The when, why and how of English learning after class debate

After the class debate, our doubt about which age is the best to start learning English continues more or less the same way. However, we realised that exposure time and quality both together are the key. Obviously, there could be several combinations of starting age and hours per week given to English in order to ensure the same overall exposure to the language, so there isn't just one right way around. But it is something to take into account that high exposure will not necessarily bring higher competence.

Nevertheless, we agree that Basque language is the priority here and starting learning English at the age of 4 gives a good exposure to English while not harming Basque language. Therefore, we have decided our starting age will be 4 years old.

The when, why and how of English learning

After reading the three articles individually, we have had a very intense debate about when, why and how should English be learnt.

One thing we agree about is the importance of how English is learnt, of the methodology used. You may read our previous post regarding good and bad practices to learn languages. When it comes to age, we don't agree, because some of us believe that an early start will be advantageous, while others think that age is not a key factor. Nevertheless, we feel that after reading the three papers we still don't know enough about the issue to give a final opinion.

We have also discussed if English can be harmful for Basque or not, and we haven't reached an agreement on this either. Some of us think that depending on the sociolinguistic context, introducing English at an early age could be harmful for Basque, or maybe the time spent learning English could bring more benefit to children if it was given to improving Basque. During our discussion, we have come to the conclusion that the problem of Basque is due to low social prestige. To many people living in the Basque Country English is a very strong and prestigious language compared to Basque, and that could be the reason why English could become a threat for Basque, that would be a minority language coexisting with two very strong languages in school.

Don't let the pigeon drive the bus!

The Internet is a great source of information that can help you with tales and stories to use in the preschool classroom. For instance, if you are not sure about how to tell the story we listened to in class today, you can watch this video where a man tells it (US accent):

You can also find proposals to be creative about the story afterwards. Here is one; even though it is meant for older children, one can always pick up ideas, maybe for a play?

As for pronunciation and intonation, check the resources we have found.

Objectives and principles for our project

Taking into account our personal experiences about learning a language, as well as the debate held in class when we shared the good and bad practises we had experienced in the process, we have selected a set of objectives and principles regarding what we would like to achieve through our project, together with some practises and outcomes we would like to avoid or we are not interested in obtaining. We have added some objectives that our fellow classmates mentioned in the debate held today.

Goals and principles for students

• To develop a positive attitude towards English, and gain self-motivation.
• To become the main actor of one's learning process.
• To maintain and increase a curious and open mind.
• To feel that English is useful, attractive and fun. For example, it can be interesting to get in touch with a school from and English speaking country and share a project or a workshop, keeping in touch through Skype, or even travel abroad.
• To feel that one has improved and learnt new things.

Goals and principles for the teacher

• To be passionate and positive about your work and about children.
• To create equal opportunities for all students.
• To have patience.
• To be creative and flexible when it comes to selecting methodologies, as well as critical.
• To integrate evaluation into the learning process as an intermediate step geared towards the improvement of the process itself and it's outcomes.
• To evaluate the quality of the learning process, not the academic results of individual students.
• To be a researching teacher who will reflect on his/her practise in order to improve it.
• To set students' interests and their experiences at the heart of the learning process, taking advantage of particular things that are of interest to students to reach wider concepts.
• To see and manage diversity as what it is: an advantage and richness, respecting each one's rhythm and qualities.
• To be aware of each student's Zone of Proximal Development and create learning opportunities for all of them.
• To encourage cooperative learning and peer tutoring.
• To apply meaningful learning, relating new knowledge to what they knew before.
• To use activities that encourage children to experiment and play with the language.
• To use body language to help children understand, and encourage them to use it as well.
• To make students aware of their progress. 
• To integrate English within the regular activities and contents of the class, so children will not have the feeling that there is a specific time and space to learn English.
• To achieve optimal communication, collaboration and coordination among the tutor and the English teacher (if they are not the same person), as well as other teachers.

Goals and principles for the group

• To learn things by doing, using English in everyday life.
• To create a fearless, warm and welcoming atmosphere, where everybody will feel secure, accepted and respected as he/she is, and will feel part of a team that has common goals, but at the same time allows space for individual goals too.
• To have fun in class, to enjoy it.
• To put social learning into practise, to learn in a cooperative way within a free and creative environment.
• To actively engage all class members in every activity and decision.
• To put dialogic learning into practise.
• To extend the process of learning out of the classroom's walls, and to bring the outer world into class.

What we want avoid

• Learning without fun.
• Focusing too much on vocabulary.
• For the teacher, to focus only on marks and exams.
• Comparing one child to another.

Putting together personal learning experiences

Last week we shared our individual experiences in class, and we would like to highlight the following ideas that arose in the discussion:

• The oldest among our classmates started learning English (or French) in Primary School (when they were around 12 years old), whilst the youngest started in preschool.
• Those who started learning English in preschool have sweeter memories of that period, because they sang and listened to stories. Nevertheless, once they started Primary School, emphasis was placed on grammar, just like what happened to those who started learning the language at 12.
• Regarding language schools, two different views were put forward: those who went to language schools were happy because they improved their level and school was easy for them, while those who didn't get to go to language schools felt left behind and frustrated. So, it is not clear whether language schools are good or bad; it depends on the side you are on.
• Even though some of us in class are in their twenties and others in their forties, the methodology used in Primary and Secondary School, based mainly on learning grammar through written exercises, hardly changed over decades. The only exception is the fact that some of the younger classmates had the opportunity to learn a few school subjects in English, which is quite recent. In this case, also, there were opposite opinions in class: some thought that it was a good thing, and others ended up neither learning the language nor the subject. Besides, some believed that using English to learn subjects could be harmful for Basque, depending on the sociolinguistic context of the school.

In summary, we had a very interesting and intense debate, that led to many readings recommended by our teacher, which we will discuss in another post when we finish reading them.

Group experience: good and bad list

During today's class we have been speaking about our experiences learning languages. After our explanations, we have done a list with bad and good things about our process which you can read below.

Good things:

- Class organisation: teacher in the centre and the students in circle around him/her. Collective studying.

- Have a lot of fun.

- Sing, play... in English.

- Have the same teacher for six or seven years.

- Private English School got us to be ahead in school.

- Stay in an English speaking country gets the immersion in language.

- Tell stories in English with puppets.

- Funny teacher.

- Having no other option than to speak the language.

- Use the body language.

- Listening exercises with songs you know.

- Real life examples and exercise.

- Activities linked to your interests.

 Bad things: 

- Class organisation: students in lines. Individually studying.

- Old methodology. Teachers hits students with a rule or ring.

- Learning only with books.

- The level they asked too high.

- Boring classes.

- English learning trips with a Basque Group.

- No external motivation to learn English.

- Too simple and repetitive classes got bored.

- French Revolution in English at 12. Too complicated, we didn´t understand.

- Grammar only.

- Students that go to private languages schools made me bad and left behind.

- Expensive if you want to improve English.

- Learning alone.

- The classes are only a preparation to the exams. After passing the exam, you forget everything you had learnt.

We have also talked about these issues:

1. How we should address diversity of levels in the classroom

2. Grouping in classrooms: should we group by levels or just by age ...?

3. Should it be mandatory to speak English? If not, how can we make pupils talk in English?

4. Evaluation: should we evaluate the net knowledge, or the effort employed?
5. At what age should we start learning English?

We sum up the answers we have at the moment to those questions:

The first and the second issues are related to each other. The second one answers the first one; in our opinion, the diversity issue would be resolved using the Interactive Groups, where people of different ages, level ... learn from each other. 

Our answer for the third question is the next one: the teacher should create a dynamism of English atmosphere, starting with her/him who speaks only in English. In that way, children should know that they have to try to say things in English but they can speak in another language if they need to. 

About the fourth question, we think that teachers should evaluate the effort employed by children or students to improve English. In that way, exams wouldn't be the most important thing of the subject and they would learn more.

Some years later… in the 90’s

As my parents are monolingual, that is to say they only speak one language, Spanish; they have never taught me English. However, they brought me to school where I started to learn the language when I was three years old. I still remember the teacher who I would say spoke to us everything in English. We used to sing English songs, watch cartoons and listen to stories in English... It was really fun!

Afterwards, when I was in primary school, we used to have a reading book, which was in colours, and a black and white workbook. Each unit started with a story and then activities where in relation to that story. We worked vocabulary, verbs, different types of sentences, listening… But we didn’t had conversations or anything to improve our speaking. As my parents thought learning English was important and school wasn’t enough, they took me to a private English academy in my neighbourhood. I was about eight years old. I can remember how I improved my English, because, for the first time, whatever English teacher at school asked I knew the answer. At that time English at school was very easy for me!

After that, in secondary, we continued doing grammar above all, and lessons where really boring. Anyway, I think they did one thing really well, which was to make us read 3 novels a year. The novels where really good and I enjoyed reading them. For example, “Rebecca”, “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time” eta “The secret diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 and ¾”.

I continued this way, learning English at school and academy, until I took the First Certificate in English at the age of 17. That year, in summer, I went with a scholarship to study English to Ireland for a month. There, I spoke in English with my host family and at English lessons, but the rest of the time I didn’t. This is because the trip was in group and all the people were from Basque Country. Really it’s a shame. But I think it is normal, taking into account that we all where 17 and our maternal language were Basque or Spanish. Anyway, I would say that on that trip I improved significantly my English, most of all pronunciation skills. Although, I fear I have lost them.

After that, I haven’t continued learning English. The main reasons are lack of time and lessons cost. I also have to admit that at the moment I don’t like the way or method I’ve seen at English academies. What I mean is that I’ve been studying English for a long time, nearly all my life, and that I can’t say I’m able to speak it well, in a fluent way and with a good pronunciation. I’m sure this is because we didn’t use English lessons to speak; we spent most of the time making written activities. I think English lessons may be most of the time practising it orally, speaking about interesting themes, having real debates, singing songs… And the most important: having a good time!

Forbidden education: our group's view

First of all, we agree with the critical view over traditional education that the film shows. We also agree with most of the principles that members of alternative schools propose in the film, although we think that the film lacks detailed explanations about how those principles and nice ideas are put into practise in their schools.

On the other hand, most of the alternative educational methodologies mentioned in the film are put into practise in private schools, and therefore, are only accessible to a small part of the population, thus becoming elitist.

Still, we believe that these innovative, and to an extent revolutionary, principles can be put into practise in "regular" schools. Just like inclusion is a process, not a matter of being black or white, we cannot wait until we manage to get a job in a school that will be %100 right until we do something to change the system. The teacher has a great power over what happens in the classroom, and should take advantage of that. No doubt, big changes will be needed in order to improve the education system, but the sum of small changes can become a great wave that will make them inevitable.

Learning English in the new century

I was seven when I started learning English. It was the second year of Primary School and the only thing that I knew about that was the expression "English pitinlisgh".We just had a notebook where we sticked a few song such as "Elephant" and some rituals.

During the Primary School, the only thing we had learnt was a really repetitive vocabulary (numbers, letters, parts of the body, colours ...) and really basic English. We didn't learnt grammar in that period of time, so when we spoke we just repeated what the teacher had said. At the last years, we had also had Arts in English, but we didn't learn so much even there. 

When I got to the Secondary School, I didn't know how to formulate a correct sentence because I had never learnt grammar before. I understood all the teachers said to me, but spoke really badly, and my teacher suggested me to go to English classes outside school. I was 13 when I started in an English Academy. I spend all my summer going everyday to that classes, and I have to say, that I had learnt more in that month that in six years. I started with a bit of grammar  (present and past) and a extend my vocabulary.

Back at the school, I noticed that I could have a conversation with my teacher at class so I saw that English was useful and it really likes me. At the third level of secondary school, we started with grammar. My classmates, who had never went to English classes outside school, where really lost because everything was new for them; there were not more songs or more boring expositions about volcanoes or planets.

When I get to the high school, more known as Instituto, my experience was really bad. I had a really awful teacher, whose pronunciation was worst than mine. I didn't learn anything there, and, in my opinion, we lost most of our knowledge. The only thing the teacher had in her mind was that horrible exam called Selectividad. All we had done was only the preparation for that exam, so, we didn't learn anything special, useful or interesting about the English language.

I might say that   it has been this year when I have taken pleasure to English, more exactly when I spent three weeks in London learning it. During that weeks, I have met lots of people from different parts of the globe and now they are really good friends. We have to communicate in English and it's incredible how awesome could that be. It is not only that, during my stay with a real English family I had learnt a lot and I really feel that all of the years that I have been learning are useful because I could have real talk with them.

Learning English back in the 90’s

 

I started learning English at school. I don’t remember very well how old I was but I think that it was in Childhood Education when I was about to turn 5. It was my first experience whit a foreign language; at home I spoke Basque and Spanish but I had not any contact whit any other language; or on TV, or when I travel, or summer caps…

 

I have to say that I remember very well my first English classes. The teacher cams to class with a puppet and told us stories. I don’t remember the name of the puppet or the stories she told us but I know that I loved those classes. I also remember that before tell us a stories she take pictures with animals, colour, body’s parts… and we had to appoint them. On the other hand, we sang a lot of songs. For example one that I remember clear is head, shoulder, knees and tolls. We sang the song very often and we touch the head, shoulders knees and tolls, it was very funny. I also remember that in first years learning English we play a lot to Simon says and games like this.

In the secondary school until 12 to 16 unfortunately we ignore the games, songs and stories to make way for de grammar and written exercises. Was then when  stopped liking English classes. Classes became very boring, and sometimes I had difficult to understand. I didn’t take lessons out of school and I remember that it was very big difference between students who take lessons out of school and students who don’t. First had not any problems to continue the lessons and they also take very good notes. Others we had many more difficulties to follow the lessons. From my point of view this is very unfair. In fact, English lessons out of school are very expensive is not uncommon that many families cannot afford it. I also think that when I was at school teachers often prepared the classes to children who takes lesson out of school, and others who going we were from behind. I still remember the anger and indignation that I was producing this.

Last year resume my English classes. The experience has been much more rewarding than at school; classes are more practical and not focus so much on grammar. I must say that I learned a lot more in one year that in ten at school. Despite this, I had to leave the English lessons because I had no time and because they were very expensive. We were also many students and it was very difficult to focus on the needs of everyone.

Nowadays I don’t take English lessons, my level is low but is in my mine to learn English, is my unfinished. I would like to learn it whit other person who need to learn Spanish or Basque; in tandem. Without books and grammar only speaking, making mistakes and having fun. At list I think that is the only way to learn; not only learn languages also you get life experiences.

 

Another learning experience from the 70's and 80's

I also started studying languages ​​at school. Until sixth grade, the only language we used was Basque. It was at the age of twelve when we started learning French and Spanish language. There was no option to choose the language; the whole class had to learn French.

At that time, my school was ( ikastola) but it changed to be a public school (Herri eskola).  Unfortunately my French teacher’s ideology was Spanish and taking into consideration the political atmosphere of that time, there was no way to learn nothing.  I only remember that he was a really bad person and that we were all scare of him.  Nowadays I would dare to say that he was a fascist and that he really hated Basque culture.   His methodology was   very traditional. I remembered that we had to learn things by heart; he also used to hit us, and was constantly punishing us.

The lessons were boring and we did not learn any French at all. What I learned was how to cheat with the only purpose of passing my exams.

After three years learning French, I changed school. It was there when I first started   learning English. All my colleagues knew some English but I did not know any English at all. I was always failing this subject.

The methodology used had no sense; we used to do many repetitive exercises related to subjects of not interest to us.  I end up felling that English did not interested to me and that I had lost all my motivation.

During all those years, I took more English lessons and learned the basics. I had no interest in learning a language that was not mine and did not think that it was of any use. I managed to get an A1 level, but that was very long time ago.

Nowadays I'm taking English lesson; my level is very low but at least now I am enthusiastic and fell very motivated and hope to learn much English

Learning English back in the 70's and 80's

When I was a child we didn't start learning English at school until our sixth grade, when we were about to turn 12. On the other hand, being exposed to English wasn't as easy as it is today either; there was no way one could watch TV in English, and unless you travelled to an English speaking country, you couldn't get books, magazines or newspapers in that language. Of course, there was no Internet back in the seventies and eighties. Still, I remember knowing a few words in English before I started learning it in school. One of my uncles went to England for his honeymoon, I think, and they brought me a wonderful and huge box of watercolours. It was one of the coolest gifts I have ever received; full of tiny watercolour pans, each with the name of the colour underneath. They had really exotic names which I have forgotten, but I guess that my dad taught me how to read them, as he knew a bit of English. So, one of my first memories regarding English is about something cool, exotic and fun, which must have been a good beginning, no doubt.

My first English teacher was a young woman, whose name I don't remember. I cannot recall the exact details of what we did in class, but I have a vague image of a different way of teaching, compared to the rest of our subjects, and that she could really speak English (how on earth I could tell her English was good, I don't know, because I knew none myself). She was sweet also, and the outcome of it all was quite sad, as she was bullied by some of my classmates. After my first year learning English with her, I was eager to learn more, so I took English lessons in a neighbourhood language school. My favourite activity was listening to songs and trying to guess the lyrics. Those listening exercises were usually done with old Simon & Garfunkel songs, which are quite appropriate. Nowadays, Kings of Convenience would be a similar choice.

I don't remember much of how we learnt English at school after that, but it was mainly based on studying grammar and exclusively doing written exercises, so I guess it was pretty boring. I continued taking lessons out of school, and after a couple of years I changed to a larger language school in the town centre. I had a really nice teacher for a couple of years there, he was an absolute clown and we had a lot of fun in class (at least, I did). Classes were mainly focused on learning to use the language, or learning the language through use. We were placed in real life situations, and grammar or vocabulary became the means, and not the end themselves. I think that was a good approach.

I also took a couple of courses specifically targeted to get certificates. Classes we not so much fun, because they were just a matter of preparing an exam, but they proved useful for their purpose, I must admit.

My parents made a great effort in order for me to improve my English and, thus, I spent a few weeks in England during two summers when I was 15 and 16, and a whole year in the US after that. Back in those days, when you travelled abroad you really experienced 24 hours a day of language immersion, because there was no phone, whatsapp, skype, or email that could get you in touch with home. I believe that helps a lot when it comes to learning a language; you really need to live in that language, there is really no other way around.

I lived for over three years in the UK as well, where I worked and took my postgraduate degree, thanks to the Commet programme (similar to Erasmus, but for recent graduates who went abroad to work as trainees) and a government scholarship.

I returned home in 1997 and since that I read quite a lot in English, I seldom write, most of the TV I watch is in English (shows and films), and I only speak English when I travel abroad. My English is not half as fluent as it used to, but I couldn't expect it to be otherwise.

I studied French for a year and a half in my twenties, and I can understand a bit, but I can hardly speak. If I had time now, I would love to study Portuguese, which sounds sweet and sour at the same time to me and is really soft, just like fados.

Finally, I strongly believe that learning a language is a lot about not feeling ashamed of making mistakes, being able to laugh at yourself and laugh in the company of others. Only mistakes will lead you to improving your knowledge, and you will only be willing to do so if you enjoy it. I also liked a quotation by Rousseau in a text written by Daniel Pennac that we recently read, which said that we tend to accomplish with ease that which we are not in a hurry to achieve. I never learnt a language because I needed to, or because there was an exam that had to be passed; it was just for the fun of it, and it worked.