What Is The Problem?

I. THE MAJOR OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE LEARNING OF ENGLISH IN HUNGARIAN STATE SCHOOLS

1. ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

a. Most EFL teachers believe that their major role in the classroom is the transmission of information. Their "teaching" results in very boring lessons (to pupils and teachers alike).

• extremely high teacher-talking-time and from very low to none student-talking-time,
• a defensive attitude to both the target language and the pupils,
• discipline problems in classes (traditionally a "good class" is both silent and paralyzed),
• extremely high level of (unnecessary and avoidable) stress for pupils,
• the transmission of the teacher's mistakes-weaknesses in English as well,
• most pupils' antipathy to / hatred for the (learning of) the language.

Seen from the standpoint of the "progressive" school of teaching "In order for learning to occur in general it must be meaningful learning. This means that the learner must understand the material to be learned, think actively and solve problems within the area of knowledge, and critically evaluate alternatives." (Bolton, N. DLP M1, p.5.) All the "results" of this problem clearly indicate that this sort of teaching is not accompanied by meaningful learning, the pupils do not understand the material to be learned and do not evaluate alternatives critically. Bolton goes on saying that "We may define learning as the progressive change in the capacities of persons, occurring as a result of experience, to understand, control and develop their environments in such a way that they can realize their potential as individuals within the social order."(ibid. p.9.) If we confront this definition with the problem above, it is obvious why so many students spend 8 to 10 years with learning a language with very little to show for it. "The expertise is no longer to be seen as one of knowledge or even of skills to impart it. The credibility of teachers as organizers of learning experiences depend on their perceived ability to organize their own learning and practise what they promote... learning results from the interaction of learners, not just from submission to expert treatment."(ibid. p.11. quoting Sayer, J. "Teachers as Learners".) If pupils' learning difficulties originate in the transmission model of teaching, the teachers' teaching difficulties must originate in the transmission model of teacher-training. Very often pupils learn a great deal in spite of the teaching. By the same token teachers may teach a great deal in spite of their teacher-training.

b. Most EFL teachers still do not teach English through English. Traditionally the language used for classroom management is L1 by which any message in English would very easily become artificial and actually a stumbling block in teacher -- pupil communication.

c. In most EFL classrooms in Hungarian elementary schools the grammar-translation method is still in vogue. This outmoded, but deadly stubborn concept suggests that translation should take pupils to understanding (rather than the other way around: understanding might make it possible for pupils to translate if they wish). Dogmatic grammar on the other hand is good for one thing: postmortems. That is how you find out why something did not work. Both of these misconceptions are clear proofs that these teachers are not aware how their teaching impedes and in what other ways it would promote learning. Translation at early stages of learning takes students to the sort of understanding that makes meaningful practice impossible (i.e. psychologically blocked). Without practice the "material" never consolidates, does not become a habit and is soon forgotten. If we let or make the pupils translate at early stages of learning,

• we assign them the role of translator/interpreter;
• make / let them work with very long reaction time; and
• delay / impede their thinking in English.

d. It is not so obvious, but just as painfully significant that most teachers "teach" the book (or the language at best) rather than the pupils. Unthinking, habitual behaviour is the teacher's worst enemy. S/he gets into ruts without realizing it. The mystery, the sense of discovery, and the awareness that a person had when the job was "new" give way to safe routines. There is a tendency to ride with the status quo, or modest changes at best.

e. If "presentation" is grammar / translation -- centred, it goes without saying that "assessment" can only be rules (i.e. how to "make" present perfect perfect), and word-list / word-test centered. By these, teachers assess neither the teaching nor the learning (of anything useful) but at least they try to make the unquantifiable quantifiable.

f. School-textbooks do not follow modern/humanistic methodology; they usually contain up to 50 "new words" (i.e. new lexical items) and 20-25 new grammatical/structural categories per lesson (e.g. they want to make the pupils "swallow up" the present perfect in one single bite).

g. If teachers know relatively little about their pupils' learning, its general corollary would be that pupils know almost nothing about their own learning (i.e. how to learn effectively). In the syllabi and the curricula (if and when they exist at all) we prescribe what to teach, and assess what pupils know, assuming that the efficiency and efficacy of our teaching is 100 per cent. It is something like a multi-dimensional black-box:

• If you (i.e. the pupil) learn it well, I am a very good teacher;
• If you do not learn it well, you are good for nothing and send your daddy in (but I am still a very good teacher);
• I (i.e. the textbook-writer) have written the book, so now it is your (i.e. the pupil's) turn to know it (quite independently from whether it is teachable and learnable or not).
• Very often teachers also assume that TEACHING and LEARNING are simultaneous processes, although TEACHING is most often only the induction period to LEARNING. Because of this, homework and autonomous learning are not organic parts of the TEACHING/LEARNING process, e.g. we give, as a bit of homework, something hard to chew on.
• Very often pupils know quite a lot in spite of whatever is going on in the classroom.

Hungarian teachers of English, in general, are not observation-resistant. Unfortunately, much of our formal education teaches us to be critics. We tend to focus on observable factors and neglect those that are not observable, e.g.

• What are the learners in fact learning?
• What is really going on in the groupwork?
• What do the learners feel about a given piece of teaching?

Since the teacher operates within an area of invisible role-performance, what s/he is doing is invisible to all outside the classroom but in many ways -- because of perceptual difficulties -- it is also invisible to her/him. Observation is all about helping her/him to see what is happening in her/his classroom more accurately. Without this helping attitude, observation is an educational peepshow.

h. Most Hungarian teachers of English overcorrect, i.e. act as critics. Because of this attitude to correction, learners operate at or below their level of accuracy and the productive skills are retarded. It also has very serious side-effects: since sentences (oral and written) are "made" according to rules, the analytic sub-skills dominate over synthetic ones. There must be a shift in philosophy for teachers re mistakes, fluency and accuracy.

"If making mistakes is a part of learning, and correction is a part of teaching, how do the two of them go together?

They go together in the work of teachers who see themselves as part of other peoples learning, where the teaching exists to serve the learning. After all, we can learn without teachers, but we cannot teach without learners.

Learners need a clear idea of the language that exists outside them and a strong feeling that the language is developing inside them. Students depend on the teacher to help with both of these needs, day after day, lesson after lesson, minute after minute:

• whether to correct,
• when to correct,
• what to correct,
• how to correct."

(Edge, J. "Mistakes and Correction" 1990. Longman.)

i. Traditionally teacher-training courses have had a "negative approach: the aim of training is to prevent disasters. That is one of the reasons why there are so many black-spots in classes.

The maxim you hear most often is:

"The devil take the hindmost".

The problem is that there is no such as hindmost, so let's not let the devil take him.

"failures of learning can be accounted for, to an extent, by explanations grounded in structure, culture and interaction. Failure to learn is not reducible solely to psychological, not solely reducible to being "not very bright" or "unintelligent". If we, as teachers and learners, develop an appreciative understanding of this sociological insight, there are significant implications for the ways in which we behave as teachers."

(Riseborough, G. DLP, M1. p.84.)

It is quite frightening, isn't it? And it happens in elementary schools which should be "joy-factories" (for both pupils and teachers) in the lower grades and "info-centers" for the upper ones. Please compare it with the present situation within which the school is a meeting point for teacher-killing students and student-killing teachers. The "result" is no wonder teachers with nervous breakdown and students who are practically illiterate after seven or eight years of going to school.2. SECONDARY SCHOOLS It is really impossible to understand the teaching / learning problems in secondary schools without reconstructing the beginning (i.e. problems in the elementary school) and extrapolating the end (i.e. problems in higher education).

Over and above the problems/obstacles mentioned above, secondary schools have some specific ones as follows:

a. After having learnt English for 4 to 6 years at the elementary school, some students practically have to start afresh. They have a long history of not learning the language.

b. Some of the schools cannot resist the temptation of trying to attract potential students who fall at the right extreme of the bell-shaped curve. If they do, both the teacher and classmates will have a difficult time; they may not be able (and happy) to compete with somebody who for example studied for six years in an English school in Kuwait.

c. The butt of criticism more recently has become a relatively new type of school, the so-called bilingual secondary school. When they started some 6 to 7 years ago, the psychic repercussions were really great, a lot of people thought it is the answer to all the (language teaching) world's problems. For the last 2 to 3 years this type of school has got short shrift from Government and a narrowed down financial supply.

The special problems for this type of schools are as follows:

Lack of clear aims, goals, objectives; i.e. somebody has to raise such questions as

• What are the purposes of the bilingual secondary school (BSS)?
• What roles are people assigned?
• What rules must be followed?
• What rights and restrictions are given and imposed?
• What are some of its critical, underlying assumptions?
• What are its key words?
• To what extent do the problems of the BSS require decisions? choices? solutions?
• To what extent are the teaching methods of the BSS obsolete?
• What are the critical, non-verbal symbols of the BSS?
• To what extent are these changing?
• What is the actual effect of the BSS on students? teachers? educational management? parents? local society?
• To what extent is this different from the ostensible purpose of the BSS?
• Are there alternatives to the BSS?
• Can we do without it?
• How is the BSS related to other schools and institutes of higher education?

(Based on Postman, N. and Weingartner, C. (1969) "Teaching as a Subversive Activity", Penguin Education Specialist, p.118.)

• lack of syllabi and curricula;
• lack of a clear definition of the scope of bilingualism (i.e. why do students learn physics, biology, history, etc. in English and what would their future possibilities be?);
• how do students learn physics, biology, history, etc. in English? i.e. Subject-matter teaching in a bilingual setting is language teaching to start with.

If subject-matter teaching is language teaching, then subject-matter teachers have to be language teachers, i.e. teachers with a deep insight into language teaching methodology.

• difficulties for students at the university entrance-examinations: e.g. at the University of Medicine students do not get in if they do not know physics well enough in Hungarian (after having studied it in English);

And now the Big One. The final examination in English is still grammar- and translation-based. Students who -- in principle -- have had the possibility to learn to think in English, to totally immerse in the language and its culture, will have to face an examination which has been outmoded for many decades now. It also has very serious side-effects:

• teachers have to give up using really modern methods and humanistic approaches if they want their students to be successful at the examination (a methodological valve-effect).

"examinations... should serve the following objectives:

• to raise standards across the whole ability range,
• to support improvements in the curriculum and in the way it is taught,
• to provide clear aims for teachers and pupils, to the benefit of both and of higher education and employers,
• to record proven achievement,
• to promote the measurement of achievement based on what candidates know, understand and can do, and
• to broaden the studies of pupils."

(Tolley, G. "Learning and Assessment" in Murphy, P. and Moon, B. (ed) in Developments in Learning and Assessment, 1989., Hodder and Stoughton).

Well, the present examination serves none of these objectives

3. HIGHER EDUCATION

a. Technical Colleges have traditionally been unable to attract student population with pre-intermediate level of English or above. On the other hand, languages cannot compete within the Colleges with any technical subject (as seen by most teaching staff). This situation results in a technical intelligentsia with very little or no foreign language competence. To make matters worse, they need English and they read English (since technical literature either comes late or nonexistent in Hungarian). They read English for many years and later, when they come to adult language classes they listen with their eyes (i.e. they want to hear whatever they would see). It is a real challenge for teachers either to make them join beginners classes (where they belong from their listening-and the speaking-skills' point of view), or to make them catch up with the listening-and speaking-skills if they go higher (where they belong from their vocabulary's point of view).

As Gardner describes the problem:

"In the study of skills and abilities, it is customary to honour a distinction between KNOW-HOW (tacit knowledge of how to execute something) and KNOW-THAT (propositional knowledge about the actual set of procedures involved in execution)."

(Gardner, H. "The Application of Intelligences", in Lee, V. ed. "Children Learning in School", 1990, Hodder and Stoughton, p.5.).

These engineers KNOW a great deal ABOUT the language without having even basic skills in using it.

It is very strongly suggested in the technical colleges that technically minded people do not stand good chances in learning foreign languages and

"a consequence of labelling a person as a particular type is that it is possible for the act of labelling to cause the person to behave in such a way that our predictions will come true because the number of courses of action open to the labelled person have been reduced. Thus, labels become the basis for a self-fulfilling prophecy. GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME!"

(Riseborough, G. DLP, M1 p.71.)

b. Teacher-Training Colleges have traditionally been the meeting-points of students with the highest level of English (and other languages). The main focus of attention at the selection(?) is language proficiency.

Typical problems that arise during and after the training are as follows:

• based on the existing proficiency (as the entry requirement), the target language is not taught at the colleges as a means of communication but only as the object of linguistic analysis;
• language proficiency in itself can be a little bit misleading: i.e. on the one hand it may mean that you are an efficient learner with excellent learning strategies and with a direct experience about the difficulties any learners have to face; on the other hand it may mean that you are lucky and learnt it effortlessly and consequently you have no insight whatsoever into how a language is (i.e. can be) learnt;
• many trainees do not have a clear idea of what a teacher's job entails. When they realize it during the practicals, it is catch - 22 : they either leave the field leaving a very expensive blank space behind, or, even worse, they stay for everybody's dissatisfaction;
• the courses are not really practical and without practice the theory does not stick. That is the reason why some of the strategically important subjects (psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc.) would leave the trainees untouched;
• methodology is too little, too late;
• the main part of the training is done in the absence of students (both physically and figuratively),
• and most importantly: Most EFL teacher-trainers believe that their major role in the teacher training institute is the transmission of information.

Their "training" results in

• very boring sessions (to trainees and trainers alike),
• extremely high teacher-trainer-talking-time and from very low to none trainee-talking-time,
• a defensive attitude to both the topic and the trainees,
• attendance problems (as the college-equivalent of discipline problems in elementary and secondary school classes),
• extremely high level of (unnecessary and avoidable) stress for trainees,
• the transmission of the trainer's deficiencies in methodology.

Conclusion: Almost all problems mentioned above would strongly suggest that there is something basically wrong with the present concept of teacher training. Some problems are the consequences of "wrong tracks" while others originate in lack of training. Our methodology is deficient: we should be aware of this every time we enter a class.

There are three key words in newer methodological approaches:

• Motivation,
• Imagination, and
• Security.

One view, that of Ivan Ilyich is that teaching (i.e. traditional teaching based on transmission), like medicine, is a "disabling" profession. Instead of encouraging independence in students, teachers play on the mystique of their profession and depend on the ignorance of those they deal with to give them credibility. Teachers use many insidious techniques to instill insecurity into their students. If this is true to teaching, it is even truer to teacher-training. These are problems which require reference to an ethnical framework. A new ethical framework.

These problems are by no means limited to EFL in Hungary. If we happen to find at least partial solutions to these or some of these problems, they would not be limited to EFL either; with proper transfer means they could be relatively easily applied to other fields of education, although the teachers only respond well if quality is seen as an integral part of the teaching process, not an extra piece of dogma fastened on them by a keen, newly appointed Director of Studies who has a job to do.

Well, these are problems that really need an interdisciplinary insight into both the managerial sphere and the practicalities / intricacies of foreign language teaching / learning. The solution might quite easily become the greatest challenge I've had so far.