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Teaching/Learning English Through English
In Lee (Chonju
National University of
Education)
There is a high demand that "For English classes, English should be the medium of instruction." It is a truism. No one can deny the importance of teaching English through English. What is happening, however, in the classroom at any level in Korea? If the teacher is not a native speaker of English, English or English-related subjects are being taught in English and Korean. Korean English teachers might raise the following questions. The first question is: Do we need to teach English through English? "If I speak English for the whole class period, can our students understand me? If not, why do we need to use English only for class?" The second question is somewhat naive: How can I teach English through English? Because English is not their native tongue, Korean English teachers in general lack confidence in speaking English. Of course, there are some competent teachers who command English like or almost like native speakers of English.
In this article we will discuss the two questions of 'why' and 'how' raised above. Not being a scholastic or technical research paper, this article may include opinions or suggestions many other scholars do not agree to. Section 1 deals with the first question and section 2, the second question. In section 3, we will consider the following question: Is Korean useful or useless in English classrooms? And I conclude this article with my experience of teaching English through English.
1. Why do we need to teach English through English?
It is often said that the best way to learn English is to go to the US or Great Britain where we can hear people use the language. This is certainly true. Unfortunately, however, the majority of our students do not have the chance to go there. We cannot send all the students to an English speaking country. They should have the chance to hear their teacher use English in the classroom and to use it themselves. As it is taken for granted, no one can master a language without really practicing it. We know it is quite difficult to correctly pronounce a word or an expression we have never heard before.
In the context where English is taught as a foreign language, students need to be exposed to English as frequently as possible. The more input students get, the better they can speak English. English teachers should teach English through English or at least try to do so. For our students, learning English through English in a classroom is the next best thing to going to an English speaking country and learning English there.
The main purpose of learning a language is to learn to communicate in that language. If our students want to be able to use English at the end of their course, they must practice using it during their course. The classroom situation should be a genuine social environment which allows the meaningful situational use of the language. English teachers should speak and use English in the classroom as often as they can, for example, when they organize teaching activities or chat to their students socially. We cannot put too much emphasis on the importance of teaching/learning English through English.
DDR has recently come into vogue among the youth in Korea.
Likewise English Education Revolution (EER) will be in full swing
in Korea. To successfully attain our goal of teaching English
through English, we must be well-prepared; teacher-training
schools should make every effort to help their students have the
chance of learning English through English. If would-be teachers
are well-trained, they will have confidence in using English in their
classrooms. If the new, well-trained teachers teach English
through English, their students will be able to communicate in
English much better than ever.
2. How can we teach English through English?
Most Korean English teachers hesitate to start teaching English through English. They may ask themselves a question: "Can I talk in English for an hour?" What they need is courage, or confidence that "I can do it." In fact, we don't need to use English for the whole class period. According to a survey, our communication consists of 55% of body language, 38% of voice tonality and 7% of words.1) Can you believe that we use only 7% of words for our communication? Probably you can confirm that a language teacher has to talk and talk while teaching. Haven't you ever thought we talk too much in our classroom?
Even with a class of beginners starting their first lesson, it is possible to teach entirely in English. In a beginner's class, gestures and tone of voice are much more important than the actual words or phrases used to tell students what to do and how to do it. For example, the instruction 'Would you close your books, please?' should at this stage be accompanied by a clear demonstration. The teacher should pick up a book from his desk and close it as he gives the instruction. Only a few students might understand and obey your instruction. If so, they should be praised―'Good, you've closed your books.' Praise is a very useful technique language teachers should employ. If beginners get used to hearing nothing but English spoken during their English lesson, they will very soon understand and later learn to say words like 'good', 'altogether', etc. Language is much better learnt through real use than through pattern drills and exercises.
Let us briefly show how to start using English. The following are the procedures2) we may consider:
Stage your language
Suppose that the teacher says he wants to collect students'
exercise books, but that the students do not understand what the
teacher says. The teacher picks up the first student's book and
gives it back to the student. A moment later the teacher holds his
hand out for a second saying 'I want to collect your exercise
book.' The first student may hand his book to his teacher. The
teacher says, 'Good. I want to collect all your exercise books.'
The teacher goes around the class, collecting books. He may say,
'I'm collecting your books.' Or he may ask a student, 'What am I
doing?' If the teacher repeats this on several occasions, then at the
end of the lesson all the students will understand what the teacher
says.
Praise before correction
Praising is very important in education, especially in language teaching because it reinforces learning positively. If a student uses a declarative sentence with a rising intonation when he asks a question, how can we correct him/her? The following dialogues will suffice.
Student: "You want to collect our books?"
Teacher: "Good, well done. Yes, I want to collect your books. Will you ask the question again so everyone can hear it? Listen. 'Do you want to collect our books?' Now, you ask."
Student: "Do you want to collect our books?"
Teacher: "Very good."
Get your students talk
When you use a new expression, give your students a chance to repeat it. For example, you can use the present perfect tense even in a class where the tense has not been taught yet. You may say, "Have you finished that exercise?" Then you can gesture toward someone who has finished and ask the student to repeat after you: "철수, say 'Yes, I have'." Or you may say 'Yes, I have' and wait until the student says it. If the student says it, praise him/her. After several repetitions of this in the following lessons, the whole class will respond automatically without the help of the teacher's gestures.
3. Is Korean useful or useless in English classroom?
There are times when it is preferable and more economical as far as time is concerned to drop English for a few seconds and use Korean. You can use Korean in some cases such as the following:
(i) If it would take a long time to explain the meaning or use of a new word in English, you could give it to them in Korean.
(ii) If it is very difficult to explain the aims of your lesson or of the next activity, a quick explanation in Korean would save time and make students more relaxed, confident and ready to learn.
(iii) As a check of your students' understanding, after the presentation stage, you could ask them, 'How would you say that in Korean?'
(iv) When you explain a grammar point, it might save time to explain it in Korean.
As a general rule, it is probably a good idea if you allow your students to speak in Korean only when you give them permission to do so. You then have to make clear when they must stop speaking Korean and return to English. Suppose that the teacher asks his students to cut out the picture of giraffe, but that students do not understand what they are told to do. The following dialogues show you how to proceed.
Teacher: "How can you say 'giraffe' in Korean?"
Soo-nam: 기린이요.
Students: (begin speaking Korean)
Teacher: "Yes, good. It's 기린, isn't it? O.K., then back to English. How can you say that in English?"
Tae-han: (pronounces the word correctly)
Teacher: "Very good. Let's say giraffe."
Students: (altogether)
Teacher: "Now, cut out the picture of giraffe, please." (with a
gesture of using scissors)
4. Conclusion
When I was asked to write an article, I decided to write it in English because the proposed topic was teaching English through English. I believe in the "Think in English and express your idea in English" strategy. We are demanding our teachers to teach English in English, but what if they are not prepared? If it is the best way, teaching English through English should be started from teacher-training institutions. I think it is a kind of EER.
I illustrated a few examples for the beginners. We have to develop strategies and teaching methods for different levels of students. For English teachers, what is required is to have confidence. I was willing to teach English through English, but I had to wait until last winter vacation. For a teacher retraining program, I was supposed to teach classroom English to elementary school subject teachers who had secondary school teacher's certificates. I used the term 'subject teachers' because I cannot think of any appropriate one to refer to them. I decided to teach the course in English and I did so. My students were teachers who majored in music education at colleges. At first I wondered if I could successfully finish the course as I intended, but I did and it worked. Frankly speaking, my course was not evaluated by them; thus, I am not sure they were satisfied with my course. My students understood me and at the end of the course I became confident in teaching English through English. I dare to say they enjoyed my course. This semester I am teaching two courses using English only. I hope this kind of change will bear fruitful results.
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1) I got this information from the British Council Summer School
seminar on EYL: Teaching English to young learners held at the
University of York from July 4 to 18, 1999. It was given in the
form of handout without further reference.
2) They are adopted from Jane Willis, Teaching English Through English (London: Longman, 1998).