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September 28, 2006
Teaching the teachers
With startling force the matchless importance and beauty of our mother tongue was once again driven home to us in SPELT’s Urdu strand. Dr Arfa Sayeda Zehra, head of the National Commission on the Status of Women, brought the house down with her silky smooth yet razor-sharp talk peppered with apt poetic references, reports Naushaba Burney
A flock of teachers alighted on Bahria College recently looking for expertise, know-how and a bit of fun at the 22nd SPELT Conference. For two and a half days, the teachers held sway, learning, catching up with new trends in English Language Teaching (ELT), networking and sharing experiences.
The Society for the Promotion of English Language Teaching, or SPELT, under its forceful leader Zakia Sarwar, outdid itself by ensuring the presence of experts from places like Hungary, Japan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Canada, the US and UK, besides Pakistan. There was even a young assistant professor from Kabul University English department who said that after 2001, lots of foreign scholarships became available and she went off to the University of Arizona and later did her MA from UK’s Lancaster University.
The Conference developed into a veritable feast for teachers from dozens of Karachi schools, including government ones. For a change, they experienced a role reversal, as they sat like obedient students in a classroom, taking notes, asking questions and trying to pay attention to the teacher, or expert, at the blackboard. He or she hopefully gave them fresh insight into their subject: education.
With startling force the matchless importance and beauty of our mother tongue was once again driven home to us in SPELT’s Urdu strand. Dr Arfa Sayeda Zehra, head of the National Commission on the Status of Women, brought the house down with her silky smooth yet razor-sharp talk peppered with apt poetic references.
With so many experts and scholars from around the world under one roof, new ideas, up to-the-minute methods, and surprisingly inventive modes were floating around. As if to confirm the truth of the conference theme: Vanishing Borders: Global English, an English speaker announced, “Native speakers have lost their monopoly over English.”
The importance of technology in promoting the teaching of English and furthering education in general, as highlighted by speaker after speaker, came like a slap on our faces. How many of our students or even school teachers have access to computers? Only a microscopic minority, to my knowledge. A UK speaker complained that text messaging has ruined the spelling of British children. It has also helped to expand their vocabulary, awareness of events and people and technical facility in general.
Clearly, as English spreads, it will eclipse local languages and even values, cultures and traditions, if it hasn’t already done so. Describing English as a predatory language, the trainer from Hungary warned the ELT crowd to be aware of their own educational philosophy and beliefs and know their own stance in the complex world of English teaching and learning. Otherwise the strengths and beliefs of their societies will succumb to its onslaught.
As for the technological options, they’re breathtaking. The former director of the world’s largest online network of classes suggests that students can learn English authentically by connecting to a cyber-environment anywhere in the world. By this means students can practise the language with real people and learn about each other’s cultures.
Most interesting are the changes in learning styles in the current Internet millennium as listed by the event’s keynote speaker, Dr Rebecca Oxford of the University of Maryland, USA. She described today’s young students as displaying shorter attention spans, keen on multi-tasking, (doing several things at the same time: phone, radio, book, computer), non linear thinking and wanting instant gratification. The Internet generation learns best through combinations of visual images, animations, and sounds that evoke entertainment. They want to learn by doing everything fast. Not concerned with accuracy or spellings. For some new learning styles mean freedom and creativity, for others confusion. Thank goodness this generation hasn’t surfaced here, except maybe in numbers too small to matter.
What all students need, Dr Oxford says, are high quality input or teaching, lots of practise and variety in classroom activities. Ordinary conversations, information gap activities and watching English TV programmes are all helpful. Sounds easier than having to cope with the net generation.
Before I end I have to mention Howard Gardeners’ Multiple Intelligences Theory which entranced me. It lists the several learning styles of students. These range from the visual and auditory to closure oriented. But when I heard the theory presented to me for the fourth time by as many speakers, I became sick of it.
The teachers picked up many ideas at the conference. They were also overwhelmed at the revelation that such vast amounts of research, writing and development were happening in the field of ELT. While school teachers have evolved different methods for teaching small children, the following self-evident rule is still ringing in my mind: Diverse activities provide optimum education and help cater to the needs of every child. Now comes the hard part. How to take at least some of the approaches and concepts I have absorbed at the conference to the students in the classroom?
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