ahead 1, New Interchange 1, American Blueprint 1).  As for the reading skill, I used the reading strategies, which are important for beginners, such as skimming, scanning, reading for main ideas, or finding cognates.  The writing skill was also developed, according to the main topics covered.  The only skill not fully covered was listening because of lack of materials on the market and financial resources to develop tapes appropriate for this project.  However, in the speaking activities, listening was informally covered (although not under the heading “listening”) in the information gap exercises, for example.

Step 2.  Materials design
Bearing that in mind, I set out to develop the material.  The lessons always started with a task-based presentation in which the learners had to use their previous knowledge of the Bible in order to do the task.  For example, to teach introductions, I used the dialogue in which God introduces himself to Moses talking from a burning bush, saying: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  (Exodus 3).  The task was to say the names of the people involved in this dialogue, which was illustrated.  Above the illustration was a box with the names Moses - God - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Because this is a widely known passage, the learners had no difficulty in figuring out who the characters were, not just from the dialogue, but from the picture, and from the names in the box.  After this task, the learners were ready to be exposed to introductions.

The grammar topic of this lesson was I am and are you and the lexical items were names in the Bible.  The reading skill taught in this lesson was scanning, when they were given the text in which Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd.  In this text, there are a lot of sentences that start with I am, which the learners, after a pre-reading activity, would try to find.  Every lesson also contained a section called Bible Search, a success-oriented exploratory task, and in this one they were to search names of God in the Bible, given the references.  In every two or three lessons, I taught them a song in English (mostly songs that have been translated into Portuguese) whose words had some of the structures or vocabulary they had been learning.

There were also consolidation exercises to be done as homework.  They were basically grammar and vocabulary exercises, such as gap-fills or transformation, one page for each lesson.  Basically all of the sentences or dialogues used in these exercises were Bible verses.  For example, in lesson 1, the following dialogue was used:

Jewish priest:  who are              ?
John, the Baptist:                     am not the Christ.
Priest:  Who are               then?  Are               Elijah?
John:  No,                   am not.
Priest:  Are              the Prophet?
John:  No.
Priest:  Then tell us who                   are.
John:                     am the voice of someone shouting in the desert.

I have always enjoyed developing my own teaching materials, but one thing I disliked was to have to make up sentences for exercises.  I didn’t have this problem when designing these lessons. I just did a search in the computer Bible and the sentences would just pop up!  Sometimes it was hard to decide which dialogues or verses to use.

Step 3.  The application of the material
I put up a sign in the church announcing that I would be teaching a 30-hour experimental English course with a new method.  Nine brothers and sisters signed up.  Each one was given a copy of the material in a booklet-format along with a Bible in English.  The classes met four times a week for one hour a day.  The learners were all beginners - seven of them had had some contact with English either a long time ago or for a short period of time and one of these had been taking an English course at another institution for 6 months.  The other two were genuine beginners and had never studied English before.  None of them had ever had any contact with English related to the Bible.

Step 4.  Evaluation
On the first day of class, knowing that they were taking part in an experiment, they agreed to be tested in their knowledge of the English language, and this test was called pre-test.  It was a written evaluation, where reading, structure and functions were tested, according to what would be taught in the mini-course.  At the end of the 
thirty hours, the same test was taken again (post-test).  All of the learners had positive results between the pre-test and the post-test.  This is how the knowledge was assessed in quantitative terms.

However, the  most important evaluation was how the learners felt and the learning that really took place, which cannot be assessed by a single test.  At the end of the course, the learners also answered a questionnaire, where they commented on their impressions about the mini-course.  Some of their comments were as follows:

                    “This method motivated me to learn English.”
                    “Learning from something we already know helps us to learn.”
                    “This way it’s easier to learn any language.”
                    “I gained great profit for my spiritual life.”
                    “There was a great interaction with the teacher.”      
                    “It fired me with enthusiasm for the Bible.”
                    “It was worth it.”

My own evaluation was based on four criteria:  the learning, the attendance at class, the learners’ involvement, and my own involvement.

As far as the learning was concerned, the tests taken during the mini-course reflect a considerable level of progress, but they fail to measure each learner’s actual performance.  What I can say is that they definitely learned more than the tests can measure.  For example, at each new week a new Bible verse was introduced for memorisation.  The spiritual gain was also intangible, but perceptible.  One learner commented that the course had given her more enthusiasm for reading the Bible and another one dropped her Portuguese Bible and is still seen around with her English version in the church.  Still another learner was very excited because he’d visited a site on the Web about Bible-related topics and had understood a lot of things.  These are examples of actual learning taking place.

Class attendance has always been for me a way of knowing how learners are taking advantage of the lessons.  If the students are absent too often or if there is a high drop-out rate, this is frequently a sign that there is something about the programme that needs to be reconsidered.  Students looking at their watches all too often or reminding the teacher it’s time to go home may mean that the lessons are falling apart.  In this mini-course, there was no attendance check, but the learners were practically never absent, even though it was during the rainy season and many of them would walk to the church. Often the lessons were longer than planned, but they would not show any sort of discomfort.

The learners got quite involved in the experiment.  I heard a number of comments from people who were not participating in the programme, describing the engagement the subjects were showing towards the course.  A tremendous experience to illustrate the engagement was in lesson 7.  The theme of the unit was descriptions and we were
focussing on describing places.  In the Bible search section, they filled the board with sentences that described heaven, given the Biblical references.  That activity generated such a fruitful discussion about this subject that we ended the lesson praising God with a song in English.  Two days after the course was over, there was a party at the church and the group took the initiative to sing the songs we had learned in English and so they did.  I believe these reports can be seen as clear elements of involvement.

As for my own involvement, I can say that this was one of the most enjoyable teaching experiences I have ever had. From the arduous, yet pleasurable, design of the lessons, to the teaching itself and the results I got, the whole process was very rewarding to me.  The group was very receptive, which motivated me.  Strong bonds of friendship grew within us each new day and I know that was a significant element in the success of the experiment.  The fact that that was an optimal learning situation helped me through.

Conclusions

Advantages
The advantages of using the Bible for teaching English concern motivation and confidence.

The learners’ motivation was an ultimate element in this experiment.  According to Brown’s (1994) classification of motivation into extrinsic and intrinsic, this experiment contained both types.  The former, carried out in anticipation of a reward, such as marks, was present when the learners got a Bible in English for participating in the project, which had been announced beforehand.  The latter, the engagement in an activity for its own sake, was also present when the learners showed interest in learning English through the Bible for no other purpose but the learning itself. Taking into account that all of the learners were believers, nothing  could be more intrinsically motivating than the Scriptures.  It is possible that some of them may have participated in this experiment because of the Bible in English they would get, but it is more likely that it was the intrinsic motivation the fundamental element of their participation.

The other advantage of teaching English to evangelical Christians from the Bible is their confidence.  The tasks to be done were related to their background knowledge.  For example, in lesson 6, about describing people, the lead-in task was to match David and Goliath to some pre-taught adjectives (strong, young, tall, short).  The episode of the frail young shepherd who faces the strong giant of the Philistine army is well-known to every believer.  The challenge was in the task itself, and not in the learning about new people or facts.  Even with little knowledge of the language, the tasks were not intimidating, because the new material was always related to old, generating confidence in the learners.

Limitations
As with every piece of research, this experiment also has its limitations.  I cannot be sure that I or another teacher would have the same results in a different learning-teaching situation.  The church where this experiment was conducted is a middle-class Brazilian community that gives a lot of emphasis to the learning of the Bible.  Maybe in another Christian group this material wouldn’t be appropriate because not much advantage could be taken from the background knowledge.  Another limitation was the small number of subjects involved in the experiment. Only nine people may be a rather small sample, not significant enough in order to declare this method absolutely effective.  Another shortcoming was the brief period of time the experiment lasted.  Only 30 hours didn’t intend to prepare the learners to use English fluently.  The intention was to test the principle underlying the method and the impact that idea would have on believers.  However, I have to admit that a longer experiment would have to be conducted in order to really confirm its validity.

If you have any comments, suggestions or ideas, please write to me at debpamp@hotmail.com.  They will be very welcome.

References:

•	ABBS, B. & FREEBAIRN, I.  American Blueprint 1.  England: Longman
•	AHELLAL, M.  “Using authentic materials in the classroom: theoretical assumptions and practical considerations”.  In: FORUM, Volume XXVIII, No 2, pp.37-39, April 1990.
•	BROWN, H.D.  Teaching by principles:  an interactive approach to language pedagogy.  USA: Prentice-Hall Regents. 1994, pp.66-68.
•	CASTILLO, R.  “Teaching learners to learn”.  In: FORUM, Volume XIX, No 3, pp.29-30, 1991.
•	DU VIVIER, M., HOPKINS, A & POTTER, J.  Look Ahead. England:  Longman
•	 FORRESTER, A. & SAVAGE, A.  Take 1.  Edinburgh:  nelson, 1992, p.xii.
•	 HUTCHINSON, T. & WATERS, A.  English for Specific Purposes - a learner-centred approach.  Cambridge:CUP, 1987, pp.12-19.
•	RICHARDS, J.  New Interchange 1.  Cambridge: CUP.1997