Tag Archives: a teacher’s narrative

Challenges of teaching English in rural context: A reflection of an English teacher

Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, ,
           Shankar Khanal

Introduction

English has become an indispensable part of the educational curriculum in Nepal and it is one of the most used languages in the world.  Teaching English as a foreign language in Nepal has been a challenging job in community schools in general and the context of rural areas in particular. Students in rural areas lack the competency and performance in English compared to their urban counterparts. Based on my ten years of teaching experience in a village in the far western part of Nepal, I have faced several challenges in teaching English. I reckon they are worth mentioning.

English as a subject not as a language

From the very beginning when I started my career as an English teacher, I found that most of the students, as well as teachers, have been taking it as a very tough subject like mathematics.  The only target of the teachers was to prepare students for the final examination. Teachers are evaluated based on the result of the students at the final exams because teachers’ internal promotion depends on the learning achievement of the students. Permanent teachers are promoted depending on their performance appraisal. The skill and efficiency of students are ignored. Students were provided with the typical tasks to do like writing letters, essays, applications and other writings just for memorization and never learning of the meaning, forms and structures. It is done to preserve the reputation of the teacher as a good teacher. Another challenging factor is students’ belief about the nature of learning English as a subject consisting of a list of words and a set of grammatical rules which are to be memorized and separable skills to be acquired rather than a set of integrated skills and sub-skills.

There is a kind of fear deeply rooted among the students with this subject. I would like to add a reference of a student here: he said, “If I were the education minister, I would exclude English from the school level curriculum.”  It clearly shows how students perceive English as a very ‘difficult subject’. They are always fearful about this subject. To lessen their fear, I tried to convince them by giving the example of Mumbai (at least one of every family member lives in Mumbai in connection with work) who can speak Hindi fluently within a short period- then why can’t we learn English?  We only need to learn the structural language and do continuous practice. Without practice, we cannot even write the Nepali language correctly. I encouraged my students to practise English simple sentences along structures. As I and the students spent a few months eventually, they understood and responded in English. So that the teacher, as well as the students, should change the concept that they are teaching and learning a language, though it is taught and learnt as a compulsory course or subject at the school level in Nepal.

Role of teacher as a translator

Teaching English in the classroom means translations in the mother tongue which is another challenge in a rural context. I have a bitter experience with translation. When I started teaching English as a career in private English medium schools, I did not translate all the English texts into Nepali, I only spoke in English. But the strategy was not so effective. Students remained passive, making noise and teasing each other. I asked some of them at the end of the class for evaluation, but no one responded. I guessed it might be their hesitation towards a new teacher. But the next day, I was called by the headmaster, and I got embarrassed by what I heard from him. Students had complained that they did not understand what I taught to them as I did not translate the text into Nepali. Students were habituated only to listen to the voice in their mother tongue from the teacher. One of the students said, “We were waiting for your Nepali translation by the end of the class.” After that, I observed some English classes of other teachers and found that it had been a trend to translate words in their mother tongue. Most of them are neither emphasizing pronunciation nor language structures. It means students are not learning the language with correct structure but the only translation of the written words or text in Nepali.

Later on, we (English teachers) concluded that translation can never be taken as the only tool of teaching English. It can be helpful for classroom management, setting up activities or explaining vocabulary, for example. The translation was a significant part of English language teaching for a long time in our context; it is still in use in many contexts. In my experience, it helps students to understand the language but not how to use the language in real-life situations. It does not help learners develop their communicative skills, but encourages learners to use their first language. It may only be useful to those learners who are more analytical or have performance for verbal linguistics learning strategies. In rural contexts, translation only makes students passive, completely dependent on the teachers and does not encourage students to speak in English during class time.

Less focus on teaching and testing of oral language skills

Language testing is entirely different from testing of other subjects. It covers language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and aspects (vocabularies, grammar and language functions).  The national curriculum framework emphasizes the teaching of all four language skills in a balanced and integrated way. But in the community schools of rural areas, the teaching and testing the listening and speaking skills is less emphasized. I still remember that a few years ago, we used to have cassette players and other materials for listening and speaking tests and there used to be systematic testing.  But nowadays we just provide marks without testing these two important skills. As a result, students have a misconception that they do not need to learn listening and speaking skills because they know that they will get more than 20 marks out of 25 as their practical marks. The SEE (Secondary Education Examination) board has developed criteria for testing students’ English language skills, the system requires students to face both written and oral examinations and students are expected to be able to perform a certain level of English language competence in both written and verbal forms. I talked about it with some English teachers in my neighbourhood and they responded that they have completely ignored two skills; listening and speaking. After consulting with some headteachers and pass out students, I found two reasons: 1) lack of supporting materials to teach and test listening and speaking skills. 2) Less focus on administering listening and speaking tests regularly in schools. Therefore, the teachers need to emphasize these four language skills to be tested.

Lack of ‘trained’ language teachers at lower grades

The school education structure of our country has been realigned from the basic level (ECD/PPE to 8) to the secondary level (9 to 12) after the eighth amendment of the education act. The primary level is the foundation of education. Primary level teachers are responsible for the delivery of all subjects because they do not have specialization in a particular subject while entering the service. They are supposed to teach all subjects.  They might be qualified in other subjects but regarding the English language, most of them do not have the required level of competence and confidence in dealing with it. Most of the primary level teachers are indeed permanent with SLC (school leaving certificate) qualification and they do not receive training on content, pedagogy and modern technology to cope with the current demands of English language teaching methods and techniques.

In a training, I observed that primary level teachers hesitated to speak in English. Earlier when we collected the need, many of them wrote their training need in the Nepali language. It shows that teachers in early grades need a lot of language support, good practice, sharing culture and refresher training modules.

One of the teachers from the Achham district explained that teachers are not highly motivated to teach English effectively because of the lack of enough resources in schools, motivation from school management and the headteacher.

Therefore, English teachers need to change their mindset to get updated with new ideas, teaching techniques, and innovations. We can better use the resources available online and offline. School administration should not pressurize the teachers to complete courses. Learning can be fostered through managing classrooms and resources essential for students. Teacher training on the content, pedagogy and technology should be an integral part of teaching English as a foreign language. Small class sizes are better for enhancing target language skills than large classes. Recruiting qualified and trained teachers are a dire need in our context.

Conclusion

To conclude, teachers in our context face so many challenges while teaching English. We are emphasising upgrading students from one grade to another as exam-oriented teaching and learning has been a major focus. Learning a foreign language like English has not been given much emphasis in our pedagogical practices. Maximum use of mother tongue is in practice. School management and community support mechanism seem to be too weak to encourage teachers to better facilitate the English language courses. Most importantly, motivation and specialized training on the part of English teachers in a rural context is the need of the hour.

Author’s bio:

Shankar Khanal is an M.A. in English from Tribhuvan University. Mr Khanal teaches English at the upper secondary level (11 & 12) at Baijanath model secondary school in Achham district.

My story of growing as a professional English teacher

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, ,
Narendra Airi

I adopted teaching as a profession some 18 years ago. My teaching career commenced from a private English medium school. It was after I completed proficiency certificate level examination. In this blog post, I am sharing my experiences from a novice teacher to a professional English teacher. The article explains that how I grow as a professional English teacher. It also depicts what different stages of my journey of teaching passed through.  

Teaching is my favorite profession. It is my passion too. I have been turning my passion into action teaching in different levels and schools. What I adore is standing in front of enthusiastic pupils and delivering something. This passion led me to adopt teaching as a profession. Before I started teaching, I had some exposure of English Grammar and language for the Level I had to teach. After I had completed the examination of intermediate level, I started teaching. I was selected as the teacher after my class observation. In order to perform well and mark good impression on the part of observers, I had gone through all the topics of grammar that I studied in high school level. Furthermore, I went through an English speaking course book to improve my speaking skill. The book incorporated various language functions, vocabularies used in daily conversation, class room language, Nepali –English translation and so on. When I read the book twice, it broadened my horizon of knowledge in using the English language.

After teaching in two private English medium schools for a year, I joined a government-aided school. It was the school where I had studied at lower secondary level. The school proved a turning point in my life both as a student and a teacher. It proved a turning point in my student life in the sense that I could make my foundation of English strong as a volunteer teacher from the U.S.A. taught us.  In the beginning, it was quite difficult to grasp what she uttered. She was the class teacher for a whole academic year. We, the students, were exposed to native tone in English in EFL (English as a foreign language) setting. Gradually I could get what she spoke. The way she pronounced English words or the way she delivered in the class helped me to grasp the native accent. Moreover, the school proved a turning point in my teaching career as I took my further study and teaching ahead simultaneously.  I completed my Bachelor’s Degree (B.Ed in English education) during my service there.

Then I attended training on ‘Interactive Radio Teaching’. All the trainee teachers had been given one set of radio to each. A live program would broadcast from 2:05 to 2:50 pm by Curriculum Development Centre. I had to teach English taking the radio set in the classroom to Grade five. It was a formal training in distant mode. All I had to do was to turn on the radio in the class and make the students listen to. And I had to repeat after the instructor on the radio so that students could understand what was delivered through the radio. The program particularly helped me to improve my pronunciation of English sounds and pedagogical skill.

Moreover, I attended micro-teaching (also called peer teaching) by the end of bachelor’s 3rd year. Later on, I had to teach the 10th graders for one and a half month as practice teaching. I got acquainted with practicality of communicative approach of teaching during this period. The course book that I studied in Bachelor’s level and the practice teaching I was involved in proved fruitful for my teaching. This practice teaching added some teaching techniques, skills and application of knowledge in me. During 45 days’ practice teaching I received feedback from my peers who taught English in other classes. Moreover, my classes were observed by the internal and external supervisors as the subject experts. Thus, the peers’, subject experts’ feedback made me more competent and confident to handle the class and deliver subject matter effectively. To be well prepared, I came to know that the teacher’s guide was helpful. I borrowed and went through it during this period. It has multiple benefits in teaching in a way it provides clear direction to teach English.

Besides I grabbed an opportunity to attend short-term teacher training program which helped boost my performance. After having attended the training, I started teaching the students using learner centered approach. I also learnt how to teach grammar creating situation to the context. Furthermore, I learnt to teach the vocabularies more than just giving synonyms and translating. I grasped some techniques and ideas on how to motivate the students towards learning English too.

While teaching English in grade 10, I felt some difficulty to teach some poems. I consulted several practice books; went through questions and exercises in the textbook and made notes in diary. I could interpret the poems. However, I was not fully satisfied. I went through many hurdles at personal and professional level. On the one hand, I was only job holder in the family and the other I went through obstacles in teaching career too. As I had strong passion for reading from which I could get sheer satisfaction and joy, I pursued my higher study and completed my master’s degree. After the completion of teaching practice by the end and M.Ed. 2nd year, I was offered to teach in Grade XI and XII. I got a decent platform to consolidate the subject matter that I had learnt in campus and university level. In this teacher education program, I studied various course titles such as linguistics, phonetics, translation studies, grammar, semantics and pragmatics and so on. These courses made the foundation of language, linguistics and grammar stronger in me.

In the course of time, I joined a residential Military school in western Terai of Nepal. On the very first day, when the students had enrolled, the school organized an orientation program for the first batch. I had been assigned the responsibility to host the entire program. I did not have any difficulty to teach English and to speak in English. But I had never got the exposure of public speaking in English. I did not have much idea on how to conduct a program though I know what to speak.  The principal just gave me the program details. I went through it. It struck my mind. It was the first time I was going to host a formal program in English. I mustered courage, I made notes; prepared rough draft; read it. Then I consulted one of my friends in the telephone who had the experience of conducting such program. I was well- prepared to host the program. I hosted the program. I received good feedback. It shows speaking in English in EFL setting is not an easy task. Furthermore, these types of real life contexts are really instrumental to enrich the professional growth. Like me, many students hesitate to speak English in different situations. Therefore, positive attitude toward target language can definitely enhance learning of the language. It also indicates that the abstract knowledge (competence) is to be brought out (concretized) through performance. The competence of an individual has to be sharpened through performance.

After I had attended 23rd international Conference of NELTA, I received a congenial atmosphere to learn more. The key speakers from foreign universities, presenters belonging to the expert groups and practitioner groups gave wonderful sessions. I received many insights on various issues and topics in ELT (English language teaching). Likewise, a mentor, my principal, who usually assigns me to work on various responsibilities – proof-reading the articles, writing articles and editorial for school magazine, writing proposals and certificates in English, inspires me to improve my writing skill. It shows that attending conferences and collaborating with experienced teacher or mentor helps to grow professionally.

Where there is a will, there is a way. In other words, every problem has a solution. During my teaching career in the school where I have been teaching for 8 years, I taught several course books in English. Almost every year or sometimes after 2 or 3 years the course book are changed. Moreover, a teacher has to teach three/four course books in a class. The teachers have to work hard to perform well in the class. I am not the exception. I taught an English Course book which mainly dealt with English literature to the 4th to 7th graders for two years. In other genres of literature, I had no difficulty. But I felt difficulty to teach poetry. It doesn’t mean I was unable to teach poetry; I could teach poetry to the students; I could interpret the poem. But I was not satisfied myself. Later I found myself less interested in poetry. It shows that teachers’ area of interest matters a lot in teaching learning process.

It is said handwork pays. Working as a teacher, I teach 4 to 5 periods a day. Besides classroom teaching, the teachers have to conduct co-curriculum activities in the school. Not only this, the teachers are assigned various other tasks- writing proposals, reports, certificates for various purposes, and articles for annual magazine and so on. Among the four language skill writing carries comparatively a greater importance. In this connection, the words of Francis Bacon are worth-quoting ‘Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man.” This quote highlights the importance of writing. Furthermore, writing is considered to be more difficult than other skills of language. One has to read a lot to enhance writing skill.

To conclude, in the journey of my teaching, day-by-day I began to feel more excited and motivated. Moreover, I felt more confident and competent. It was possible because of the readings, working with mentors, peer observation, feedback from the experts and most importantly my passion for teaching, a positive attitude toward the English language; an internal motivation to perform better.

Through my journey from a novice teacher to a professional teacher, I come to a conclusion that it is not difficult and impossible to transform ourselves. One needs to have desire to grow and enhance the professionalism in the course of time. He/ she needs to update to adjust him/herself in the changing context in a regular basis. It is possible only if he/she is dedicated, inquisitive and studious.

The author:

Narendra Airi is an M.Ed. from Tribhuvan University and the head of English department at Sainik Awasiya Mahavidhyalaya Teghari, Kailali.