COVER SHEET FOR CONTRIBUTION TO NADEOSA
CONFERENCE 2011
I am submitting the following contribution to the Programme Committee for
consideration for presentation at the 2011 the National Association of
Distance Education and Open Learning in South Africa (NADEOSA)
conference to be held in August 2011 in Gauteng.
Title of presentation:
Looking anew at in-service development of English
as Foreign Language teachers: An OdeL model
Initials and surname
of author:
Dr Colyn Davey
Details of author to whom feedback must be submitted
Name:
Dr Colyn Davey
Institution/organisation:
Alfaisal University
Postal address:
Department of English Studies
College of Science and General
Studies
P.O.Box 50927
Riyadh 11533
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Work telephone number:
+966-1-215-7740 (Saudi Arabia)
+27-12-429-6701 (South Africa)
+27-12-654-6146 (South Africa)
+966-1-215-7611 (Saudi Arabia)
+27-12-429-3551 (South Africa)
+966-50-744-7730 (Saudi Arabia)
+27-844-963-772 (South Africa)
cdavey@alfaisal.edu
Home telephone number:
Fax number:
Cell/mobile phone number:
E-mail:
1
ABSTRACT
Looking anew at in-service development of English as Foreign
Language teachers: An OdeL model
Using his experience of teacher education in the English as Foreign
Language (EFL) sector in Saudi Arabia, the presenter points to the fact that
there is a pressing global need for internationally accredited master’s and
doctoral programs in teaching English as a Foreign Language; matched by a
depressing absence of Open, Distance and e-Learning (OdeL) opportunities
to do so.
The presenter maintains that, in the development of EFL practitioners, teacher
educators need urgently to re-evaluate what constitutes in-service training in
environments where the teachers themselves are not mother-tongue
speakers. He maintains that higher education degrees in EFL need to be rethought and re-formulated; and, more importantly, taught differently from what
has pertained in the past.
The presenter tries to shows how ODeL is uniquely disposed to maximising
the learning of new skills, values and norms in in-service development; and,
as such, is probably far superior to the contact education model. He
advocates that in-service EFL teacher educators need to come together to reevaluate their experiences, share expertise, identity areas of future research
and develop a non-parochial program that is open to global access and
scrutiny. If an accountable model can be developed, exciting potential exists
for the development of other postgraduate professional development
programs with an almost unlimited international market.
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Looking anew at in-service development of English as Foreign
Language teachers: An OdeL model
C.R. Davey
Alfaisal University, Riyadh
1
INTRODUCTION
One of the most striking realities of the formal education sector of the nonEnglish speaking world is that – for both good and bad reasons – it is
dominated by English (Abley, 2008). As a corollary to that notion, the English
as Foreign Language curriculum, with mathematics and science, is most likely
the most common component in curriculum offerings in intermediate,
secondary and higher education institutions throughout in the world. Gordon
Brown, prior to his first trip to China as the new British premier, opined that, in
total, 2 billion people worldwide will be learning English by 2020, and that, by
2025, the number of English speakers in China will exceed the number of
speakers of English as a first language in all of the rest of the world
(Summers, 2008).
Given this fact, have teacher educators reflected on whether the EFL
curriculum (including its policies, personnel, learning content, methodologies
and processes, and its matériel) contribute to meeting the requirements of the
new world-order? Are institutions of higher learning training the right kind of
EFL teachers?
To attempt to answer these questions, we need to take a brief look at a few
crucial challenges to the modern age.
2
CHALLENGE ONE: THE NEW IMPERIUM
All evidence suggests that we are living in the last days of the supremacy of
the US-led Western empire that has dominated world thought and action via a
3
matrix of hegemonic forces (economic, strategic, military, geo-political,
knowledge-related, and ideological/cultural) for centuries. Observations
suggest that the Western allies are in deep trouble (Eco, 2004; Ramsey,
2004; Longman, 2005; Eurostat, 2005; Reuters, 2005; Crutsinger, 2005; U.S.
Department of the Treasury, 2005).
China, to mention just one of the emerging B.R.I.C. countries, has recorded
remarkable economic performance, and is widely perceived as the ascendant
power (Saickachanh, 2002; Bhaskaran, 2003; Fenby, 2003; Heymann, 2005;
Mackenzie, 2004). Over the last 30 years, Asia's share of world scientific
output grew by 155%, and, as of 2009, surpassed that of North America; and
China's scientific output is set to meet the US level of output in 2015
(Archambault, 2009).
The US (or rather, the North American-led western alliance) will in all
likelihood remain a force to be reckoned with throughout the 21st century
(Friedman, 2010). Nonetheless, the West has definitely, henceforth, to share
space in the world arena with newcomers who do not share the same cultural,
linguistic and ideological connections that bind the US and its allies together.
This is going to bring about a revolution in how English teachers are trained,
because the very curriculum of EFL studies in non-English-speaking countries
is going to undergo enormous change.
3
CHALLENGE TWO: THE NEW JOB MARKET
Warschauer (2000) reveals that globalization has resulted in the jobs that
existed in the industrial era being replaced by new types of job and work
requirements. Furthermore, globalization will ensure the growing need for
porous borders, allowing armies of expatriate workers to move across the
face of the earth from east to west and vice versa to service national and
international needs. The study needs, personal development and career
possibilities of these groups are rising and, owing to globalization, they will
4
work increasingly in English language contexts – which will not exclude, but
will only occasionally be, NS (English native speaker) situations.
This shift in employment and career patterns has obvious implications for
education – and for the EFL curriculum.
4
CURRICULUM IMPLICATIONS OF THE CHALLENGES
Changes in the global economy and job market, shifts in the relationship
between nations, and changes within English and in the use of English
presently taking place will drastically alter the future status and the role of
English in global affairs (Chrystal, 1997; Scholes 1998). The next decade or
so will witness a shift away from the traditional ESL/EFL curriculum that we
are familiar with. The trends identified in the following section reflect the
possible scenarios:
4.1
Culture and context
EFL curriculum administrators will need to reconceptualise how they conceive
of the link between language and culture, with a greater emphasis on minority
language rights (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2004), and on the traditions, contexts,
environment, values, cultural norms, and needs of the learners, rather than on
those emanating from the syllabi and texts developed in the UK and the
United States (Graddol, 2000; Warschauer 2000).
4.2
Language skills
Crucially, as the EFL learner progresses to higher EFL levels, the traditional
Four Skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening) will be there merely to
facilitate higher order cognitive and language skills to enable the transfer of
knowledge and skills across the curriculum, with specific reference to
financial, scientific and technological subjects. Reading skills will be related to
decoding information from a variety of sources; mainly from a screen, rather
5
than from a written text. Writing skills will be mostly on computer, focused on
gathering, marshalling, remaking, reformatting and orchestrating data from a
variety of multimedia resources, but will also involve writing persuasively, and
carrying out complex negotiations and collaboration in the written form.
Speaking and listening skills (usually under-rated and under-taught) will take a
very much more prominent role in the new EFL curriculum, becoming the
spoken expression of what transpires in the new Reading and Writing
components.
In a context of a developing English for Specific Purposes context, Vocabulary
Building and Development will finally come into its own and become
acknowledged as a related, but independent, Fifth Skill which, increasingly,
will develop its own corpus of research and methodological practice (Carter &
McCarthy, 1988; McCarthy, 1990; Carter, 1998; Schmitt, 2000). As emerging
curricula rely more and more on the personal input of the learner, and less
and less on imported, “canned” models and matériel, the Sixth Skill, Guided
and Independent Research will become a vital feature of the EFL curriculum
for the 21st century. The Seventh Skill is Elevated Practice (cf. Warschauer,
2000) which represents the metacognitive domain – it is the skill whereby
language is used for learning, higher-order thinking (comprehension, analysis,
synthesis and evaluation) and problem-resolution to link concepts,
understanding, language and the real-world. The ultimate objective of
elevated practice is to get learners to raise their performance to meet higherquality outcomes within content and language integrated contexts and then,
vitally, to transfer to new contexts.
4.3
Authentic contexts
Authentic teaching/learning/communicative contexts and situations will be part
and parcel of a future ESL/EFL curriculum to assist learners to learn how to
critique, evaluate and interpret information, and then to collaborate and
negotiate around that information as it applies to a particular context, and the
notion of “elevated practice” will become crucial to the curricula of the
successful ESL/EFL training institutions.
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Traditional classroom methodologies will be abandoned in favour of online
project-based approaches to give learners the opportunity to learn and
practice the kinds of analytic problem-solving and argumentation that they
need to be effective in a multinational, global, internet-connected society.
4.4
Multi-literacies
Crucially, an increase in "thinking skills" will be built into the EFL curriculum to
include interpretation, critical analysis, evaluation, experimentation, synthesis
through collaboration, abstraction, “big picture” system thinking, “small
picture” flow-charting and planning, and, of course, persuasion. Written and
oral texts will need to be explored for - and specifically related to - the
development of not just “literacy”, but literacies, of which “linguistic literacy”
will only be one. Critical thinking literacy; visual literacy; audio literacy; media
literacy; and high-level computer literacy will be incorporated into the learning
program, with cognitive and thinking skills built into each one with a focus on
their transferability to other subjects throughout the curriculum (Byrnes, 2000;
Wells, 2000; Warschauer, 2000).
4.5
Theory to practice
There will be a phasing-out of the traditional EFL university components,
specifically the academic, literary and theoretical linguistics programs. The
curriculum will become much more instrumental, mechanistic, more relevant
to local and regional needs, and much more practical. There will be a new
emphasis on a service-oriented and utilitarian curriculum. Indeed, the next
decades will see the rise, prominence and overall preponderance of ESP –
that is, English for Specific Purposes.
4.5.1
ESP - Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
By far the most important change to our present curriculum will be the
prominence of CLIL whereby all teachers become teachers of language (cf.
7
Bullock Report, 1975). The CLIL approach moots that it is the subject matter
which determines the language needed to be learned; that language is
functional and its progress, its sequence, its development through a program
of learning are all dictated (as far as possible) by the content. As the subject
matter changes, so does the language focus (European Commission, 2008;
British Council-BBC, 2006). The CLIL curriculum and the CLIL syllabus takes
for granted that language is not merely a subject offering. On the contrary,
especially in the higher education context, language is used to learn to think,
to digest content, to learn subjects, and to integrate learners “into the global
educational community and provide the opportunity to share the expertise and
establish communication networks with ... institutions worldwide”
(Cheremissina & Petrashova, 2002)
4.5.2 ESP - Learning styles
In an era of heightened focus on national productivity, employability skills are
the wide range of capabilities and attributes that will allow a learner to become
more employable, to sustain employment and to become a lifelong learner
capable of realizing his or her potential in the world of work, but also being
able to change and adapt, and even unlearn skills, values and attitudes that
have become irrelevant, outdated, outmoded, or limiting (Davey, 2010).
Current EFL education is extremely wasteful (Davey, 2010), based on
imported models of education that have nothing to do with local needs and
contexts. Even worse, these imported models of education seldom, if ever,
look at the employability of the learners who are placed in their charge.
The challenge is on for teachers (not just careers advisors) to facilitate a
better match between individual competences, skills and qualifications for
learners in the education system, (future) employers and extended learning
environments (MindMill, 2008). This matching is needed to help learners,
both young and old, to become aware of their personal skills, qualities,
attitude, aptitudes and interests in order to make the most of their life choices
and follow a career path which suits them (DE and DEL, 2007).
8
5
EFL IN NON-ENGLISH ENVIRONMENTS
The discussion in the forgoing sections dealt with the situation in the EFL
teaching and learning worldwide. For the purposes of the following discussion,
the EFL environment in Saudi Arabia, as a case in point, will be under review.
5.1
The EFL environment
Al-Kahtany (2011) reports that pre-school Saudi children are often taught
colours, numbers and simple phrases in English in order that a solid
foundation for future language learning might be laid. Notwithstanding such
early informal beginnings, English formally enters the curriculum in Grade 6, a
measure introduced by the Saudi Government in September 2004. Habbash
(2009: 96) refers to “a trend to lower the level of compulsory English to start at
Grade 4 as well as to teach scientific subjects through the medium of English”.
Most private schools in Saudi Arabia teach in English from the first grade, and,
finances permitting, these schools are the schools of choice for those of
means.
Technology and the sciences in Saudi Arabian colleges and universities are
taught, in the main, in English especially in the élite subjects like Medicine,
Engineering and Computer Science. It is really only in the Humanities that
Arabic continues to be the language of teaching and learning. All university
students, however, undergo a first year academic bridging program where,
apart from some mathematics and a variety of sundry courses, the bulk of the
curriculum revolves around English studies. All private universities in the
country teach exclusively in English, no matter whether the subjects be
technical, scientific or in the humanities (Davey, 2007).
All of the EFL programs [excepting obviously for the BA (English) and MA
(Applied Linguistics)], emphasize a utilitarian, practical employment of the
language – not for cultural or literary purposes (Davey, 2007: 3ff.). The
intention of the various curricula is to develop students who are competent in
9
English to enter higher education – local or international -- and to function in
Saudi Arabian society. There is no desire to “become Western”, and while the
“American dream” might be admired as a financial objective, there is no desire
to give up the unique Saudi Arabian identity amongst the youth. The purpose
of learning English is to function in the 21st century – an ideal that implies
contact with native speakers (NS), but more likely, not.
With a total expenditure on Education, Manpower and Development in 2010
of $36.5 billion [accounting for 25% of the total National Budget (USSABC,
2011)] and the opening of many new universities and colleges throughout the
country in the last 10 years, the demand for EFL teachers is at a premium.
Education institutions have not coped well with staffing the system with
teachers who have the requisite skills to develop the language competencies
required by a sophisticated, formal economy that, to a large extent, functions
in English. Competing with education institutions are the huge state, parastatal, and private corporations that require English trainers for operational
staff that are mainly expatriate.
The education system as a whole finds itself in conflict between a
progressive-thinking leadership in both governmental and private enterprise
on the one hand; and, on the other, the local and expatriate staff who are do
not have – and are unable to engender in their learners – the kind of
competencies that Saudi society requires; which situation is described in the
next section.
5.2
The Non-Native Speaker (NNS) EFL teacher
To feed the country’s voracious appetite for EFL teachers, staff is drawn
mainly from the Middle East (Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the Occupied
Territories of Palestine) and South Asia (Pakistan and India, and, to a lesser
extent, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka). Such staff arrive in the country from
teacher-talk, textbook-driven, grammar-translation backgrounds, with an over-
10
emphasis on (a) theoretical linguistics (the Middle East) and (b) English
literature (South Asia).
In the experience of the present author, who has experience working with the
NNS staff of 8 universities, and a large number of colleges and schools (both
governmental and private), these teachers, no matter how dedicated, have
little knowledge or experience of English teaching and learning that an
education practitioner from the West would recognize as conforming to the
principles of accountable classroom practice.
To add to this, despite their professional status, intelligence and higher
education qualifications in English, their linguistic competence is problematic:
Apart from mechanical errors (spelling, paragraph and essay formatting,
punctuation), in the experience of the present author, NNS teacher writing
tends to be rudimentary and littered with grammatical errors. Their reading
comprehension and text analysis skills are weak, especially when dealing with
extended formal academic texts. Indeed, in a recent analysis of Reading and
Writing skills of EFL staff teaching at 12 company-owned private colleges in
Saudi Arabia (for which the present author consults), the average score for
the 23 male subjects who wrote the Reading and Writing tests on a simulated,
commercially available IELTS-like test, was equivalent to Band 5.00, that is,
about 500 TOEFL (Source: Undisclosed proprietary document, 2011). Of the
23 subjects, 5 had a Bachelor’s degree from a university in the Middle East;
one had a PhD from India; and the rest had a Master’s degree from the
Middle East. Only the PhD scored a Band 6.00 in both Reading and Writing.
Considering that Band 6.00 - 6.50 is the commonly required criterion for NNS
candidates seeking admission to undergraduate learning programs in the
English speaking academic world, and Band 6.50 – 7.00 for graduate
programs, some idea can be gained of the extent of the problem. While NNS
EFL teachers tend to be quite competent basic interpersonal communicators,
their cognitive and academic language vocabulary is attenuated, and they
speak with marked accents. Their speech and writing texts are redolent with
non-standard grammar.
11
What makes the situation untenable is that, because of the Arabic language
context in which day-to-day living is transacted, there is little way in which
these NNS EFL teachers will ever get the opportunity to improve their
language competence. Their salaries are low (compared to salaries
obtainable elsewhere in the economy) and they do not qualify for the
generous postgraduate scholarships and bursaries that are reasonably
accessible to Saudi citizens. Their progress, impelled by (a) the financial
exigency to improve their marketability and qualifications, (b) demands from
their performance-conscious employers for improved command of the
language they teach, and (c) demands from the education ministries and
parents for improved teaching and learning success, is impeded because they
cannot benefit from the incidental learning that occurs naturally in NS English
situations where they can assimilate and accommodate to the environment
around them. The expatriate NNS teaching population is a mature one
(between 30 and 50 years of age), and there is little opportunity for these
people, deeply embedded as they are in extended kinship families, to leave
their work and salaries behind to go and study in NS English contexts where
they can acquire the skills that will raise their proficiency. Even if they did
have the funds to enter expensive NS universities, they would find admission
into these programs denied because of their limited IELTS/TOEFL scores.
5.3
The Native Speaker (NS) EFL teacher
The above discussion does not imply that the relatively few NS EFL teachers
in the country are better. Trained NS speakers tend not to work in the country
because of cultural and religious mismatch, and because the education
system does not have the facility to pay NS teachers “scarce skills” salaries
(therefore more than more readily available teachers). Those that do come
who are qualified in English (and not employed merely because they are
English speakers), arrive in the country with little knowledge of education as a
science, and with backgrounds and skills that have been acquired in English
as Second Language (ESL), but which are not suitable for EFL contexts. The
experience of the present author with NS teachers in Saudi Arabia prompts
him to give credence to the findings of Boyadji, Hermosilla, and Portillo (2009)
12
who opine that native speakers may have a better pronunciation or richer
vocabulary, but many lack teacher training. These researchers go on to state
that, in many cases, NS teachers are just unqualified foreigners working as
teachers or who have taken a brief EFL training course. They cite research by
Arva and Medgyes which stated that “one of the most outstanding pitfalls of
NS teachers identified in a research was their poor knowledge of grammar”.
This research, it appears, showed that NS teachers could not explain or give
a scientific reason why something was right or wrong, like NNS teachers, with
their in-depth study of structure, can.
Boyadji, Hermosilla, and Portillo (op. cit.) go on to say that NS teachers are
often unable to teach at their students’ own pace because they do not know
the difficulties a student might have with certain content or certain specific
skills. They also find it difficult to modify their English to be understood by
students of lower levels of proficiency who might have difficulties in
understanding because of speed or lack of knowledge and vocabulary.
5.4
EFL teaching skills and skills development
In both the NS and NNS English corps, there is little understanding of
education theory and practice, lesson-plan design, counselling learning,
remedial and compensatory development for students at risk, education
psychology, curriculum design and development, materials design and
production, EFL assessment and assessment strategies, research and
research methodology and the know-how to interpret a syllabus. In the main,
EFL teaching in Saudi Arabia is nothing other than working in lock-step
through a variety of textbooks. In most classroom set-ups, lessons are
characterized by the grammar-translation method, with its over-reliance on
top-down, teacher-directed, non-communicative, discrete-point teaching and
testing, focusing mainly at word and sentence level, consistently neglect of
intensive reading and the production of extended oral and written texts.
Significantly, no university in Saudi Arabia offers an MA (MEd, MSc) in
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL); though an MA in Applied
13
Linguistics is offered at the King Saud University in Riyadh. Significant, too, is
the fact that the few (but not many) accredited open, distance and e-learning
Master’s degrees in Teaching English require IELTS/TOEFL admission
scores and base their reading requirements on such complex texts that put
them out of the reach of all but the fortunate few. As important, none of these
online MA programs are designed for Teaching English as a foreign language
– they are all premised on English as a second language. These fundamental
flaws prevent thousands of EFL teachers from furthering their education and
from acquiring the skills they need to deliver the services their employers and
students require.
The foregoing discussion begs the question – what should be done? This
paper posits that:

we cannot ignore the situation and go on struggling as we are doing at
present;

the case of EFL is a special one, and that by redeveloping our notion of
what a Master’s program stands for in the school education context, we
must address not only systemic needs, but also the personal
developmental needs of the teachers, as well as their learners’ needs; and

the linguistic and methodological competence (or lack thereof) of EFL
teachers has nothing to do with their intellectual competence or
professional ethics, and that the degree administering institutions need to
accept the responsibility to develop these competencies.
6
PROGRAM AIMS OF AN ACCOUNTABLE TESOL MASTER’S
Persistent personal research has revealed that there are few TESOL
programs at Master’s level that address the issues outlined in the foregoing
discussions. This is not to say that they do not address very significant ones.
14
If one peruses the handbook of, say, the MSc (ESOL) program offered at the
University of Edinburgh (University of Edinburgh, 2011) one is immediately
struck by the underpinning constructivist education philosophy. The program
aims are:

to meet the professional needs of the target population through developing
an understanding of the theory and practice of TESOL in relation to
classroom practice and/or in relation to teacher education and supervision;

to enable participants to examine their own construct of TESOL and teacher
education for TESOL within a framework
constructed
from
the
consideration of alternative interpretations of theory and the relation of
theory to practice;

to equip participants to modify their practice of TESOL and teacher education
for TESOL in the light of developing theory and the changing conditions in
which they have to operate;

to increase and update the professional knowledge of participants to enable
them to develop their critical appraisal of English language teaching practice;

to give participants the opportunity to reflect on this professional knowledge
with regard to the appropriateness of its application to a range of educational
contexts;

to provide a forum for sharing the rich experiential knowledge which the
participants bring to the course, and through this to seek appropriate
solutions to relevant professional educational problems;

to give participants the opportunity to explore TESOL and applied linguistics
problems and concepts of interest to them in some depth;

to give participants practice in the design, implementation and evaluation of a
substantial research or development task; and

to extend the participants' ability to work autonomously in a specific area of
interest to them.
The careful reader will note how closely the anticipated learning aims
(outcomes) meet with the principles of Sociocultural Instructional Design
outlined by Grabinger, Aplin, and Ponnappa-Brenner (2007); or the
elucidation by Grabinger and Dunlap (1995) of the notion of REALs (Rich
Environments for Active Learning), that is, to:

promote learning within authentic contexts;
15

encourage a sense of responsibility in students, develop their sense of
autonomy in the leaning situation;

grow students’ initiative and decision making skills, and cultivate their
focus on intentional learning;

galvanize student collaboration amongst themselves and their teachers;

utilize learning activities that promote metacognitive thinking processes to
help students develop complex knowledge structures that are integrated
within the lived environment; and

channel student progress via content and hands-on professional skills
development within authentic contexts using realistic tasks and
performances.
7
CONTENT OF AN ACCOUNTABLE TESOL MASTER’S
But, no matter how nobly program objectives might be stated, courses do not
necessarily meet the needs of NNS EFL teachers. The same Edinburgh
University (2011), whose learning objectives were under discussion in the
previous section, for their EDUA11256 TESOL Methodology course has a
bibliography of 28 scientific/academic books all designed for the NS reader;
the EDUA11255 course (Evaluation and Design of TESOL Materials) has
another list of 27 books. Analysis of the reading load reveals that NNS
readers have clearly not been taken into consideration.
As a further example, Durham University (2011) describes its Language for
Teaching course in these terms:
This module provides the foundation for the core areas in language
description. The course will cover syntax, morphology and phonology within
the context of language teaching. The topics covered include:
phonetics/phonology; articulatory phonetics, phonemic analysis, distinctive
feature theory, phonological processes; morphology: morphemes and
allomorphs, inflection and derivation, morphological analysis, levels of
morphology; syntax; word classes, constituent structure, tree diagrams and
syntactic rules.
16
It is clear that there is no intention here to promote learning within authentic
contexts, to encourage a sense of responsibility or autonomy in the learning
situation. There is no intention to grow students’ initiative and decision-making
skills. One is hard put to see how such content-driven subjects can galvanize
student collaboration amongst themselves and with their teachers, or promote
metacognitive thinking processes to help students develop complex
knowledge structures that are integrated within the lived environment, within
reality. One is at pains to see how student progress will be channelled via
content and hands-on professional skills development within authentic
contexts using realistic tasks and performances. The course described is
sheer theoretical linguistics, with very little relevance to the task of learner
self-development or professional skills.
8
THE POTENTIAL OF ODeL TO MAKE A POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION
Over a period of 12 years (1996 to 2008), the U.S Department of Education
(2009, revised September 2010) examined comparative research done at
education institutions, mainly institutions of higher learning and adult
continuing-education programs. The report focused on e-learning versus
traditional face-to-face classroom teaching and came to the conclusion that,
on average, learners in online learning situations performed better than those
in face-to-face contexts.
Online education has made quantum leaps forward with the potential of the
internet, Web-based video and audio resources, instant messaging and
collaboration tools. Course managers have the use of sophisticated online
learning management systems like Blackboard, Blackbaud and open-source
Moodle with the facility for posting assignments, reading lists, class schedules
and hosting Web discussion boards. Through the increasing use of social
networking technology, students are able to help and teach each other, and
interact more intimately with their teachers. The technology can be harnessed
to create learning communities among students in new ways, and to
17
provide learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than
is possible in classrooms. This facilitates more “learning by doing,” which
students find more engaging and useful -- which speeds up the development
of skills, allows for hands-on practice, and increases the retention rate of new
learning. Most importantly of all, learning by well-designed OdeL is
engendered within a community, returning learning and the classroom
situation to the Vygotskian notion of the social and linguistic dimension of all
education (Vygotsky, 1978).
Language studies and language learning, being a “learning by doing”
enterprise, requiring a community within which to share and acquire new
knowledge and skills, and to test norms and values within the larger social
context are uniquely placed to benefit from the potential of ODeL – and the
development of EFL teachers even more so. The table (Table 1, adapted from
Goodwin-Davey, 2011) on the next page is self-explanatory.
9
RECOMMENDATIONS
No institution engaged in using EFL as a language of instruction should doubt
the need for getting its curriculum house “in order”. The current debates about
language learning outcomes; about language standards; about the function of
indigenous languages in the education situation; about the role of a lingua
franca in general society, education, commerce and politics; about
incorporating the vast majority of the populace who struggle to cope socially,
educationally and career-wise in a society that is becoming, day-by-day more
international, more global and less local in focus; about the relationship
between language, cognition and academic competence; about the
methodological implications of English as a first, as a second, and as a
foreign language; about the role of technology in language learning; and
about the positive and negative cultural content of language learning
programs are an ever-present reality. Indeed, it is right and proper that these
debates continue – and strive always to be on-going, in-depth and in focus.
18
19
But education planners in NNS countries where English is an integral
component of the education system need to engage with the reality of the
situation in that teachers charged with the responsibility of educating the
future generations for the years ahead do not have the requisite know-how,
language competence and methodological ability themselves to develop the
skills, norms and values in the learners who have been placed in their charge.
It is for this reason that this paper calls for a re-evaluation of the TESOL
Master’s programs offered to NNS by academic institutions:
1. The language competence requirement for Master’s admission should be
lowered to Band 5.00 (IELTS) or 500 (TOEFL)
2. The academic requirement for Master’s admission should be any
academic studies equivalent to a 4-year post-Grade 12 qualification.
3. All candidates should be in service, with the availability of their own cadre
of students with whom to work.
4. All candidates must be computer literate, have access to a PC or laptop
with internet connectivity.
5. The curriculum will be delivered over 2-3 years through a combination of
short summer schools and/or weekend forums where possible, but mainly
by online learning.
6. All courses will conform to the principles of Rich Environments for Active
Learning and be underpinned by a constructivist praxis and should
conform to the principles of a “learn-by-doing” (a) professional and (b)
language developmental and formative education, with these two focuses
as the primary program objectives
7. To open the course to the very real needs of these MA TESOL candidates,
Capita Selecta components (see Davey & Goodwin-Davey, 1995) should
be part and parcel of every module’s authentic tasks and assessment.
20
This is where students may research, analyse, critically review and
present a topic of concern to them.
8. Taking into account NNS low reading and viewing ability, all reading
material should be designed to meet the level of competency of the
candidates. The protocols dealing with interactivity with the texts need to
be the same type and kind that the candidates’ students in the classroom
require – firmly establishing the principle whereby useful and efficient skills
development protocols are modelled to the teachers.
9. Within both academe and the education system, need to see that the 2year Master’s degree has program objectives that are there to:

develop the teacher’s linguistic competences in the seven essential
EFL skills outlined in 4.2 above;

develop the teacher’s professional skills in the classroom;

explore and extend classroom-related theoretic and academic issues;
and

serve as the groundwork for future doctoral research, and to provide
research theory and practice and action-research opportunities for reallife problem solving at Ph.D. level.
These program aims need to be supported by some form of writing
centre, language editing and reading clinic services to make the
language of research and academe accessible to the learner.
10
CONCLUSION
The goal of this paper has been to explain that EFL is going to become
exponentially more different as the 21st century rolls out. It has been pointed
out that the focus of the world’s attention is rapidly shifting eastwards, as is
the locus of economic, political, military, scientific, technological and industrial
control. All evidence suggests that, as the matrix of hegemonic forces realign
21
around the new Asian imperium, English will diminish in terms of its role in
bolstering the Anglo-American western empire.
This paper has fleshed out the stresses and tensions developing around the
teaching and learning of English within the context of the new hegemony, and
has speculated on the evolution of a more focused, more specialized,
functional, utilitarian - but less culturally and ideologically hegemonic - role for
English in the coming decades. Radical forces and changes inherent within
the ruling hegemonic imperium were outlined with a view to explaining how
the changes in society are going to alter whom we teach EFL to, whose
English we teach, why we teach it, what we teach, how we teach it, and who
teaches it and where. A review was provided of what these changes would
be, of how the curriculum needs to be changed, and how this calls for a
radical rethink of how EFL teachers are trained.
This essay showed how the far-from-good EFL situation in non-English
speaking nations can be served by acknowledging that (a) the problem of unand under-skilled EFL teachers is not going to go away unless the education
system worldwide is prepared to meet teachers (both NS and NNS) halfway
and to offer graduate qualifications as a way out of the trap of impoverished
language ability and unproductive teaching that occurs in these nations’
classrooms and lecture-halls.
One solution is to reformulate, in the EFL situation, what the MA and PhD
programs are for: to serve the nation’s educational, economic and social
interests? Or to protect the academic establishment’s elitist notion of what
constitutes higher education? This article then looked at what constitutes a
R.E.A.L. (rich environment for active learning) for EFL studies with a brief
overview of how ODeL can contribute to creating this environment.
This paper advocates that in-service EFL teacher educators need to come
together to re-evaluate their experiences, share expertise, identify areas of
future research and develop a non-parochial program that is open to global
access and scrutiny. If an accountable, authentic model for an MA TEFL can
22
be developed, exciting potential exists for the development of similar
postgraduate professional development programs with an almost unlimited
international market.
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