TEACHING ENGLISH IS CHALLENGING

Jun 29, 2017 Editorial, Features / Columnists

As the school year winds down, the nation’s teachers should be praised for their extraordinary commitment and dedication in shaping the lives and sharpening the minds of our children. And while many have shown appreciation for the service of these individuals to education, others should be reminded that most teachers share a common devotion to duty and to nurturing the next generation of students. They are role models who have taught our children the importance of discipline, honesty and hard work.
Teachers have stirred the imagination of students, enabling them to embrace the idea that no matter the circumstances, an education is a tangible asset that will lead to wider spheres of achievement, accomplishment and service to the nation. It takes a special calling to be a teacher. Those who choose teaching as a career have demonstrated their commitment to serve future generations of children, and to instill values in them and help them achieve their goals in life.
Recognizing teachers for their hard work could make a big difference in their lives, because they will be motivated to serve even more. But many of the nation’s teachers never receive the public recognition they deserve. Instead, they have been criticized by parents for the failure of their children. Our teachers are getting a raw deal. Their pay is about the lowest among those in the civil service and they are being blamed for the unruly behaviour and bullying by students, drop-outs, and the low performance of some students.
Specifically, in terms of English, teachers are blamed for the unsatisfactory results of English literacy levels. While most teachers are trying their best, unfortunately they may lack the requisite skills to be competent English teachers. This may be due to the training they have received or the strategies they have employed in their teaching. Many teachers who have taken English at the university level may have been exposed largely to literature in English, and not to language courses or the teaching of English. They are therefore not quite equipped to deal with the severe language problems emanating from the classroom, due largely to their lack of teaching skills or inadequate training.
Those who train teachers might be under the impression that those who have passed English at the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) levels have no need for any further training in the mechanics of teaching English.
Contrary to what some may believe, English can be a very difficult language to learn, and teaching it at a high level can even be more difficult. It is full of irregular verbs and has the largest vocabulary and idiosyncratic spelling and pronunciation rules of any language in the world. English words are derived in large part from other languages so their spelling, in most cases, originates from an entirely different language, which is why some words are spelt and pronounced quite differently.
The problems encountered by English teachers stem from the fact that many teach the language the way they were taught—through the textbook. English is full of contradictions, confusions, and annoyances, and requires more than a textbook to teach it. If English teachers do not have a good command of the language, then teaching it does not make sense. It is as simple as that. Knowing the basics of the English language is very important. For example, punctuation, use of full stops, commas, capitals, and apostrophes as well as parts of speech, tenses, nouns, verbs and adjectives, are quite common throughout the language and must be thoroughly understood by teachers.
Further, English has all sorts of sounds that no other language has, and it seems like no one rule applies to the pronunciation of any grouping of letters consistently. The same letters in one word are pronounced differently in another word, which suggests that memorization is the only rule that makes any sense of English. Although English is one of the languages used in understanding and expressing ourselves, teaching it is challenging.

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TEACHING ENGLISH IS CHALLENGING

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