Thanks to
Laura, I am wide awake at 10:30 at night, just when I was about to head off to bed for a nice, dreamy sleep.
Instead, I'm trying to figure out how I can get a law degree so that I can represent the entire non-native-English-speaking population of Oregon in a class action lawsuit against the State Board of Education.
She linked
this article on her blog recently.
If you don't want to read the whole thing, I'll give you the salient bits.
1) The state of Oregon has recently changed their method of teaching ESL students, and teachers are overjoyed to have definitive proof that the change is working.
2) To what method have they changed? Here's a quote from the article. I swear, I am not making this up:
"Schools have begun explicitly teaching the grammar, rules
and structure of English. And they are doing it in a
carefully ordered way, making sure that students don't
miss any of the building blocks of how English verbs are
conjugated, words are ordered, conversations are expected to
proceed and sentences are constructed."Yes, the state of Oregon is delighted to discover that the best way to teach ESL students English is to
teach them English!!!My sincere apologies to all the professional teachers out there who might be offended by what I'm about to . . .
Aw, screw the apologies: What the hell were they thinking?!?!
Native speakers can't learn English without orderly, systematic, explicit and actual teaching. How are non-native speakers supposed to do it?!
And how long has the method
from which they're switching been dominant in the schools? How many years has it been since non-native speakers have been taught the language in which they must function?
Lordamercy. The next time you run across a non-native speaker with poor English skills, do consider reining in your (otherwise natural and understandable) judgmentalism concerning "their" failure to learn "our" language. Remind yourself that "we" haven't been bothering to teach it.
The real irony, of course, is that now, in the great state of Oregon, you have to be a non-native student to get any systematic teaching in the mechanics and use of English. Traditional students are SOL.
Comments (7)
Erm.... it begs the question, what were they teaching them, doesn't it? I mean, seriously, what on earth else could they have been doing? Good grief.
I'm wondering the same thing lilreds is. What was the old method of teaching English? Whole Language for non-English speakers, or some sort of vague "American Immersion" program?
According to the article: "For a long time, we just read to them and exposed them to English and figured they would pick it up just like native speakers do."
They appear not to have noticed that native speakers don't "pick it up" that way, either. "Whole-language" curricula are used for traditional students, too, and they're not learning English either.
(I'm grading this week. Graduate students. People who already have a college degree. Ask me how I know that they're not learning English.)
For a long while, many years ago, American were taught grammar; for example, see McGuffey's workbooks, which may be the classic American textbook. Then a man named John Dewey appeared. I don't think he was the first person to invent "progressive education" in America, but he certainly helped it nefariously shift didactic emphasis toward experientialism and away from the structural underpinnings of language. Thus our "old" method is whole-language (vs older = grammar) or whole-word (vs older = phonics/phonetic structures) learning.Â
One of the benefits of what we now call alternative education -- religious, private, home schooling systems -- is the opportunity to teach properly.
Interesting!! I agree and I don't. I am a ESL teacherI am also non native speaker)...eclectic methods.(all succesful and with a large number of mainstreamings in my classes..but please include that in native speakers too. No ofense!!!
Great post!
Wow ... well ... most of us native speakers don't speak it correctly either. Writing ?... hah! We're all sunk.