TEYL and provide direction for future research agendas.
The conference was targeted at experts and decision makers within the educational process with the aims of influencing future policy and planning decisions with regard to teaching English to children and creating opportunities for further collaboration, joint research and sharing. In addition, the conference provided opportunities for showcasing specific innovations, experiments and projects with regard to teaching English to children.
The following are highlights from the projects and case studies presented, which will be divided into primary school projects and projects aiming at teacher training for changes.
Iceland
Prof Lefever presented the results of a survey on teachers' and students' attitudes towards English, and their opinion about teaching and learning methods.
The results of the survey show a great discrepancy between curriculum and practice, and that most teachers lack training. Of particular interest was what was found after a study of nine-year-olds who had no training in English: they all did well in a listening comprehension test on basic English. This raised a very challenging issue: what is the role of teachers if children can acquire the language outside school?
Spain
Pilar Medrano presented the challenges and achievements of the Bilingual Project established in 1996 in 44 state schools. The project covers schooling from the age of 3 to the age of 16 with 7-10 sessions of English a week. Its objectives are
?to provide from a very early stage an enriched model of education through an integrated curriculum where two languages and two cultures meet to create a quality school experience;
?children who have been educated through such a model will be able to function in two or more cultures and will be better prepared to face up to the demands of the 21st century in an increasingly multilingual Europe.
In order to meet the demands, the project incorporates teacher development, part
of which includes language immersion and training in various areas of the school curriculum, plenty of opportunities to participate in teacher development and focus on transition and assessment.
It can be concluded that the success of this project is based on two pillars:
investment of the government and teacher development strategies.
Brazil
Dr. Telma Gimenez presented a case study of a project carried out in the city of Londrina, Parana. As part of this project, English is taught to students attending single shift state schools. This is in charge of specialist teachers with a degree in English, which creates the need to implement emergency teacher training.
Teachers are using tailor made materials based on a curriculum which favours the communicative approach. English is presented in locally contextualised situations.
A serious problem to be faced is that as from year 5, education does not depend on local governments but on the state government, which may decide to cancel the project.
Early language learning in Europe
A group of six researches from Spain, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Italy and England is conducting a qualitative study incorporating quantitative longitudinal and comparative dimensions whose aim is to find out what can realistically be achieved in state schools where relatively limited amounts of class time are allocated to FL.
Their focus at present is on two aspects:
?The significance of the teacher's role in EFL and
?The particular impact of digital media on learning Their research is based on three strands:
?The factors contributing most effectively to the success of ELL;
?The processes of policy implementation;
?The linguistic and non-linguistic outcomes of ELL.
At the conference, the results were presented of two key issues related to the first strand: the learning environment and the learner's attitude and motivation.
The findings show significant differences among the six countries, with Croatia at the upper end of the continuum and England at the lower end.
China
To meet the challenges of joining WTO, the Chinese government made the decision in 2001 to promote English as a foreign language in primary schools with learner-centredness as one of its main underlying philosophies. The overall aim of the programme is to develop students' comprehensive language competence by making learning a process during which students improve cross-cultural awareness and develop positive attitudes, thinking skills and autonomous learning strategies so as to gradually become independent learners. The main task for the English curriculum innovation reflects the shift from the transmission mode of teaching on grammar and vocabulary to the development of students' overall ability in language use with emphasis on educational objectives.
The immediate challenge facing primary English is the supply of qualified teachers. Since 2001, a number of pre-service and in-service courses have been set up to meet the needs of expanding primary English nationwide. The situation at present is characterised as follows:
?The primary EFL teaching profession is mainly composed of female teachers with limited experience in TEYL and different levels of qualifications.
?Nearly 90% of the teachers welcome the ideologies of LC teaching and see its importance and relevance to Chinese primary language teaching, yet they fail to follow a LC approach.
Three main problems are identified that feature the expansion of TEYL in Chinese primary schools:
?EYL teachers' quality in general is rather worrying coupled with a serious shortage of teacher supply.
?There exists a diversified teaching effectiveness among different schools and in different regions.
?The provision of English in the country schools encounters an even graver situation with no teachers and necessary resources available.
However, it should be noted that despite all the difficulties, a majority of primary EFL teachers in China are overwhelmingly supportive of the new curriculum.
English in East Asia
Dr Butler summarized the main challenge of the region in three issues:
?Accounting for diversity while providing equal access
?Hiring Native English speaking teachers versus training local teachers
?Adopting popular ELT methods and adapting them to local contexts
For each of the issues, she showed how the global and the local factors interact:
GLOBAL LOCAL
English is considered a communication tool
English is a barometer of academic achievement
Oral communicative skills are highly valued
Belief that NSs are the ideal language teachers
Many teachers are not language teaching specialists Low confidence
What is considered as “good communication”?
Certain types of ELT methods have gained in popularity (CLT, task-based instruction, etc.)
Related concepts have been promoted among teachers (student-centered teaching, authentic materials, activities, etc.)
Structural factors Conceptual factors Linguistic factors
It is a common feature that teacher training should be at the core of every project. Taiwan and Bahrain presented two innovative projects to make provision for the need of teachers specialised in primary teaching. Both in Taiwan and Bahrain, there was need to educate teachers into teaching young learners, but also into following a communicative approach to teaching.
Taiwan
Seeded Teachers and Central Advisory Team were established as a national programme to facilitate teachers' professional development. Seeded teachers are experienced teachers trained by the MOE to become specialists, whose mission is
to demonstrate the latest teaching methods and activities, to coordinate with local teachers and to set up a model of high quality teaching. The CAT is made up of experienced teachers (at least 5 years of teaching experience) who work with the central government to plan training courses.
At present, there is a three-tier instructional consulting team working at central government, local government and school levels:
MOE Curriculum and Instructional Consulting Team (or Central Advisory team) Regional Instructional Consulting Teams
Mentors
For each of the tiers there is a supervision and evaluation framework, which guarantees quality and standards. There are plenty of opportunities for development at all levels, especially for teachers and mentors.
Bahrain
Bahrain introduced a four-phase programme:
?Teacher training courses with emphasis on teaching young learners
?Train the trainer course
?Teacher trainer and trainer practice course
?Annual standardisation and evaluation workshops The key strands of the programme feature
?trainer teaching and teacher training
?developing teachers' networks
?ELT websites
?international conferences and seminars
The MOE and teachers consider that this programme is successful for two main reasons:
?They focus on factors that contribute to success.
?They respect the local context and participants, i.e. behavioural norms, cultural norms, systems and resources.
Apart from the projects and programmes just outlined, three key issues were debated. The first one, raised by Dr Prabhu, focused on the role of the teacher and the power relationship between English and a learner'sL1. The second issue, put forward by Professor Johnstone, revolved around the discussion whether younger is actually better. The third one, presented by Dr Graddol, introduced a wider
perspective since it dealt with the development of English into a lingua franca and its implications for the teaching of English.
Dr Prabhu stated that after years of research, L2 learning is still not predictable, success cannot be guaranteed, and many times, learning is not complete. He posed the question whether L2 learning can be made similar to L1 acquisition. He concluded that even though this is not possible, there can be attempts to create similar conditions provided the teacher adopts a natural approach as opposed to a more rational approach to language teaching. In this respect, he equated the notion of teacherese with that of motherese. He ended his talk by making reference to the fact that in countries such as India, in which English is the language of communication irrespective of people's mother tongue, it should never be made to have pre-eminence over people's L1.
Prof. Johnstone presented three hypotheses, as outlined by David Singleton (2001, 2004):
?the younger the better,
?the older the better
?the younger the better in the long run under certain circumstances
He started by stating the potential advantages of starting at a young age, which are summarised below:
?Young learners have a better disposition to acquire the sound system.
?They are less language anxious, which, in Krashen's terms (1985), lowers their affective filter.
?They have more time available overall. However, few periods a week do not result in learners acquiring the language.
?Starting at a young age creates productive links between L1 and additional languages.
?The range of acquisition and learning processes over time can complement each other.
?Finally, there is positive influence of children's general developmental:
cognitive, linguistic and literacy, emotional and cultural.
Older learners, on the other hand, have some potential advantages over younger learners:
?They can make use of an existing cognitive map of the world.
?They are experienced in discourse, e.g. they know how to manage conversation and get feedback.
?Older children have more spontaneous concepts available to them.
?They have a wider range of strategies for learning: note taking, summarising, use of reference materials, searching for underlying patterns to mention but a few.
?They may have a clearer sense of why, what and how, to direct their learning.
He summarised this dichotomy by stating that younger learners need a naturalistic environment while older learners can benefit from naturalistic and instructional environments as well.
Prof. Johnstone made reference to policy developments, which he considers essential for implementing programmes. Though there are a number of advantages associated with them, such as additional resources, and a high status and prestige for the schools involved, there are also potential drawbacks in large scale policy developments:
?they may be based on popular but dubious assumptions;
?they may be too different from busy teachers and current practice and thinking so aims and processes may be distorted to fit existing conceptions;
?they may offer quick fix but supply may dry up as other policy priorities arise, so development may become unsustainable;
?they may promote an over-standardised model of teaching implicitly discouraging alternative approaches. In this respect, teachers should not be seen as the tools of implementation of a policy but as agents of change.
He concluded his presentation by summarising the features of successful modern languages at primary school and foreign language at elementary school:
?early introduction of reading and writing
?good use of generic skills of teaching, e.g. careful planning, creating an ethos that is supportive but also challenging encouraging children to think and collaborate.
?explicit strategies for transferring concepts about language from L1 to AL (alternative language).
?good arrangements to ensure continuity from primary to secondary levels.
Dr Graddol (2006) presented an overview of the global trends in education, and outlined the characteristics of New Global English:
?the motives for learning English are different;
?the motivation for learning English is also different nowadays;
?English is perceived as the language of economic/employment access;
?English has become the international language of knowledge, especially science, technology and news;
?English has become a lingua franca;
?English has become a kind of Windows platform on which programmes are based.
English as a lingua franca (ELF) raises interesting issues for the teaching of English, since it is more concerned with soft skill and intelligibility than accuracy. As most interactions will not include a native speaker, there is heavier emphasis and focus on instructional communicative skills and presentation skills, and competence, at least receptive, is needed in many forms of English. In this respect, bilinguals are often better at lingua franca usage than monolingual native speakers.
The following are emergent features of ELF, which will affect the teaching of English world-wide:
?the 3rd person singular for the Simple Present Tense does not require an –s;
?the complex native speaker usage of the and a will simplify and articles may be lost
?the which vs. who distinction may disappear;
?non count plurals may regularise (e.g. informations);
?the pronunciation of th may become a /t/ and a stop.
Conclusion
The age at which students start learning English is dropping due to trends in education to meet the requirements of globalisation. Therefore, the teaching English has become a political issue, yet ELT academics are not politicians.
The teacher in the classroom plays a crucial role, and no programme can be successful unless it is accompanied by teacher development and education.
References
Graddol, D. (2006): English Next. British Council.
Krashen, S. (1985): The Input Hypothesis. London: Longman
Singleton, D. (2001): Age And Second Language Acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (21 2001). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Singleton, D and L. Ryan (2004): Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. London: Multilingual Matters.