[etni] Fw: Reply to Adele

----- Original Message ----- From: byk - byk@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Reply to Adele

Adele said, quite rightly, that the curriculum can't be blamed for a poor choice by a teacher. However, I 'meet' such a variety of teachers in my practice, and so many of them are off the mark in what they are teaching, that I can see that they need more guidance. Some of them actually ask me for help, because they don't really know how to interpret the guidelines. Remember, not every teacher has that innate abililty to know how to make the right choices.

This is why so many teachers 'fall back' on teaching grammar; the teacher feels she's teaching, the student's feel they're learning, and everybody's happy, until it comes to reading something they've never seen before.

One of the problems with Mudd Lark was that it was simply handed to the class, without, as far as I could make out, reading it in class!

I feel that the ministry should give sample exams, and/or excercises, to show teachers what is wanted. These examples should also be explained, point by point, so that teachers understand why certain things are suitable, and what difficulties different levels of students face.

I have said it before, and will say it again, at the risk of boring everybody; I live and work in a privileged area, where almost all pupils have had private lessons since early elementary school, many have been to summer school, and all go abroad frequently. Nevertheless, the students are few and far between who can handle authentic language from the internet. Yes, there are the 'native speaker classes' (actually advanced learners), but even they cannot all read an authentic English book. What I am saying is that the Ministry appears to think that we are teaching 'second language' learners, because of the wide exposure there is to English, rather than 'foreign language' learners.

On that note, may I wish you all a very good week.

Jennifer Byk

#####  To send a message to the ETNI list email: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx   #####
#####  Send queries and questions to: ask@xxxxxxxx    #####

Other related posts: