A comment on: ELT-Ten Things I Hate About You

Angry Cat - I took this one!
Angry Cat – I took this one!

I’m not in a “hateful” mood in the slightest, particularly as I’m happily on holiday vacation. But The Secret Dos always has things to say that are worth discussing, and this post “ELT-Ten Things I Hate About You” is no exception.

This post is the first I remember seeing (pardon me if I’ve forgotten someone!) that actually talks directly about us, the forgotten group, we classroom teachers in national school systems:

…”And this is despite the fact that the vast majority of our practitioners are swimming in the waters of mainstream education. By this I mean that the vast majority of English language teachers are working within the conventional education system… 

Kudos for highlighting this! May you lead the way!

One by one - I took this!
One by one – I took this!

Coming from the point of view of  a classroom teacher, I now must disagree with point number three, even though we are probably not  talking about the same thing when we say levels (harks back to point one – a school teacher’s life is different). It has been my experience that struggling learners and really strong learners benefit more from being in a different group. Not just academically, but emotionally too. I have seen children who resort to being class clown and don’t even try to deal with the difficult material because they feel they don’t stand a chance when the “strong” students are around. In a group of their own there are no pretences to keep up. Some of the strong children stop studying completely. They get so used to tuning out when things they understood the first time are explained again that they begin forgetting to tune back in… In my own classes I have resorted to teaching in the format of a learning center so as to address that problem (it isn’t feasible to divide my students according to their level).

I like the approach to grammar (point number 4)!

I know the best way to learn a language is to travel to a country that speaks that language and spend some time there, but that’s hardly feasible for most people. The current system may be flawed but we can’t get rid of it. And of course, one can’t ignore the fact that some people simply do not learn a language by osmosis – I’m sure we all know immigrants who have lived in a country for years and can barely manage basic sentences in the language of their adopted country.

Photo by Omri Epstein
Photo by Omri Epstein

Finally, I found it interesting that the Secret Dos brings up “polarizing arguments” (point 6) . Aren’t all debates about taking opposite sides? Doesn’t that expose characteristics of each one, even if we believe the right answer lies in the middle? And wasn’t it a bit of a polarizing act to choose such a name for the blog post? The title caught my eye, to be sure. And I’m glad it did. I believe I’ve only just mentioned a small part of the things to think about following this post.

 

2 thoughts on “A comment on: ELT-Ten Things I Hate About You”

  1. Some interesting food for thought.I have always seen a great diviide between private and public language schools.The whole situation is completely different and not comparable.
    I don’t think one should go to extremes with anything be it levels, grammar or whatever.
    And by the way I am in the middle of a Gaiman novel right now and also finding it very weird! Coincidence!

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