Bill[2] nervously entered the university classroom to find seventy eager students, facing him in neat rows. What in the world was he doing here, in an English class in Asia? He had majored in missions in college and had stayed as far away from the English department as possible. âIf these students could see my high school English grades they would be leaving in droves,â he thought wryly.
A few short weeks ago he had been so excited about this opportunity. His team leader had suggested that it would be a good way to meet people, and Bill could envision lively conversations and relationship building before and after class. He even thought he would invite some students to his house for coffee and get to know them better. But for some reason he hadnât given a whole lot of thought to this: the actual one hundred and twenty minutes during which time he was expected to stand at the front of the class and spew forth wisdom. In his planning and replanning for this moment he had come to one scary conclusion: he really had no idea what to do.
Billâs story is repeated frequently as more and more missionaries find themselves in English classrooms. It is difficult to find an evangelistically oriented mission organization that is not actively recruiting people to teach English. It is easy to see why: people all over the world want to learn English. Often they need English for work or studies. Sometimes they also want to understand English movies or songs or visiting tourists. And sometimes, they simply want the perceived status of being an English speaker. And so the mission community has seized this opportunity and built English teaching into its toolbox of techniques, often with self-proclaimed success. âStart an evangelical church in Poland, and no one will come. Start an English school, and youâll make many friends,â says Agnieszka Tennant (2002) in her Christianity Today article âThe Ultimate Language Lesson.â Another writer compares using English teaching with more tried and true missionary activities such as Bible studies and camps, saying, âNothing appealed to the âtypicalâ German better than the English classes which we offeredâ (Woodward, 1993, p. 2).
And the desire is often reciprocal. Where missionaries want to teach English, locals are often desperate for a ânative English speakerâ to teach them. Even when missionaries do not want to teach English, they often face great local pressure to do so. What missionary has not heard the plea, âPlease teach me English. I want to learn with a native English speaker.â[3]
Of course not all missionaries who teach English are like Bill. Some are well trained as English teachers. But they seem to be in the minority. An informal survey in one mission organization revealed that on only two of twelve fields of service involved in English teaching was there someone who had training in teaching English as a foreign language. The prevailing message that is conveyed from both mission agencies who want people to send and locals who want to learn English is this: âIf you can speak English, you can teach it.â But, is this true?
To begin to answer this question, letâs go back to Bill, to see how heâs doing now, five minutes into the class.
As Bill finished taking attendance, struggling through the long list of unfamiliar names, he wished he had brought nametags for the students to wear. How could he call on anyone? Well, he would do this next time. Now for his first activity: introductions. âHi. Iâm Bill, and Iâll be your teacher this semester. Iâm from the USâNorth Dakota specifically. Does anybody know where thatâs at?â The silence was deafening. He had brought a small map, but only those in the first couple of rows could see it, so he quickly decided today was not going to be a day to learn about North Dakota.
Moving on . . . âOkay, I want you to turn to someone next to you and introduce yourself. Tell them your name and where youâre from.â The students sat silently, and it suddenly occurred to Bill that maybe they didnât know enough English to understand his instructions. So he pulled one surprised student out of her seat and acted out what he wanted them to do: âHi, my name is Bill,â he said loudly as he vigorously shook the hand of an obviously uncomfortable young woman.
âWhatâs yours?â he continued. The girl muttered something that he could not understand, but he decided to proceed. âWhere are you from?â She said the name of the city that they were in, in a barely audible voice. As the young woman finally escaped to her seat, Bill motioned for all the students to do this in pairs. When they finally understood the task and turned to face each other, they did so with embarrassment. A few appeared to ask the questions very quietly, while others sat mutely in their seats doing nothing. The entire activity took about one minute. With perspiration forming on his forehead, Bill looked at his notes again, wondering how in the world he would last through 114 more minutes.
Bill is in trouble. And to understand the nature of his trouble, we need to first look at what is required for effective English teaching.
THE TWO REQUIREMENTS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING
Effective language teachers possess two skill sets: 1) language skill and 2) teaching skill, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Requirements for effective language teaching
The first requirement seems obvious to most: You canât teach a language if you canât speak it. This ability to âspeakâ or âuseâ a language we call communicative competence. We develop this ability naturally in our native language. Usually by the age of five or six we are fully proficient in basic communication skills. We can both meet our needs and build relationships with others by using language. Additionally, we are able to use language to think, entertain, and understand the world around us. But we do not automatically develop linguistic knowledge. This is knowing about language. Our teachers in school strive to fill our heads with an understanding of verbs and adjectives and adverbs, in hopes that we will know a lot about our language by the time we graduate from high school. Unfortunately, the result of many years of grammar study is often just a distaste for diagramming sentencesânot a real and lasting understanding of how our language is put together.
Teaching skill is the second requirement for effective language teaching. In teacher education programs, the starting point for developing language teaching skill is theoretical knowledge. Language acquisition is a fascinating field of study. How does the brain make sense of incoming sounds and symbols and transform them into meaning? What conditions must be present for language acquisition, and why? When attempts at language learning fail, what has gone wrong?
After laying a foundation of theoretical understanding, we can begin to develop methodological competenceâthe ability to choose classroom activities and techniques which will result in language learning. We build up a storehouse of activities to teach the different language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), different age groups, different class sizes, and multilevel classes (such as Billâs). We know how to foster fluency with some activities and accuracy with others. We can make quick changes in activities to perk up a sleepy class or to keep an overactive group of third-graders from tearing up the classroom. In essence, we know what to do in the classroom so that students can learn the language.
So now, letâs check in on Bill again.
Bill has embarked on another of his planned activities: having students tell something they like to do. He began by saying âI like soccer,â and writing the sentence on the board. Before he could even elicit student participation, an eager student in the third row shouted, âTeacher, I think âto play soccer.ââ Assuming that the student was his first eager participant, he enthusiastically affirmed the contribution, âOh good! You like soccer too!â âNo, no,â came the reply, âYou write âI like soccerâ but you must to write âI like to play soccer.ââ Bill was stumped. He had no idea how to explain why you could say it either way. And he had not planned on getting into any grammar â at least not today, and preferably never. He answered, âWell, it doesnât matter â you can say âto playâ or not â it doesnât matter.â The student shook his head and gave a slight smile of superiority. Bill suspected that he had just lost at least one studentâs respect as an English teacher. How many more would follow? Would there be anything left to his teaching career after the next 105 minutes had passed?
Now Bill has gotten into a different kind of trouble: grammar troubleâwhat every untrained English teacher (and even some with training!) fears.
CAN BILL TEACH ENGLISH?
After seeing Billâs first fifteen minutes in the classroom, we have just about enough evidence to ascertain whether the statement âIf you can speak English you can teach itâ is true or false. Letâs look at each of the competencies that are needed for effective language teaching and see how Bill fares.
Communicative competence
Bill does have communicative competence. He grew up in North Dakota and has spoken English all his life. He can use English very effectively in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. He gets 100% in this competency.
Linguistic knowledge
By his own admission, Bill âknows nothing about grammar.â He made it through high school English by the skin of his teeth and wouldnât know a particle from an article. When he was studying the local language just recently, his teachers grew exasperated in trying to teach him clauses, because he didnât even understand them in English. I think weâll give him a 20% in this area for having a general idea of what verbs and nouns are, but even that is generous.
Theoretical knowledge
Some organizations provide new missionary candidates with a good understanding of language acquisition, but Billâs sending agency is not one of them. The extent of his preparation for language learning was receiving a list of tips such as âGet out with the peopleâ and âLearn market language first.â He learned nothing about concepts such as the silent period, interlanguage, fluency and accuracy, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the need to develop automaticity, learning styles, or fossilization. I think weâll give him 0% in this competency.
Methodological competence
Does Bill know any good teaching methods? He probably does. After all, he has been in school for sixteen years. You canât sit in a classroom for that long without picking up some notion of how to teach. The question is, has Bill picked up any methods that are appropriate for language teaching? Learning a language is not like learning math, science, or even literature. If Bill studied a foreign language in high school or college, then maybe he has picked up some appropriate methods. However, language teaching in the United States has not produced stellar results in the past, as evidenced by the overabundance of Americans who are monolingual. So thereâs a good chance that Bill does not have a great many language-teaching methodologies tucked away from his high school and college French classes.
What about his recent experiences in learning the local language? This may possibly help him, but sadly, some language school programs for missionaries do not have teachers who are well trained in language-teaching methodology. Some use methodologies with limited effectiveness, forcing missionaries to acquire much of the language from their own initiative. Even if Bill has experienced good methodology in his local language classes, these were probably for a very small group of people, and he has still probably not seen methodologies which could be used in a class of seventy. So, again, Billâs chances for having passively acquired appropriate methods as a language student are slim.
What about natural ability? Bill probably has some knack for teaching. He shows potential here, despite his rather dismal first fifteen minutes. He got students working in pairs. He introduced a topic of interest (hobbies). He made a statement orally and also wrote it on the board: good reinforcement and simultaneous development of oral and written skills. I could work with this guy! Iâll give him a 30% just for raw ability and intuition.
THE VERDICT
Billâs score is 150 out of 400 total points. Thatâs 37%. Not the greatest. So, should Bill pack up his briefcase and be done with English teaching? Not necessarily. First, preparatory programs for teaching English abound, even online, and in a short time of study Bill could significantly increase his score in language-teaching effectiveness. Second, we will see later in this book the vast diversity of English-teaching contexts and the fittedness of individuals with differing competencies for different types of teaching. For example, there are students who simply need conversation partners, and Bill could do that well. Third, there are contexts in which untrained teachers are supervised and helped by trained teachers. Bill could also work well in this kind of environment. So, he should not despair just yet.
However, it behooves us to look at Billâs case and his lack of skills in three of the four major areas and admit what his first fifteen minutes have made painfully clear to him: Bill is not an English teacher. Both uninformed missionaries and their sending agencies and uninformed local people clamoring for a native English speaker are wrong: simply being able to speak a language does not mean you are able to teach it.
This fact is supported and affirmed b...