BUILDING TEACHER TRAINING CAPACITY IN EGYPT: THE SCHOOL-BASED MODEL

By Robert Burch

Background

The Integrated English Language Program (IELP-II) is a four-to-six year technical assistance and training project funded by USAID and administered by the Academy for Educational Development and its subcontractor, AMIDEAST.  The goal of IELP-II is to increase the number of qualified English as a foreign language teachers in Egypt through strategic training and technical assistance.

One of the challenges facing IELP-II has been reaching the large number of Egyptian teachers outside the greater Cairo area, where training centers and opportunities for professional development are not so readily available.  In an effort to reach this particular audience IELP-II administers a program called School Based Training (SBT).  This training program was developed in order to provide Egyptian teachers in rural areas access to training on communicative techniques to teach the four basic language skills and to help them use the national English textbook _Hello!_ more effectively.  The techniques that the teachers receive are practical and can be used immediately in the classroom.

Description

The SBT model selects supervisors from various areas in Egypt to attend a regional three-day training of trainers workshop.  They observe demonstrations of the SBT materials and techniques presented by trainers from both IELP-II and the Ministry of Education.  In addition, they receive sets of Trainer's Notes and copies of SBT material to be distributed to senior teachers and teachers in the designated SBT schools in their areas.

Next, the preparatory supervisors bring together senior teachers from local schools and provide the same training to them in a local school setting.  The senior teachers, in turn, demonstrate in their schools how to use the SBT materials and techniques.  In addition, they assist all of the English teachers with implementation of SBT materials at the classroom level.

What makes SBT unique?  The answer lies in the strong "grassroots" policy SBT has promoted at a regional level.  SBT localizes, rather than centralizes, training so as to make it more accessible to teachers outside major urban areas.  Moreover, rural schools and senior teachers assigned to those schools host and take control of the training.  Because the training is integrated into the normal work routine, participating teachers do not have to take time off from teaching or travel long distances in order to improve their knowledge and skills.

Feedback

As this project moves forward participating teachers are singing its praises:

"I recommend this to other teachers to help them have the same benefits we already had.  Master Teachers can do this in small groups in their school.  This training is especially fruitful for newly appointed teachers and it is our task to carry it out."  (Teacher from Arment, Upper Egypt)

"I recommend this workshop to others because we are sitting as groups and families; we exchange ideas, participate in activities, and discuss things about teaching with each other."  (Teacher from Luxor, Upper Egypt)

Conclusion

School Based Training recognizes that the school is the central unit in any successful reform effort.  No matter how elegant their design, innovations that do not meet the needs of the school and approaches that do not have support among staff members will never lead to meaningful change.  To effect real improvement, schools must identify their specific needs and develop policies and plans to meet those needs.  Schools must take the lead.  The basic localized School Based Training design could easily be applied to other training programs around the globe.

Robert Burch is currently the Manager of the Research and Evaluation Unit of the Integrated English Language Program in Cairo, Egypt.  He has worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, and evaluator of TEFL programs in the United States, Thailand, Yemen, and Egypt.  <rburch@aedegypt.org>

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DR. BLAND'S TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH

By Merton Bland

Introduction

A few years ago the author was assigned to the prime TESOL institution in southern Vietnam, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.  What he found was quite a challenge: an educational system, centrally administrated, mired in traditional practices.  The grammar/translation methodology, a legacy of the French, held sway in the classrooms, producing, in spite of six years of English in the secondary schools, a nation of graduates unable to communicate in the target language.  Discussions with Vietnamese colleagues, usually trained abroad, resulted in plans for a lecture tour to the major teacher training institutions of Vietnam (including Hanoi, DaNang, Hue, and about a half-dozen others) with a message stressing alternatives to the status quo, and the present format was developed.  The author was subsequently invited to speak at institutions of ideological training (Communist Party Cadre) and information diffusion (schools for journalists) previously off-limits to Westerners, as well as the teacher training institutions previously noted.

The Commandments

(1)  Do not teach English.  Teach something, anything, IN English, using English as a vehicle of communication rather than an object of study.  This is sometimes called the content-based curriculum.

(2)  Do not teach grammar.  Ingesting rules can be counterproductive:  We are all familiar with students who are unable to apply rules learned through rote memorization.  Instead, the grammar of English is best acquired inductively by the students formulating their own hypotheses.  (This reflects Krashen's acquisition vs. learning.)

(3)  Do not teach vocabulary.  The schema, the concept pods which constitute the lexigraphical units of language, vary from language to language, even from person to person.  No language is a direct translation of any other.  Thus, vocabulary must be forged within the target language itself in a manner not unlike that of first language acquisition.  To do otherwise is to risk forging the chains which prevent the bifurcation of the native and target languages and forever making your students translate in their heads word for word.

(4)  Do not teach pronunciation.  There is no longer any standard English.  Well over two-thirds of the world's 1.5 billion English speakers are non-native speakers.  Their English is certainly as acceptable as the Received Pronunciation (RP) of a tiny fraction of the British or the Broad Midwestern of Hollywood--as long as their English is comprehensible to the greatest number of persons who do not share that particular accent.

(5)  Do not give tests.  While testing is well embedded in many parts of the world, scaling is to be preferred to testing.  Usually tests only require the regurgitation of knowledge.  Scaling, placing people on a scale from beginner to educated native, has much more validity.

(6)  Do not use lesson plans.  Teach students, not lesson plans.  Many teachers come away from their teacher training institutions with a mandated compulsion to spend hours writing lesson plans.  Such planning is quite counterproductive since in an actual teaching situation the teacher must be alert to the reactions of the students--stressing pragmatic considerations, putting more time and effort where the lesson needs it and shortening or eliminating parts where the students seem to be in command of the concept being stressed.  Yes, the teacher should have a general idea of the objectives of the lesson.  Certainly the teacher should have available any materials which will be needed.  Most importantly the teacher should leave time after the lesson to reflect on it and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses.  But the focus of any teaching should be on the students, not on the constraints imposed by any preconceived lesson plan.

(7)  Do not use the native language in the classroom: Never, never, never!  If our aim is the successful bifurcation of the native and target languages, any use of the native language is by definition counterproductive.  Draw a chalkline on the doorsill and proudly use the native language outside the classroom, but create an immersion situation inside.

(8)  Do not use textbooks.  You know your own students better than any textbook author. Authentic materials are all around you.  For example:  Record the news from the VOA or the BBC.  Videotape CNN or Australian TV.  Bring in any expatriate Anglophone in town and have him chat with the students.  Have your school subscribe to the "International Herald Tribune" or "Time" or "Newsweek."  Borrow English language videos.  If they have subtitles put a book in front of the bottom of the monitor to cover up those subtitles.  Buy, with your own money if necessary, paperbacks.  After you read them they can be the nucleus of an individualized reading program (each student reads his own book and then reports on it to the class).  Have your class keep journals in English, and write their own English to English vocabulary lists.  Have the class write their own book.

(9)  Do not teach the microskills: reading, writing, speaking, listening.  English is one language, indivisible.  And English is a living language; one only dissects the dead.

(10)  Do not teach.  Empower your students to take responsibility for their own learning.  This reflects a general trend, especially in North American education, to deemphasize the role of the teacher as the font of all knowledge and provide the students with the means to further their own educative process beyond the classroom.  This is called the student-centered classroom (as opposed to the teacher-centered classroom).

Thus Hath Dr. Bland Spoke

On the international plane, a focus on communication is overtaking traditional methodologies.  This is reflected in most of the commandments.  On the other hand, some of the commandments, i.e. Number 4, were reactions to local controversies.  Number 4 was a response to the discussions as to which English represented the standard:  British (RP), Midwest American, or even, in the Vietnamese context, Australian English.  The answer was none of the above, but rather a Vietinglish comprehensible to the greatest number of non-Vietnamese.

Obviously, no immediate revolution was planned, nor did one occur.  The aim, rather, was to present some alternatives and allow them to foment.  Someday one of those teachers-in-training will become minister of education, and perhaps he or she will remember Dr. Bland's seminar and institute some of those reforms.

(Versions of this list have appeared in other publications, including the "WATESOL Journal.")

Merton L. Bland teaches at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco.  He has worked as a K-12 teacher in the USA; a US foreign service officer in Africa, Asia and Australia; and as an ESL/EFL teacher and teacher trainer in the US, Asia, Africa, and Europe.  <merton@erols.com>

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A GUIDE TO BRANCH CAMPUSES OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES:  GETTING A MASTER'S DEGREE IN TESL WHILE WORKING IN JAPAN

By Paul Hackshaw

Introduction

You have finally graduated and you have landed your first teaching job working as a language teacher at a conversation school or as an assistant teacher at a high school in Japan.  Everything goes well for a few years until you realize you would like to increase your teaching qualifications, get better paying and more attractive jobs at high schools or universities, with better working conditions.  Settled into your job, perhaps engaged or married with dependents, you may find it difficult or problematic to relocate back home to pursue a master's degree in TESL.

However, there are other options available to you: a degree by distance learning from a foreign university in Australia, U.K., etc. where coursework is completed by a combination of mail, email and/or semi-annual conferences with professors; or a degree from a branch campus of an American university--the coursework and diploma received are identical to that of the mother institution, and coursework can be completed by attending classes with professors from the main campus or employed by the university in Japan.  This article will describe the experience of a graduate of one such program completed wholly in Japan and now working full-time at a Japanese university, and the job prospects that await once you receive that magic piece of paper.

Description of Programs

At present there are only two accredited American universities in Japan which have their own campuses and offer master's degree programs in TESL for native and non-native speakers of English.  Temple University has its main campus in Tokyo as well as other campuses in Osaka and Fukuoka.  Columbia University offers a Master of Arts in TESL at its campus in Tokyo.  Many of the students studying in these programs are language teachers working as full-time conversation, high school or college teachers.

The average class has 10 - 20 students, evenly consisting of English-speaking Japanese, and native speakers of English.  To complete the coursework at Temple requires completion of thirty credits, consisting of five compulsory courses and five electives.  The electives are generally three-credit courses offered on a variety of topics, such as curriculum design, testing, ESL reading and writing, teaching literature, etc.  The cost to complete a 30-credit program of instruction is at the moment about 1.9 million yen, which is about $US17,000.  The master's program can be completed part-time at the student's own pace; the average time to completion is two and a half years.  The cost of the Columbia program is 2.5 million yen (about $21,000), expensive by American and Japanese standards but since the schools receive no financial support from the Japanese government, the fees will remain high for some time to come.

Some of the teachers attending these courses have been away from formal study for several years, or are new to studying in English, and the programs make allowances for teachers' busy schedules and rusty writing skills by also providing workshops on academic writing and writing papers, etc.  For those with a severely masochistic bent, Temple University also offers a doctorate program in education, which consists of 48 credits (about sixteen courses) taken over five years.

Job Prospects

For graduates of distance learning courses and a degree from Temple or Columbia, there are better paying jobs to be found teaching full-time at Japanese universities and/or high schools.  Many employers in Japan are now requiring master's degrees in TESL as a minimum qualification from their part-time staff.  A teacher with a master's degree at a conversation school can move up through the ranks as head teacher or teacher-trainer.  A full-time teacher with an M.Ed. or an M.A., on a starting salary at a university, can expect to earn from six million yen per year (about US$55,000), or about double what conversation school teachers with a B.A. or new graduates teaching on the JET program can expect to earn.

In my experience, the graduate degree pays for itself many times over with increased income, better teaching positions and better working conditions.  A full-time university teacher will teach about six to eight classes per week, for example, as opposed to thirty a week in a conversation school.  Given that many people are also working at the same time, the master's program initially requires a great deal of mental sacrifice in terms of effort and financial outlay before graduation but the rewards outweigh the immediate disadvantages and setbacks when starting out on the program.

Conclusion

Temple University in Japan has about 400 graduates from its M.Ed. program since starting in Japan in 1981, and over 300 have graduated from Columbia's program as of last year.  I would thoroughly recommend these master's programs if one is serious about teaching and working in Japan, has a commitment to working in Japan and is serious about upgrading one's teaching qualifications.

Due to declining student rolls and increased job competition, to teach even part-time at universities and high schools a master's degree is becoming the minimum teaching qualification.  It is a necessity for those seeking better jobs, a ticket to higher and more secure income, increased teaching and promotion opportunities, and more responsibility and possible tenure-track positions.  Obtaining a master's degree from Temple University Japan or Columbia University Japan creates for oneself a more stable and more secure career as a professional EFL teacher in Japan.

Contact Information

Temple University Japan

LLM, MBA, M.Ed, D.Ed (Tokyo, Osaka & Fukuoka)

Osaka Campus:

8F YMCA Bldg. Tosabori-dori

Kita-ku, Osaka

http://www.tuj.ac.jp

http://www.tuj.ac.jp/tesol/index.html  (for information about tuition)

Columbia University Japan

Teachers College in Tokyo, MA Program in TESOL

Teachers College, Columbia University

Mitsui Seimei Bldg. 4F, 2-21-2 Misaki-cho

Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan 101-0061

Tel:  +81-3-3221-9771

Fax: +81-3-3221-9773

http://www.tc-japan.edu/

Paul Hackshaw has taught in Japan since 1987 and is a full-time EFL teacher at Kyoto Institute of Technology.  He graduated from the Temple master's program in 1994.  <hackshaw@hiei.kit.ac.jp>

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BOOK REVIEW:  From Reader to Reading Teacher, by Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field

Reviewed by Kirsten Schaetzel

Many EFL/ESL teachers are people who enjoy reading.  It is not uncommon that people who teach English are also people who read magazines, newspapers, novels, biographies, etc. in English for pleasure.  These same people often need to teach students to read in English and, somehow, the enthusiasm they bring to their own reading in English does not enter into their designing and facilitating their students' reading tasks.  From Reader to Reading Teacher, by Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field, gives EFL/ESL teachers important fundamental information about the reading process and provides step-by-step guidance in the design of creative and meaningful reading lessons.  If teachers have missed out on this text and the concepts it contains as part of their formal training, it is a text that trainers can use for in-service training courses and workshops.  It is an excellent reference and source book and should grace every EFL/ESL teacher's shelf.

In the first two chapters, Aebersold and Field examine different models of reading and factors that influence reading in a foreign or second language.  This information is essential to understanding the process of learning to read in another language.  Chapter Three, "Designing the Reading Course," gives trainees criteria for setting reading goals, selecting appropriate material and evaluating student progress. Appendices to Chapter Three give examples of authentic and modified reading texts, types of L2/FL reading books and tables of content for reference works that might be helpful.  The categories of L2/FL reading books are especially concise and helpful; trainees can identify what type of text they are using and see what other types of books are available.

Chapters Four through Ten describe different parts of the reading process: preparing students to read, reading the text, reviewing reading, vocabulary issues in teaching reading, using literature, assessing reading, and planning the reading lesson.  Each chapter has a clear theoretical description of teaching methods and strategies in each of these areas and gives specific examples to illustrate these. Examples can be found either at the end of a chapter or at the end of the book; the last fifty pages of the book are devoted to samples of reading materials and exercises to go with them.  Each chapter also contains exercises for trainees to use to interact with the concepts and material presented.  For example, Chapter 4, "Preparing to Read," includes the following exercise:

"Working in small groups, develop a description of one more activity that could be added to, or substituted for, one of the activities that introduce the topic of earthquakes in Classroom 4A [a hypothetical class assignment].  Be sure you are clear about which general and which specific objectives your activity is trying to meet.  Try to think of an activity that uses a combination of modes different from those already given (pictures)."  (83-84)

Trainees can work on this, and activities like this, individually, in pairs, or in small groups and apply the concepts being presented.  At the end of each chapter, "Expanding your Knowledge" and "Chapter Highlights" sections are found.  "Expanding your Knowledge" contains more practice exercises for the material of the chapter.  These exercises help trainees to practically apply what the chapter has taught in their own teaching/learning situations.  "Chapter Highlights" contains a numbered summary of the main ideas presented in the chapter.

Whether teachers are new to teaching reading or are old hands looking for a few new ideas, From Reader to Reading Teacher is an extremely helpful text.  In addition to including good, up-to-date information, it is well-organized and clearly written, an easily accessible resource for whatever kind of reading a teacher happens to find herself/himself teaching.

Publication Information:

From Reader to Reading Teacher

Authors:   Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field

Publisher:  Cambridge University Press

Year of Publication:  1997

ISBN:  052149785X

Cost:  From Amazon.com (USA) = US$21.95 (paperback), US$49.95 (hardback); from Blackwell's Online Bookshop (UK), at <blackwells.co.uk> = 12.95 pounds (paperback); 30 pounds (hardback)

Kirsten Schaetzel teaches at the University of Macau.  She has also taught and done teacher training in the United States, the Ukraine and Bangladesh.  Her areas of interest include academic reading and writing, literacy studies and language planning and policy making.  <kschaetz@hotmail.com>

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BOOK REVIEW:  Vocabulary in Language Teaching, by N. Schmitt

Reviewed by Ruth Wajnryb

Many years ago I read a short article by N. Schmitt called 'How does your Lexicon Grow?', a serious, if occasionally apparently flippant, comparison of learning vocabulary with planting and growing a garden (reference unknown).  The content had a marked influence on how I subsequently thought about word-learning and how I subsequently taught vocabulary.  I learned for example, the obvious points (of course, hindsight is always obvious) that retention is linked to personal connection, and that the weird and the strange tend to linger longer than the commonplace.  It's a matter of some interest, too, that though I don't remember where I read the article, I do remember the title--no accident, I'm sure, because it taps into a lower stratum in my brain where I probably store my nursery rhymes and the odd tongue twister.

I was excited, therefore, to see that a recent addition to the Cambridge Language Education Series, of which Jack Richards is the series editor, is a work on vocabulary by the same Norbert Schmitt, I presume.  I thought--if I could have learned so much from a few pages, how much more might I learn from a whole book?!

Like others in this series, the volume is designed as a textbook for post-graduate work in TESOL and Applied Linguistics.  For this reason, chapters end with a neat little summary, some extension exercise (must save lecturers precious hours!) and a list of annotated reading--including websites of relevance, a nice addition.  If at this point you think this topic too dry to bother with, I urge you to reconsider.  Even if thoughts of vocabulary don't keep you awake at night, there's a charm and a sparkle to Schmitt's writing that is most engaging.  For example, here is an exercise from the set at the end of the Introductory chapter:

Choose two or three words.  List everything you know about these words.  Do the same after you have read chapters 3, 4 and 5.  Does the second list indicate a greater awareness of vocabulary knowledge?  If so, recommend this book to a friend.  If not, try to sell him or her your copy (p. 9).

Certainly, there's a currency about 'the magic of words' (Schmitt's term) that learners seem to appreciate more than teachers.  For years we taught grammar by bouncing it off words (the only reason classroom vocab--table, chair, pen, etc.--were used was as practice elements--cushions?--for structures.  And yet learners have always, in some very lay way, equated the words-you-know with your knowledge of the language.

And there's a basic truth in learners' belief in vocabulary.  If you're in a foreign city and you need to get to the post office, a few key words like post office + some exaggerated body language will get you there.  Crudely but successfully.  Grammar, on the other hand, may not.  The grammar that holds the question together--'Excuse me, can you tell me where the post office is?'--will not help if you don't know the word for 'post office'.

In my years of observing teaching, I have seen many natural but unhelpful assumptions being made about how people learn words: teachers who give little thought to 'how many' words are optimum or even possible per lesson, per day, per week.  Or which words?  Or that asking definition-type questions ('What does X mean?') is singularly unhelpful but we do it all the time... don't we?  Or the fact that words 'go in' and hover and move about and end up at different levels of competence.  And the fact that  many go in but many don't stay in: they erode, decay, and without attention, quietly perish.  (Years ago, Dorothy Brown used to speak of 'the mountain of vocabulary' and 'the cave of erosion' that would eat away under the mountain, unless what was learned was also attended to.  I remember that mountain and that cave really well, probably because of the visual she used to accompany that talk).

After all, learning words is an almost infinite business, even for native speakers.  Schmitt cites David Crystal's comment that by the time a child is ten, the grammar of the language, which is made up of a limited set of 'rules' is largely in place.  I actually remember when my son 'got' indirect speech ('Mum said that dinner is ready' instead of the reiterated command 'Dinner!!!') and then, when he slipped into using the passive voice, in order if I recall, to reduce agency--not 'I broke it' but 'it was broken'... handy).

Unlike grammar-learning, however, vocabulary is infinite.  Schmitt writes: 'a person is unlikely to ever run out of words to learn' (p. 4).  So true--think for a moment: What was the last word you heard in English that you didn't know, or weren't sure of, or looked up in a dictionary?  I bet you can recall the word and the context in which you encountered it, if not the meaning you `learned'.  As Schmitt points out (reinforcing Brown's cave of erosion point), it takes more than one exposure for a word to become part of you!  That itself is a valuable lesson to teachers.  What about five minutes at the end of a lesson to go over some of the words that have cropped up?  Or a list on the side of the board that's referred to many times, and tested too, before the week is out?

Chapters cover, roughly in order, what we mean by vocabulary, the history of vocabulary in language teaching, the way meaning is organised--semantically, morphologically and grammatically--the use of corpora, vocabulary in discourse, vocabulary acquisition, teaching and learning words, testing word knowledge.  This last chapter on assessment is an important one.  The sub-headings give a good indication both of the complexity of the topic and the elegant and lucid way that Schmitt approaches it.

What do you want to test?

What words do you want to test?

What aspects of these words do you want to test?

How will you elicit students' knowledge of these words?

Although a whole chapter is devoted to pedagogic elements (Ch. 8), throughout the book Schmitt's draws classroom applications.  He has the twin perspectives of researcher and teacher and it is a strength of the book that each enhances the other.  And his debt to the undisputed king of vocabulary studies, Paul Nation, is everywhere evident.

Among the most interesting parts, for me, were these: the increasing frequency of corpora in dictionary and research, and the prediction that this will grow and soon affect the content of course books; the patterning of lexis in discourse, and how reiteration works cohesively and interactively; the notion of cross-association (the danger that words like 'deep/shallow' are likely to be confused if presented simultaneously); the inverse relationship between ease of inferencing and word retention; the value of deep processing vis-a-vis retention; and the advantages of creating vocabulary learning groups as students in groups have more success than individuals learning alone.  The book is a veritable bank of rich ideas, any few of which will impact on your teaching.

Numerous Appendixes elaborate matters raised in the body of the book--e.g. a Vocabulary test over 4 levels - 2000 words, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 + an academic word list that will make EAP teachers (if not their students) very happy indeed.

I'll exit this review by leaving you with an exciting titbit of lexical systematicity (from Ch. 6, Vocabulary in Discourse, p. 114) , an exercise that might stimulate your appetite. This one's on the order of modifiers before a noun.  Not a discussion starter at a dinner party I agree, but something to think about during traffic jams perhaps.  In each of the two cases below (a. and b.), five different adjectives are given for two different nouns (a. trains; b. clock):

a. electric

old

splendid

those

two       TRAINS

b)   big

 brown

 cuckoo

 noisy

 that       CLOCK

Your job ('should you choose to accept it...') is to put the five in 'the most natural order'.  Then compare your two lists, and develop a rule for their ordering.  Then, if you're still interested, wrap a lesson around it.

Publication Information:

Vocabulary in Language Teaching

Author:  Norbert Schmitt (aka Norbert Schmitz)

Publisher:  Cambridge University Press

Year of Publication:  2000

ISBN:  0521669383

Cost:  From Amazon.com = US$21.95 (paperback); from Barnes & Noble online (<bn.com>) = US$21.95 (paperback)

(This review will also appear in the "ELICOS Association Journal", Australia.)

Ruth Wajnryb has been in the field of TESOL for some 30 years, first as a teacher, then as a trainer and materials writer.  She has published widely and now conducts her own consultancy firm in matters relating to education and language.  <rwajnryb@nsw.bigpond.net.au>