英文教育 | 哑巴英语之痛

原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205547998&idx=1&sn=80c581e1d5d77864994dc3e2f9ec1af5&chksm=1615b02721623931d53c9f592500578e41a0530c773fdc945251dcaf2d093136e34baa4919c0#rd

The Mute Leading the Mute

Why are countries failing so badly at teaching English?



AGUSTÍN has spent 29 years teaching English in Mexico City. It has often been a thankless task; many pupils yawn their way through class. But their lack of interest may be compounded by his lack of English. Ask him where his next lesson is, and he replies, “nine o’clock”.

标题中, 俚语[The blind leading the blind]在这里被改成了[the mute leading the mute] - 哑巴英语之痛。


He is not unusual in Mexico, despite its proximity to America. A recent survey by Mexicanos Primero, an education NGO, found that four-fifths of secondary-school graduates had “absolutely no knowledge” of English, despite having spent at least 360 hours learning it in secondary school. English teachers were not much better: one in seven had no English whatsoever.

近水楼台也完蛋。


Comparable global data are scarce, but experts say the situation is similar in much of the non-Anglophone(non-English speaking) world. Common problems include bad teachers hired via written tests rather than oral ones, and an outmoded(outdated) approach that sees English as a foreign language to be taught about, rather than a lingua franca to be taught in. Teachers’ lack of fluency means too little English conversation in the classroom, says John Knagg of the British Council, so pupils do not get used to using the language. It is as if they were being taught to swim without ever getting into the water.

哑巴英语就这么形容吧.


China has made English compulsory in school from a young age, but teachers are overstretched and mostly underqualified, says Jing Zhao, a visiting researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Just over 1m English-language staff teach over 200m Chinese pupils, a heroic, if mind-boggling, teacher-pupil ratio. In Guangdong, an affluent province that Ms Jing has studied, just 257 of 53,500 English-language teachers had master’s degrees. Many speak a scripted English in class and prefer to focus on the pen-and-ink grammatical work on which their pupils are examined. “They’ve been teaching for the tests all their career,” she says.

师资不够,方法不对.


The problem is compounded by education systems that are out of touch with parents’ demands for more English instruction. “There’s a huge and increasing demand for English, but the supply of teachers and ability to teach English have not kept up,” says Mr Knagg. In Japan, for instance, the government has said it will bolster the mandatory English requirement for children in primary school—but only from 2020 when the country hosts the Olympic games.


In Latin America “there is a huge gap between what the system provides and what the students actually need,” says Rosangela Bando of the Inter-American Development Bank. The gap widens the farther from cities one goes, she notes. Better-off city-dwelling children are more likely to have private language lessons, internet access or the chance to travel abroad.


But even in state systems where instruction has long been poor, there are signs of change. Agustín’s colleague, Armando Velázquez, a mid-career English teacher, refuses to speak a word of Spanish in the classroom and makes the whole of his lessons conversational. At the start of one of his first classes, a pupil mimes vomiting when asked whether he likes English. By the end, the youngster is merrily using it to describe Lionel Messi, an Argentine footballer, as fast, rich and famous.

好老师会出现的,例如我😄

A year ago Mr Velázquez benefited from an English-language course that he says changed not only his teaching, but his life. Provided by the Inter-American Partnership for Education, it taught him conversational and theatrical methods that he now passes on to his colleagues. Such on-the-job training has also produced results in Chile and Malaysia, says Mr Knagg.

希望我们那么多的“在职培训” “科研”有点实质性的改变


Uruguay takes a different, and more novel, approach. It makes up for its dearth of English-speaking teachers by contracting Filipinos who teach via videoconferencing from Manila to pupils’ laptops or tablets in Montevideo. In China, says Yuko Goto Butler of the University of Pennsylvania, good teachers are rotated among schools, and young teachers offer free weekend classes to pupils while earning credits that advance their careers. Interactive technology can help make lessons more lively, as South Korea has discovered.


Ultimately, the goal should be to teach other subjects in English, as Canada is helping China to do, rather than just teaching English. But no one should expect miracles. Even if the most promising innovations are widely copied, fluency will come only gradually; today’s pupils must first learn enough English to become tomorrow’s competent teachers.


科技再发达, 语言这东西还是得勤学苦练, 循序渐进。边学边用才是目的, 有很多的MOOCs课程, 选择你有兴趣的去学一学. 如果你掌握了方法,善于利用各种资源, 学习的效果和出国基本没差的。


如果你要做一名英文教师的话, 靠谱点儿.

@ericzenglish