Principles and Challenges of Teaching Practical English in your country

Thanks for your great effort here, Cara. It's great to see you trying to formulate your own principles and describe what they involve.

I think the principles you've chosen here are good for English language learning in general. It might be better to try and make principles that are more directly related to what you feel practical English involves. For example, look at what you wrote previously about your feelings about practical English:

As you know, all of Korean students are obsessed with the university entrance examination. As a result, they have been learning some skills for reading English contents, which is I though a very impractical Enlish more than learning how to understand and apply English to our life.
The way we can learn "practical English" is to have a lot of time speaking, writing and listening besides just reading. It's time to discard the impractical English teaching methods by which we have been taughted.
(The impractical methods I wrote are based on a typical and traditional things for a test not for a real life.
As the one who dreams of becoming a great English teacher, I dare to insist it. I expect there would be many different students who have various opinions.

-sankang

The part I have highlighted in your comments would make a good principle for teaching practical English.

In any case, you've shown some good thinking here, which is wonderful to see.

Thanks for your efforts,

~ Jason

Hi, I am Hyun Kim. Call me Kong, which means a bean in English.

After taking class, I think about principles in learning practical English. It feels shameful that I who will become a teacher have ignored very important things. Of course, I keep in mind some a kind of codes but sometimes it might change if something wrong happens. Therefore I set principles definitely.

I am going to start with setting definition of "practical" english. So my principles of teaching practical English is

All part of English; listening, speaking, reading, and writing is really important.
I am going to emphasize on all parts of English; listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but there are only activities for a reading in our secondary school's class, but a reading is a part of english; it is not all. So I will try to make some methods, materials, and tools, which lets students learn language English, not grammar part of English. For example, for reading and writing activities, I am going to use not only our present text books but also many books; I think it may be used part of book because of the circumstance's condition. I think both a listening and a speaking are practiced together; it is useful if one speaks and another student listens what he says.

The cooperatives make each others good.
I am going to emphasize on cooperation activities for becoming better together in class. For example, considering individual's ability, I am going to organize the class; a pair consists of who are good and a little good or are better and worse or are best and worst; if necessary I will change pairs once a month for becoming familiar with strange situations. I will give some extra points to the best pair; two student of pair get promotion in competences. I will assign the mission which it might be solved by each pair once two weeks.

The unfamiliar things and stupid mistakes are really precious.
As a speaking in English at unfamiliar situations is really touch, it is of course for students to make mistakes. I will help them realize it is not shameful. I will encourage them to become good with making mistakes. I will make them note each other's mistakes to be better.

what you think are the challenges to applying practical English in public secondary schools in your country.

It may be tough to apply practical English in public secondary schools in my country. Until a recent date, English teachers are not learned a sufficient education; it is not their fault, because circumstances are becoming shifted from emphasis on grammar to a kind of practical English. They are not the challenges, will be good helpers, if necessary fulfilled some measures. The policy should make them feel easiness. of course, teacher try to develop new, practical methods and materials.

A circumstance of school is not good. There are too many miscellaneous administrative tasks teacher must do at present. Laying aside a preparation for teaching, they have to do it. Therefore qualities of teaching is becoming worse and worse. It also need resolutions. In addition, too many quantities of student in class is a big problem. Last but not least, the preference for just getting a good grade in test of people, especially parents, might be changed, if the form of test are changed.

-hyunkim

Wow - excellent effort, Kong (or should I call you Mr. Bean? )

I'm really impressed with your thinking and attention to detail here. Perhaps we could summarize and title your three principles:

Principle 1: Practical English requires multiple and integrated skills

Principle 2: Practical English can be facilitated through cooperative and collaborative learning techniques

Principle 3: Practical English requires teachers and learners to view mistakes and unfamiliar situations as positive opportunities to improve one's communicative ability

I've basically re-worded and extended the principles you started with. How do they sound to you?

I also think you've shown great insights into the challenges for implementing practical English into the school curriculum. Being able to recognize these limitations is the first step towards overcoming them.

In any case, thanks for a very thorough report about your principles for teaching practical English. I'm sure many of your classmates will learn from and appreciate your example.

Best wishes,

~ Jason

Hi, Cara
Well done, I envy your diligent.
I have read your writing. You will be a good teacher; your class of english is enjoyable, active, and considerate. The principle that you have established will be getting better as you are getting much experience in school. The principle is a kind a map, which can direct and revise if you are getting depressed or do not know where and what you teach. I hope so.

-hyunkim

That's great feedback and advice, Hyun. In addition to your kindness and consideration to a fellow teacher-in-training, I can see that you have a good positive grip about the role and purpose of establishing principles. They are indeed "a kind a map, which can direct and revise if you are getting depressed or do not know where and what you teach." Very well said!

~ Jason

Thanks for your advice. I also read your writing and felt impressive. You gave a full detail of the topic. I get to know my opinion was so general by Jason and you. I'd better to think about my own principles of Teaching Practical English in my country more detail. I'm sure it helps me a lot in the process of learning how to teach Enlgilsh in school.

-sankang

Hi Cara,

Being too general at the start is not a negative - it is a good beginning and certainly better than having no ideas at all to share... If you'd like to improve and extend your principles and re-post them here in the thread, please go ahead and do so. The purpose of this forum is to experiment, try and develop. You're certainly doing that and I am impressed.

Thanks for your efforts,

~ Jason

Wow! Look at these super diligent students in this forum! I guess I need to put more effort on this class to cope with you all! :P I'll upload what I've felt while I read your report tomorrow. To be honest, I'm very impressed by Mr. Kong's work up there. 

After class, I looked up a thesaurus to find words that have close meaning to 'Practical'. There were two words in bold: REALISTIC and USEFUL. I'll just skip the 'Useful' part, since Jason already told us about it in the class. The other principles that I would present are 'Practical English will be learned effectively by students, after BREAKING THE ICE in the classroom.' and 'Students also can learn practical English via media' Here are about my principles in detail.

1. Practical English should be REALISTIC to students rather than vague ideas or theories.

I still can't understand why some teachers at school only concentrate on the texts in the textbook. They sometimes skip the Speaking Drills, Discourse and even Enunciation part! Students need to learn not only grammar, but also Enunciation Etc. Only learning of the texts can't be practical English. Practical English is not only in the text book. Since there are some we-hardly-will-be-in-this-situation-texts, students can't have many chances to learn practical English which is realistic. So I will make photocopies of good dialogue and will study about it in class.

2. Practical English will be learned effectively by students, after BREAKING THE ICE in the classroom.

I don't know how you felt when you went to private academy to learn English as a little kid. I definitely enjoyed a lot while I was learning with teachers at the private English academy. Teachers always brought various activities to teach practical English in class. One day, we were talking about 'my favorite color'. All my friends (seriously!) were shy to speak in English. My teacher talked about her favorite color and why it's her favorite color, holding a soft ball in her hands. After she finished her saying, she tossed a ball to a student in class randomly, the one who got the ball automatically started to talk about her/him favorite color. and then the ball was kept being tossed during the class. We could break the ice by only the soft ball!!! Since breaking ice to make students speak is pretty hard job to do, we need to think of several options like soft ball.

The other example of various activities would be singing a song. I think students also can learn practical English in Lyrics, too. The first song that I learned in class was 'Do-Re-Mi Song'. I could find that English is fun and easy to sing like Koren song. Students don't really need to stand up in front of whole class, and talk in English. They all will song together, memorizing the lyrics. Then students can learn the practical English in comfortable and prime set class room effectively.

3. Students also can learn practical English via media.

When I was in highschool,  I coudln't even talk in English fluently. (Of course, I'm still learning to speak fluent English now.) I used to talk with broken English, and foreigners always coped to figure out what I was saying. One of the Coping-with-my-broken-English-Teachers recommended me to watch cartoons in English, such as 'The Simpsons' or the Disney cartoons. Since the charecters in cartoons talk each other, it could be also practical English for me. I started to watch them, and I tried to copy what they are saying. It was pretty hard to copy them at first. I couldn't even understand what they're talking since they talked so fast. However, my English which is called 'Practical English' began to improve by copying the same sentence hundreds times.

Based on my experience, I might say that Students in class also can learn practical English via media, like cartoons or talk shows etc. Of course, just copying what they are saying and memorizing the sentences will be useless. I might use 'Speaking Drill' for this part. Here's an example.

If there were a sentence like 'They look quite heavy' in the cartoon, I might put alternative words to replace them such as 'very', and 'cute'. And I'll make students put the alternative words in the sentence and make another new sentence. They also can make their own alternative words by themselves, other than very, anc cute.

So what I'm saying was we can learn Practical English by practicing the sentences in cartoon. The way to practice is putting alternative words in teh sentence, and make new sentences.

I do hope it works for my future students. and I will love to hear from you, too. I can't wait to see other studetns stunning ideas of principles! See you next week!

Best wishes,

Gloria Kim

Hi Sena and Gloria, and thanks for posting your very insightful efforts in this topic thread!

In both cases (Sena and Gloria), you neglected to mention what you believe might be the challenges posed - as in, things in your country's secondary school approach or environment that could make your principles difficult to apply. Look at Kong's example to see what I mean.

Sena, your principles look too brief to me (as with Cara's principles). You need to state your principles as sentences, showing what you believe practical English should involve (not just one-word titles). Also, as with Cara, I think your principles are very general and about teaching English in any form or approach. They're good principles, of course, but it's a little hard for me to see how they are relevant to teaching PRACTICAL English skills in particular.

I hope that feedback helps you ladies, and please feel free to edit/add/re-post if you want to improve your submissions in this topic thread.

Thanks for your efforts,

~ Jason

SECOND VERSION OF GLORIA'S REPORT

Since it's pretty vague and missed 'what I believe might be the challenges posed -as in things in my country's secondary school approach or environment that could make my principles difficult to apply', I update my report. Sorry for redundance.

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 Wow! Look at these super diligent students in this forum! I guess I need to put more effort on this class to cope with you all! :P I'll upload what I've felt while I read your report tomorrow. To be honest, I'm very impressed by Mr. Kong's work up there. 

After class, I looked up a thesaurus to find words that have close meaning to 'Practical'. There were two words in bold: REALISTIC and USEFUL. I'll just skip the 'Useful' part, since Jason already told us about it in the class. The other principles that I would present are 'Practical English will be learned effectively by students, after BREAKING THE ICE in the classroom.' and 'Students also can learn practical English via media' Here are about my principles in detail.

1. Practical English should be REALISTIC to students rather than vague ideas or theories.

I still can't understand why some teachers at school only concentrate on the texts in the textbook. They sometimes skip the Speaking Drills, Discourse and even Enunciation part! Students need to learn not only grammar, but also Enunciation Etc. Only learning of the texts can't be practical English. Practical English is not only in the text book. Since there are some we-hardly-will-be-in-this-situation-texts, students can't have many chances to learn practical English which is realistic. So I will make photocopies of good dialogue and will study about it in class.

I might use various activities to make students to get the knowledge not only through texts, but through activities. I'll mention how I'm going to do through principle #2 and #3 in detail. Briefly, I will use a ball to break the ice in class. Students will learn several songs in English, and they will watch some cartoons in English. They won't just watch and sing a song in class, they will make new sentences, using the dialouge in cartoons and lyrics. In addition, students will share their ideas in groups.

2. Practical English will be learned effectively by students, after BREAKING THE ICE in the classroom.

I don't know how you felt when you went to private academy to learn English as a little kid. I definitely enjoyed a lot while I was learning with teachers at the private English academy. Teachers always brought various activities to teach practical English in class. One day, we were talking about 'my favorite color'. All my friends (seriously!) were shy to speak in English. My teacher talked about her favorite color and why it's her favorite color, holding a soft ball in her hands. After she finished her saying, she tossed a ball to a student in class randomly, the one who got the ball automatically started to talk about her/him favorite color. and then the ball was kept being tossed during the class. We could break the ice by only the soft ball!!! Since breaking ice to make students speak is pretty hard job to do, we need to think of several options like soft ball.

The other example of various activities would be singing a song. I think students also can learn practical English in Lyrics, too. The first song that I learned in class was 'Do-Re-Mi Song'. I could find that English is fun and easy to sing like Koren song. Students don't really need to stand up in front of whole class, and talk in English. They all will song together, memorizing the lyrics. Then students can learn the practical English in comfortable and prime set class room effectively.

3. Students also can learn practical English via media.

When I was in highschool,  I coudln't even talk in English fluently. (Of course, I'm still learning to speak fluent English now.) I used to talk with broken English, and foreigners always coped to figure out what I was saying. One of the teachers who coped with my broken English recommended me to watch cartoons in English, such as 'The Simpsons' or the Disney cartoons. Since the charecters in cartoons communicate each other, it could be also practical English for me.

Based on my experience, I might say that students in class also can learn practical English via media, like cartoons or talk shows etc. Of course, just copying what they are saying and memorizing the sentences will be useless. I will use 'Speaking Drill' for this part. Here's an example.

If there were a sentence like 'They look quite heavy' in the cartoon, I might put alternative words to replace them such as 'very', and 'cute'. And I'll make students put the alternative words in the sentence and make another new sentence. They also can make their own alternative words by themselves, other than very, and cute.

So what I'm saying is we can learn Practical English by practicing the sentences in cartoon. The way to practice is putting alternative words in teh sentence, and make new sentences.

However, there must be several difficulties to apply my principles in the secondary schools in Korea. Since students need to be evaluated by teachers, they need to take exams like Mid-term and Finals. But I think the problem is with both current teachers and curriculum in Korea. Teachers shouldn't just concentrate on teaching the things on texts for exam. Students can be evaluated 50 for written exam, and 50 for role play or writting a new lyrics or making a new dialogue with using the mterials that they've learned. I think the evaluating system should be changed to improve Korean students' practical English skill.

The English levels of students in one class will be very various. It might be pretty hard to make all the students be concentrated on the material from media. For some students, it could be a piece of cake, so they won't even try to listen. And for others, it might be too hard to understand cartoons or sitcoms in English. To cope with this problem, I think sudents ought to be divided into their levels, like Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced. Then teachers should get ready for three different classes. They might have tons of works to get prepared before they go to each classroom. But I think it'll be pretty effective to teach practical English on their own levels.

I do hope it works for my future students. and I will love to hear from you, too. I can't wait to see other studetns stunning ideas of principles! See you next week!

Best wishes,

Gloria Kim

Gloria:

Thanks for upgrading your submission. It's much more thorough now that you have investigated the challenges to your principles.

I quite like the principles you have chosen. At first, I thought the second one (breaking the ice) was a little too general and applicable to language learning in general, but on reflection, I think it's very appropriate and specific to practical English. Given we want students to actually use the language, dealing with affective factors will be important. If one of your principles is to ensure students' fears are put aside through ice-breaker activities, I think your classroom approach will be very effective and help students to actually use the language more quickly and more confidently.

One thing I really liked about your principles was your use of reflection (about your own language learning experiences) and examples. It makes your ideas more convincing and persuasive! So, all in all, excellent work, Gloria!

Jayla:

I think your principles are very solid and applicable to learning practical English. You've obviously put some deep thought into your ideas, and expressed them very well.

Your principles:

1) Practical English requires development in all four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking)

2) Practical English should be applicable to real life

3) Practical English should facilitate ongoing communicative development and competence

These are very valuable principles, and if you can remember and hold on to them, you will be in a good position to help your students learn practical English! 

I also think you've done a very good job of identifying some of the key challenges evident in your teaching context. The next step would be to start considering ways to overcome those challenges, but part of that depends on actual teaching experience.

Great job, ladies. Thanks very much for your excellent efforts!

~ Jason

Hi Jinmoo,

What an excellent post! You have really paid attention to other people's contributions and commented kindly and wisely about them. That is great to see. One of the best attributes a teacher can have is a willingness to listen to, learn from, and encourage other teaching colleagues. You demonstrate that in spades!

I also think your principles are well selected and explained. I think they are all very relevant to effective learning of practical English skills. I was particularly interested by your second principle - the one about drawing a line between fun and serious learning. Of course, there are ways to make learning fun all or even most of the time, but (as you say) most of the enjoyment needs to come from the awareness that the students are progressing and learning useful language and skills. I also like any teaching approach that promotes mistakes as being a valuable and positive part of the language learning process.

I can see you've put tremendous thought and effort into your post here. Thanks so much for your efforts.

Best wishes,

~ Jason