The art of teaching English language

16 Sep, 2016 - 00:09 0 Views

The ManicaPost

Morris Mtisi

THREE English Language teachers; Mrs Evelyn Masondo in Rusape, Mr Tennyson Hlatshwayo in Chipinge and Basilton Chipara in Mutasa all requested a re-publication of the following article which was one of my instalments on this education page in June of 2014. Wow, You still remember this?

It is also interesting that countless numbers of students in teacher education colleges requested the same and others they want re-published.

So here we are! By public demand! And thank God I keep all my columns in a special archive, all waiting to go into a special English Language publication for students and teachers of English Language on one rainy day in the near future.

Teachers, you are free to request these ‘old’ articles and any other new topics or areas you may want me to handle in your favourite newspaper, The Manica Post.

I remember saying in that article of June 2014, a good English Language teacher was not good enough. I said an effective teacher is passionate, committed, above all able and creative. Nothing ever replaces competence and an excellent English Language teacher is an artist, I added. I said he or she creates fun from nothing, enjoys teaching and is thoroughly enjoyed by his or her students.

I said a clumsy and boring teacher invites resentment from his or her pupils. I forgot to add, “Sometimes even quiet hostility.”

The tragedy with the new crop of teacher is that he/she hardly understands or appreciates the dynamics of the subject area. They have no idea of the unique demands of the tasks they are looked upon to perform.

The teacher has become as cold and boring as the textbook. The students know what she/he is going to say before they come to their lesson.

They know even the first few statements she is going to say and indeed the corner of the classroom she is going to sit before someone calls on her phone and she goes out giggling to answer the call…and this happens every day of the week except on pay day when she is going into town to do her month’s shopping.

Instead of enjoying the fun and excitement of learning, students are daily subjected to sickening never-changing routines of instructions. The teacher is an actor or actress in a Big Brother sort of drama called SCHOOL where he or she is not sure what she must teach others and how to do it. But it is well rehearsed all the same. A life size robot acting according to instructional modes of command programming! Do this. Do that. Don’t do that. Thank you. See you tomorrow!

THE TEACHER AS A ROLE MODEL.

Over and above being an example of decent dress code and the UBUNTHU/HUNHU factor, both which are very important, I am referring to a perfect model of beautiful command of the English Language. What attributes of the language do your children learn from your example? Is your own language as you teach, as you joke with them, as you interact with them, a natural code of language skills coaching? What special skills do you impart in your teaching style? Do your children have something to admire and learn in your own speech…use of metaphor, a suitable proverb here and there, an intelligently thought out and fresh(original) simile or comparison, an acute sense of humour, tasteful flavour of descriptive detail?  If your children go away from your lesson not having learnt a new word or expression from your mouth, what are you modelling as an English Language teacher? If you have no speech or written skills to show-case to your students, what skills can they learn from you as their mentor? What kind of protégés do your students become if you are not a model of excellence? How many compositions do you write your students as a model of distinction material?

The English Language teacher is the first textbook. He or she is a mirror in which students see themselves. You must be the source of reflection of knowledge and skills…a model to emulate and celebrate.

If you teach your lessons in Shona all the time from beginning to end, do you know what your students think of you? POOR ROLE MODEL! “You want to teach us to master the skills you do not have. You want us to master skills which you failed to master.”  If you love Shona so much and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, join the Shona department then sir or madam and swap with the Shona teacher. He or she may have a few crucial English Language skills to impart and demonstrate to the class.

Give History, Divinity and Geography students, lots of relevant books to read, take away their teacher, but give them a copy of the syllabus! They can do well in their examinations. Give your English Language students, hundreds of excellent novels and textbooks to read, give them the syllabus, but take away their teacher and you will forever know how to spell DISASTER. This helps to illustrate one simple point.

Good students can read facts on their own. If they remember them well they pass their examinations. No matter how good students of English Language may be, they need effective hands-on coaching and drilling. There are no facts to master in the study of English Language but skills. They need to be taught by precept and by example by a skilful teacher. They need a coach with the skills himself/herself to learn from. They need a mentor who showcases the exact skills tested in their examinations in every single lesson. They need an artist who is a role model of all that the examination systematically endeavours to test. Students first acquire these skills from a skilful teacher assisted and guided by a good textbook.

They do not acquire them from a good textbook assisted and guided by a good teacher. An ideal English Language teacher is one who is a bank…a fund of skills from which the students can readily withdraw. He or she is far above the levels of his or her students…not at par with them. I know a few some of whose pupils are slightly above their teacher’s proficiency. Common sense does not allow this kind of reversal of values.

PUBLIC INTEREST TEACHING:

Public Interest Teaching (PIT) is a new concept of teaching I have mooted in my TEACHERS WITHOUT SCHOOLS PROGRAMME (TWSP).At this inception stage PIT seeks to regenerate…reorient… perhaps in-service a model English language teacher who is an example and reflection of the kind of student of English language he or she endeavours to prepare, not only for examinations but for life indeed. The concept seeks to complement Ministry of Education’s efforts to stop English Language from continuing to be an obstacle in the process of the educational development of our children. It seeks to remodel a ‘superstar’ in the art of teaching English Language…and Literature. It seeks to recreate an able and self-motivated classroom practitioner who knows and understands the place and value of the English Language in our education system whose examinations, whether we like it or not, are set and answered in English.

The crisis of low pass rates countrywide was caused by a variety of factors that compromised the teaching and learning process in those years there were endless sit-ins, strikes and the rest of forms of industrial action. It will certainly call for a variety of interventions to address. We still do have this ‘dead’ crop of student in the system, struggling to make up for the wasted time. PLAP we all know is the baby born out of that desperation to address or breach the gap.  One of the most effective ways is obviously to aggressively address the quality of teaching English Language which is a service subject and important determinant of the level of pass rates in all other subjects in the curricular.

Through various but specific innovations and interventions, the Public Interest Teacher, at this stage the English Language and Literature teacher, seeks to partner…to complement…to facilitate and to add value to the mainstream-sector in an effort to jointly address the crisis of performance gaps responsible for current low pass rates countrywide.

More of this concept shall soon enjoy popularity, comprehension and use as it finds its place and value in the general scheme of educational development in Zimbabwe.

Schools that have sought and received consultancy from me on the above concept of teaching and learning English Language have already harvested huge benefits and rewards for their teachers and students. Those that have not yet, please try it. You will not regret you did.

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