“Summary of Teaching English as Foreign Language”
Geoffrey Broughton, Christopher Brumfit, Roger Flavell, Peter Hill and Anita Pincas
University of London Institute of Education
Second edition published 1980
Presented by :
Name : Agus Hultanudin
NIM : E1D 011 001
Class : VA
Faculty of Teacher Training and Education
University of Mataram
English is International language
English has being the major and official world language since about 400 years ago because almost all of country in the world has used English for all of their activities. For instance, announcement, broadcast radio programs, and mail. There are more than 60% radio programs in the world use English and about 70% the world’s mail. The role of commerce and education is important to make English became common language in communication.
English as a first language and second language
English is used as the first language in USA and Australasia because they are using it as their mother tongue. It is also become the second language in Ghana and Singapore where English is the language of commercial, administrative and educational institutions. There are two main kinds of motivation in foreign language learning including instrumental and integrative. When learning a foreign language instrumentally, we need it for operational purposes, for example to be able to read books in the new language, to be able to communicate with other speakers of that language. When we learn a foreign language for integrative purposes, we are trying to identify much more closely with a speech community which uses that language variety; we want to feel at home in it, we try to understand the attitudes and the world view of that community. In a second language situation, English is the language of the mass media: newspapers, radio and television are largely English media.
English as a foreign language
Beside as the first and second language, English is also as a foreign English is a foreign language. That is, it is taught in schools, often widely, but it does not play an essential role in national or social life. In Spain, Brazil and Japan, for example, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese are the normal medium of communication and instruction: the average citizen does not need English or any other foreign language to live his daily life or even for social or professional advancement.
Here also tell us about how the teachers teaching in the class. There three lesson and some phases as the example for the teaching method.
First of all, there are twenty five students in secondary school, aged between 4 and 17 years old who have been learning English for two years. Their relationship with their teacher is one of affection and trust which has been built up over the year. They are about halfway through the second term. They are familiar with the vocabulary and structures necessary to describe people, jobs, family relationships and character in very general terms, also to tell the time, describe locomotion to and from places and to indicate purpose.
The teacher has a large picture on the blackboard. And the teacher gives the learners some questions perhaps with the 5W+1H.
The girls are all working in small groups of about four or five. The teacher is moving round the class from group to group, supplying bits of language that the pupils need and joining in the discussion.
The girls are acting out their dialogues in front of the class. Two girls from each group take the roles of the people actually speaking, the others, together with any additional pupils needed to make up the numbers, form the queue, and are miming impatience, indifference, and so on.
The second classroom contains eighteen adults of mixed nationality most of whom have been studying English for from five to eight years. Their class meets three hours a week and they have virtually no contact with one another outside the classroom. They have had this teacher for about a month now and are familiar with the kinds of technique he uses.
The teacher has distributed copies of a short text (about 400 words) to the students and they are sitting quietly reading through it. Attached to the text are a number of multiple choice questions and the students are attempting to decide individually which of the choices in each question most closely matches the sense of the text.
The students are working in five small groups with four or five of them in each group and discussing with one another why they believe that one interpretation is superior to another.
On the blackboard the teacher has drawn up a grid with five vertical columns—one for each group—and ten horizontal rows—one for each multiple choice question. He has been asking each group to indicate which choice they had made for each question.
In the third classroom the teacher has just announced, ‘This morning we are going to learn about the Simple Present Tense in English. Then explains to the learners and gives them some questions about it.
Kinds of communication
Man is able to exploit a range of techniques of communication. Many are in essence the same as those used by other creatures. Man is vocal, he uses his body for gestures of many kinds, he conveys information by facial expression, but he has extended these three basic techniques by adding the dimension of representation. Thus both speech and gesture can be represented in picture form or symbolically and conveyed beyond the immediate context.
It is unfortunate that the word language is often used to cover all forms of communication, and that the term animal language is common. These expressions obscure a very important distinction between communication which is basically a set of signals, and communication which is truly language, human language.
Features of language
Language has two fundamental features which mark it as quite different in kind from signals: productivity and structural complexity. First, language allows every human being to produce utterances, often quite novel, in an infinite number of contexts, where the language is bent, moulded and developed to fit ever-developing communicative needs. Second, language is not a sequence of signals, where each stands for a particular meaning. If words were merely fixed signals of meaning, then each time a word occurred it would signal the same thing, irrespective of the structure of the whole utterances in fact there would be no ‘whole utterances’ beyond individual words.
The transmission of information
As the major and most complex technique we have of communicating information, spoken language allows us to produce a sequence of vocal sounds in such a way that another person can reconstruct from those sounds a useful approximation to our original meaning.
In the process of communication, every speaker adjusts the way he speaks (or writes) according to the situation he is in, the purpose which motivates him, and the relationship between him and the person he is addressing. Certain ways of talking are appropriate for communicating with intimates, other ways for communicating with non-intimates; certain ways of putting things will be understood to convey politeness, others to convey impatience or rudeness or anger. In fact, all our vast array of language use can be classified into many different categories related to the situation and purpose of communication. For a foreign learner, it might sometimes be more important to achieve this kind of communicative competence than to achieve a formal linguistic correctness.
Presentation and practice
Just as the processes of language teaching presuppose a theory of the nature of language, they equally need to be based upon a theory of language learning. The one is derived from applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, the other from educational psychology and psycholinguistics.
Pronunciation teaching deals with two interrelated skills recognition or understanding the flow of speech, and production or fluency in the spoken language. These skills rely very little on intellectual mastery of any pronunciation rules. Ultimately it is only practice in listening and speaking which will give the learner the skills he requires. Learning to acquire the pronunciation habits of a foreign language, however, involves a larger number of new skills, especially recognition skills.
The sound system
The truth is that in the area of sounds, as in all other areas of language, structure is all-important. Although separate sounds can be isolated, the characteristics they show in isolation will not be the same as the characteristics they have in the context of neighboring sounds and the overall structure of the utterance. An oversimplified view of English phonology so frequently leads to a teacher’s and his pupil’s sense of failure. Phonology, the study of the sound system, is as vital to him as phonetics, the study of the physical properties of sounds and their place and manner of articulation in the vocal tract. Phonology, the study of the sound system, is as vital to him as phonetics, the study of the physical properties of sounds and their place and manner of articulation in the vocal tract.
The aim of pronunciation teaching must be that the students can produce English speech which is intelligible in the areas where they will use it. In teaching the different uses of /t/ and /d/ to students who have difficulties with either or both, the distinction of voicing is a useful starting point and examples should be taken of these sounds used between two vowels, as in rated, raided, sighting, siding, a tin, a din, etc. In initial position preceding a vowel, the distinction must emphasize presence or absence of aspiration, and in final position lengthening of the vowel preceding /d/.
In foreign language teaching, pronunciation is the one area where it is generally agreed that imitation is the essence of the learning process. On occasion he can make the task easier by separating out the items to be heard. If the students cannot hear a /ts/ combination at the end of words like cats, mats, and persistently hear either just /kæt/ or /mæt/ or /kæs/ or /mæs/, the teacher can contrast /t/ with /ts/ and /s/ with /ts/ separately. (Failure to make the plural correctly is often due to a pronunciation problem like this one, as are some other apparently grammatical errors.)
It is very difficult to build up a graded teaching sequence for pronunciation teaching, because, even at beginner level, all the sounds of English tend to occur within the first few months of teaching. The amount of time devoted to specifically pronunciation teaching depends on the larger priorities of the course in general. The teacher should be prepared to slip a few minutes’ pronunciation drill into a lesson at any point where a significant problem is noticed. It has a natural place in much grammar work, e.g. the teaching of plural endings, third person singular simple present tense, simple past tense and past participles of regular verbs, use of questions of different types, use of adverbial modifiers involving intonation distinctions, and so on.
It is a principle common to this and the previous chapter that listening should precede speaking. Clearly, it is impossible to expect a student to produce a sound which does not exist in his mother tongue or a natural sentence using the stress, rhythms and intonation of a native speaker of the foreign language without first of all providing him with a model of the form he is to produce. At first sight it appears that listening is a passive skill, and speaking is an active one. There are some steps for teaching listening, it is including to training listening, extensive listening and intensive listening.
However good a student may be at listening and understanding, it need not follow that he will speak well. A discriminating ear does not always produce a fluent tongue. There has to be training in the productive skill of speech as well. In many cases, listening should lead naturally on to speaking.
Guided oral work
It is probably a mistake to structure so tightly all the utterances demanded of a student that it is difficult for him to make an error. Practically, it is nearly impossible to do, and mistakes in themselves can teach a lot. It seems that making mistakes and learning from their correction is a natural part of the learning process, so too great rigidity in control may well be counter-productive. Guided oral practice aims to give the student a limited freedom to use and practice what he has learnt, yet still be subject to some restraints. In general, it is best to provide the general situation and content of what is to be said, but allow some freedom in the mode of expression.
The conversation class
Conversation classes are very common at intermediate and advanced levels, often with small groups and individuals rather than large classes. They usually take place in private schools or with private teachers rather than in state-run institutions. The general assumption is that simply talking in a free and easy way, preferably to a native speaker, is the best way to improve oral fluency.
It is a common place of teacher education that teachers tend to teach by the methods which were used by the teachers who taught them. In no area of language teaching is this truer than in that of reading. A third skill which is involved in the total skill of reading is essentially an intellectual skill; this is the ability to correlate the black marks on the paper by way of the formal elements of language, let us say the words as sound, with the meanings which those words symbolize. We have therefore three components in the reading skill; the recognition of the black marks, the correlation of these with formal linguistic elements and the further correlation of the result with meaning.
One relatively mechanical aspect of reading is that related to reading speed. The second point which the teacher needs to bear in mind is that the choice of an appropriate text is very important in building up pupils’ reading competence. The third point is that it is important that all the aspects of reading, all the various kinds of relationship, between words in the text, between grammatical constructions, between logical and rhetorical elements, between the author and the reader and the text should be covered by the questioning. The fourth point the teacher needs to bear in mind when using questions to help pupils to understand what they read is that the form in which the question is put may have a bearing on how easy or difficult it is for the pupil.
a. Teaching extensive reading
The practice of extensive reading needs little justification. It is clearly the easiest way of bringing the foreign learner into sustained contact with a substantial body of English. If he reads, and what he reads is of some interest to him, then the language of what he has read rings in his head, the patterns of collocation and idiom are established almost painlessly with a range and intensity which is impossible in terms of oral classroom treatment of the language, where the constraints of lock-step teaching and multiple repetitions, however necessary they may be, impose severe restrictions on the sheer volume of the amount of language with which pupils come into contact.
A writing programme
There should be a programme to develop writing skills which works all the way through the educational system. Such a programme would list the main types of writing which it felt students should be able to master by the end of their education, and would offer guidelines to teachers on ways of achieving success with each of these.
A basic methodology for written work
In dealing with written work, there are a number of ways in which the teacher can bring the task to the level of his class. Basically, this means making the exact solutions to the writing problem more and more explicit the lower down the educational system we go. The teacher can grade the task in the following ways:
1 He can limit the length of the written material to be produced.
2 He can increase the amount of class preparation for the task.
3 He can provide guidance on the final form of the written work, for example with picture prompts, or word prompts, or memory prompts as a result of the oral preparation.
4 He can encourage students to collaborate in the actual process of writing.
5 He can allow cross-checking between the draft stage and the writing of the final product.
6 He can limit the complexity of the writing task itself.
7 He can demand that the task be completed either slowly or quickly.
Errors, Correction and Remedial Work
Errors will always be made, and have direct implications for remedial work because they are by their nature systematic infringements of the normal rules of the language. The teacher needs to plan his remedial treatment of them into the syllabus for the coming weeks and months.
The first stage is to establish what the error is. The basic question to ask is whether what the learner intended to state is the same as the normal understanding of what he actually said or rote. The second stage is to establish the possible sources of the error, to explain why it happened. It is important to do this as a full knowledge of the causes of an error enables the teacher to work out a more effective teaching strategy to deal with it.
Assessment and Examinations
An examination of this kind may be set by the teachers or head of department in a school, or by some central examining body like the Ministry of Education in various countries or the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate—to mention only the best known of the British examining bodies. This usage of the word examination is fairly consistent in the literature on the subject and presents few difficulties.
The word testis much more complicated. It has at least three quite distinct meanings. One of them refers to a carefully prepared measuring instrument, which has been tried out on a sample of people like those who will be assessed by it, which has been corrected and made as efficient and accurate as possible using the whole panoply of statistical techniques appropriate to educational measurement. The second meaning of test refers to what is usually a short, quick teacher-devised activity carried out in the classroom, and used by the teacher as the basis of an on-going assessment. The third meaning which is sometimes given to test is that of an item within a larger test, part of a test battery, or even sometimes what is often called a question in an examination.
Subjective and objective testing
The understanding is that objective tests are those which can be marked almost entirely mechanically, by an intelligent automaton or even a machine. The answers are usually recorded non-linguistically, by a tick or a cross in a box, a circle round a number or letter, or the writing of a letter or number.
If ‘knowing a language’ is seen as the ability to communicate in particular sorts of situation, then the assessment will be in terms of setting up simulations of those situations and evaluating how effective the communication is that takes place. Situations are likely to have to be specified in terms of the role and status of the participants. The degree of formality of the interaction, the attitudes and purposes of the participants, the setting or context and the medium of transmission used is spoken or written language. The productive-receptive dimension will also enter in since this is often relevant to the roles of participants.
Kind of assessment
There are at least four different sorts of purpose that assessment may serve. First, one may wish to assess whether a particular individual will ever be able to learn any foreign language at all. An assessment of this kind is an assessment of aptitude. Second, assessment may be made to determine how much English an individual actually knows with a view to how well he might be able to function in situations, which may be more or less closely specified, often quite outside the language learning classroom. Third, assessment may be made to determine the extent of student learning, or the extent to which instructional goals have been attained. The four terms aptitude, proficiency, achievement, and diagnostic care very frequent in the literature on testing and it is well to get their meaning clear. It is also worth noting the characteristic usages which these terms have.
English in the primary school
In learning English as foreign language for primary school, France, Holland and Sweden try an experiment for children from seven and nine years old and they using oral method to teach them and they get the excellent result. This is shows that the oral method is appropriate to apply in primary school.
The young learner
English lesson for the young learners must be short. The ideal time to learning for the young learners between five and seven years old is about twenty to thirty minutes in a day and for older primary school forty-five minutes is a longer period. Their lesson is like mention part of their body. The teachers can also use the mime, imitation and repetition approach to teach the young learners because in this period they interested in play game.
Learning English in the secondary school
One of the characters of secondary schools is large. The teachers have to know how to solve this situation by their ability. For example they have to know what the appropriate materials he can give them. The teachers have to know how to make himself to be a center attention for the learners and can manage the classroom. When teaching large classes, particularly, the teacher has to think very carefully about the most appropriate ways of enabling every pupil to participate as fully as possible in the lesson.
Teaching English to adults
In teaching English for adult, we need the advanced English because they have to learning English in high level. They have to learn about advanced of the speaking, listening, reading, vocabulary and well pronunciation. The teachers also have to teaching ESP for them because they are prepared to be the workers.
The English Department
The English department must have the good organization and administration. Listed below are some of the main areas for which English departments may be responsible:
1. Reception, stamping and storage of new books and equipment.
2. Maintaining inventories of all equipment.
3. Preparation of orders for new equipment.
4. Running external and internal examinations.
5. Filing all information of importance to staff and students, so that it is readily accessible.
6. Maintaining records of students’ progress
The head of department also has important role in determine the English department to be good or not.