Exam focus ’a cancer’ warns English academic

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Examinations are a "cancer in our school systems" that kills the joy of learning and teaching, a distinguished academic and English teacher said last Saturday. Speaking at the fifth annual Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference, Prof Alan Maley said the current education system arranged everything with an eye on examinations. Maley, a renowned educator and experienced author of English teaching materials with more than 40 book titles and research works, said parents, children and also a number of teachers cared for nothing but results attained in exams. If any subject, including English, was taught in the right way, "there will be life and love in it all, and when the examination comes your pupils will know more than if your teaching from the very beginning had not been fettered by examination requirements," he said. Poor pay and long hours also led teachers to focus on examination results, he added. Maley suggested that project work as one of the activities that teachers use as a tool to make their classes more effective and interesting for both students and themselves. Digital classroom Patrick Hafenstein, education consultant, East Asia region for publishing firm Macmillan, said kids today were surrounded everyday by animation, video and audio products and the classroom needed to reflect this in order to teach them effectively. He mooted the use of digital materials in the classroom for teaching vocabulary, grammar, phonics, songs, writing and conversations. A digital classroom was an environmentally friendly, highly motivated space conducive to learning. Grant Trew who has over 20 years’ experience as a teacher, trainer and materials developer in the United Kingdom, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Japan, said teaching natural English would help learners communicate more effectively and confidently. Traditionally second language classrooms had focused on teaching the building blocks of language, mainly grammar and vocabulary. Unfortunately these elements did not give the complete picture of what language learners needed to function effectively in the real world, he said. Many students who did well in the classrooms were not able to comfortably and confidently use English while traveling or in the workplace. Often they knew enough words to express basic meanings, but could only do so in a way that sounds unnatural or inappropriate, Trew explained. Teachers needed to guide students’ eyes to phrases and expressions used by native speakers, he said. Source: VietNamNet/Viet Nam News