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Editorial 1
The Fraud
of the Global English-Teaching Industry
The
teaching of English as a foreign language is a global industry. It has many
millions of customers and employs thousands of teachers and other workers. It
has been a global industry, in fact, for several decades. Yet the basic way it
operates and its basic teaching methods are never debated. Nor is there
discussion of whether people are really learning English or any other foreign
language better than they did forty or fifty years ago. Instead, the industry
just gets bigger and bigger.
On two occasions during the nineties I tried to
start a debate on the fundamental questions that should be asked about this
great power in the world of education. The first attempt was through a piece
published in the EFL Gazette (now EL Gazette: September 1991,
Quality teaching versus teacher qualifications); the second was in an article
in the January 1997 issue of English Today (Learning the world language:
today and tomorrow). Neither prompted any discussion, although both were
provocative. The reaction was total silence.
The reasons for this are not difficult to
understand. There is a tacit alliance between three powerful vested interests
which have nothing to gain from talking about these things, and much to lose.
They are the teaching institutions (universities and colleges as well as private
language schools and institutions like the British Council); the publishers who
largely through the teaching institutions have a vast market for their
textbooks; and academics who write many of the books for that same market and
are paid well to keep persuading people their researches and publications are
necessary to the health of English-teaching throughout the world. All three
might suffer if the value of what any one of them is doing was called into
question. So the most effective defence against criticism is to ignore it. Open
debate is the last thing they want.
Languages are learnt. They cannot be
taught. If they were left to think for themselves, most would-be
language-learners would probably realize this, and that they have to do almost
everything for themselves. Learning a foreign language is a process of
intensive observation which people have to do for the most part alone. Language
students may conscientiously do the homework they are set and regularly study
their course books. It will do them little good if they lack self-reliance and
active curiosity. The more they rely on teachers, the less - and the more
slowly - they will learn. But nobody tells this to the thousands of people who
go to English-speaking countries every year to study the language. They are
persuaded that their teachers, in some magic way that is called skilled
teaching, are going to do the work for them. They are convinced that the more
lessons they go to, the faster and better will be the progress they make.
Enterprises and institutions would naturally make far less money if their
clients thought otherwise. Nobody points out to students that every hour they
spend in the classroom is precious time taken away from the real learning work.
Nobody in the business draws attention to how grotesque it is for people to pay
vast sums of money to go and do something - spend the greater part of the day
sitting in classrooms, or participating in other group activities - which they
could do just as effectively and far more cheaply in their own country. There
is no point in going to a country to learn its language if you do not spend
most of your time there observing the language in real life action for
yourself, in its written as well as its spoken form.
The prime motive of entrepreneurs and
institutions of learning is seldom a genuine concern for the students, a desire
to give them a good deal that would help them learn as fast and effectively as
possible. If it was, there would be constant public debate about whether the
present world-wide set-up really is the right one. But the entrepreneurs have
other considerations. The qualities of their teachers are dictated largely by
their assessment of market factors. Image is all-important, so entrepreneurs
try to convince customers that they will be taught by real professionals. I
shall return to the subject of teachers and teaching methods in the next issue
of this journal. But I will comment already here that in almost twenty years of
advising and guiding many teachers of English as a foreign language I never
came across a single one whose paper qualifications were in any way relevant to
their worth as teachers. For the entrepreneurs and teaching institutions,
however, it is precisely the paper qualifications obtained by their staff from
various bodies that help them to get away with charging students exorbitant
fees.
Those 'various bodies' include universities.
Here academics profit from the training courses they effectively impose on
would-be teachers of English as a foreign language. These courses, needless to
say, are very expensive. But without them it is virtually impossible to get an
anywhere near decent job in the global industry.
The inflation in the cost of English
courses is staggering. Thirty-five years ago a student at the language school
in
When it comes to preparing for one of the
examinations in English that students can take, the teaching institutions
appear to think you need an intensive course of up to 30 lessons a week. Ten
weeks of that (they will probably try to persuade you that you need more) will probably
cost you a minimum of $4500, even before
you have begun to think where you are going to live and how you are going to
eat.
This is one of the most scandalous aspects of
the global English-teaching industry. Having a good command of English is in
many parts of the world one of the most important assets a person can have. It
can be decisive in getting a good job. But study of this language in the
countries where it is spoken is only for the wealthy or the comparatively
wealthy. For millions of poor throughout the world it is quite out of the
question.
That is the greatest wrong committed by those
who grow fat on the proceeds of a 'service' quite beyond the reach of so many.
But there is another group for whom the outrage is also great: the
comparatively wealthy. They, or their parents, make a great financial sacrifice
to pay the huge fees demanded, and are doubly cheated, because they do not in
fact buy what most people think they do. What actually happens is that students
pay these enormous sums to be prevented doing what they want to do:
learn the language efficiently. What goes on in most language classrooms around
the world today actually does almost nothing to usefully inform students.
As they sit in the classroom they are effectively
paralyzed. It is only when they escape from school that they can truly begin
learning - if they know how to do it the right way.
It would be much better if we dropped the title
"teacher" altogether where language-learning is concerned.. We should instead speak of "guides". This would
remind us that what learners need is individual attention, and that the
responsibility for learning is basically the student's. Language guides should
be able to do two things:
(1) show students how
to learn a foreign language; (2) answer questions about the language.
I have long stressed to my students that my
first duty to them is to make myself unnecessary. When students have the
independence that is essential, they will need only a fraction of the number of
sessions they at present attend at the institutions that pretend to instruct
them. They will probably have to pay high fees for each session of individual
guidance, but will only have to spend overall a small proportion of what they
have to pay today for private lessons or even for classes at schools.
What I am suggesting does not mean throwing a
lot of teachers of English out of work. Almost certainly more, not fewer,
'English' guides would be needed. Each student would probably not have more
than two hours a week with their guide, over a period of several weeks. But
this would mean that the guides would be able to help a far greater number of
different individuals than private teachers can at the moment. And the lower cost
of guidance in English would put it within the means of millions more people.
This would increase the demand for guides even further.
But to make such changes, teachers
must escape from the control of entrepreneurs and the institutions. This would
be done best by organizing themselves in small co-operatives. These would need
very small amounts of space, equipment and administration. The money would all
go to the people who do the work. People who would like to become
English-language guides could be given free apprenticeships at such
co-operatives. Apprentices could attend and participate in the advice sessions
with the students, and join in the discussions between the members of the
co-operative. This would be stimulating for everybody involved.
Guides would be able to spend fewer hours
'advising' than most teachers of English are made to put in today. They would
not make a fortune. But their freedom, their independence, and the timetable
they would decide for themselves would make daily discussions about the work
with colleagues something to look forward to, instead of a chore resented
because it cuts into insufficient leisure.
At the same time, organization of such a kind
will make it clear to students, in a way that is not possible at the moment,
whether their guides are doing their job properly. So
standards that are genuinely high will be achieved.
It is surely time for interested, dedicated and
conscientious teachers to take control of their own work and lives. That will
need mutual encouragement, solidarity, and practical organization, and the will
- no more. With those, English- 'teaching' and English-learning can be
transformed. This journal will perhaps become a place where people can make
contact to give each other that encouragement and solidarity, and help them to
organize together. I hope so.
Meanwhile, this journal would like
to hear from anybody who wants to express their dissatisfaction with any aspect
of the English-teaching world as it is today. We welcome general criticisms,
but also complaints about specific establishments. We realize that many
teachers will be reluctant, for the sake of their jobs, to add their names to
their exposures of wrong-doing. So while the more closely an establishment can
be identified the better, we will publish any information we think interesting
even if the person who supplies it wants her or his name withheld, or prefers
to limit identification to the name of a town or even a country. (However, we
will be more inclined to publish anonymous material if the informant at least
gives their name in confidence to us.)
Obvious matters of interest are such things as
contract conditions, working hours, salaries, course prices, directors' incomes
and profits, class sizes (real ones, not the ones in brochures), and, of
course, students' opinions (a student at a well-known language school in
Cambridge told me that the school - one of an international chain - was
"rubbish", but that when she was choosing a course she had been taken
in by the glossy publicity that this large organization was able to afford in
her home country).
I hope teachers will let students know about
this web site. Students are obviously less vulnerable than teachers, and their
personal evidence is perhaps the most important of all. (If I knew the name of
the student I have quoted in the previous paragraph, and had permission to
reveal it and name the school, my story would of course have far greater
force.) Equally, I hope students who discover this journal will talk about it
to teachers they feel might be sympathetic listeners.
As interesting and important as anything,
though, will be thoughts and comments on the whole
basis of the present English-teaching set-up, and judgements on whether people
are really learning as well as they might. And supporters of the status quo
should at last have the courage to let us know whatever arguments and evidence
they think they have in favour of it.
Amorey
Gethin
[Updated August 2002]
See further editorials on the
subject of the global English-teaching industry at The Illusion of Global English-Teaching Standards and
at The
Rational Learning of Foreign Languages.
The editor (editor@english-learning.co.uk) welcomes contributions to debate on the
subject of this editorial.
The English-Learning and Languages Review does not exist solely to attack the
dictatorship of the global English-teaching establishment. It has many other
aims. It gives advice on passing language exams. It presents information on
English grammar, and in the future, it is hoped, on the grammar of other
languages, often approaching problems from a new angle. It debates linguistic
theory, and discusses language-learning principles. It invites contributions on
all those subjects, and from those who find their own particular delight in the
infinite variety of the languages of the world.
The English-Learning and Languages Review and its individual
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Global English-Teaching Industry, or parts of it, on condition that:
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