global trends: challenges and opportunities christian duncumb british council
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Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities
Christian Duncumb
British Council
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-englishnext.htm
A world in transition
Society
Demography
Economy
Communications
Languages
The educational revolution
Changing needs of society
Changing basic skills
Changing nature of knowledge
Social cohesion
Higher Education
Globalisation of universities
International student mobility
Transnational education
Global change
The growth of English
Which model?What variety of English is regarded as authoritative?
Which language skills are most important? (Reading? Speaking? Interpreting?)
What is regarded as a suitable level of proficiency?
How and where will the language be used?
What is the motive for learning?
At what age should learning begin?
What is the learning environment (classroom only? Family? Media? Community?)
What are the appropriate content and materials for the learner?
What will be the assessment criteria? What kind of exams?
Graddol 2006: 82
A post-method world?
“There is no single way of teaching English,
no single way of learning it,
no single motive for doing so,
no single syllabus or textbook,
no single way of assessing proficiency and, indeed,
no single variety of English which provides the target of
learning”
Graddol 2006: 82
Global trends
But, there are some clear trends which have evolved and are
emerging:
•English for Young Learners (EYL)
•Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
•English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)
EYL
Age at which children start with English is lowering and being introduced with greater compulsion
Idea that it is easier for young children to learn languages
It gives students longer to learn English over their school careers. Critical mass?
Provides a potential transition to CLIL at secondary school and English medium learning later
EYL dangers
•Needs specialist teachers who understand child development and are good at English. There can be a lack of such
teachers
•Expansion must be met with corresponding changes elsewhere in the curriculum
•Will result in a very mixed abilities entering secondary school
•Children need to be motivated for 10 years or more
•Failure at the early stage might have profound implications later
•So, “the expansion in TEYL signals a potentially major shift in ELT that needs to be taken seriously” (Cameron 2003:
106)
CLIL
CLIL is different – focus on both content and language learning.
Not the same as English medium education
Combining language and content can help give more space to language
to achieve ‘critical mass’
Can be seen as the ultimate communicative methodology and fits in with
global trends
Growth has dangers
But…..
Relies on basic language skills having been learned, usually at Primary level
Requires different skills of teachers
Changes the working relationships in schools
Difficult to implement unless the subject teachers have enough language.
Dangers if not done effectively. Students may end up not learning content and
language
Potentially excluding
ELF
Fewer global interactions in English now involve a native speaker.
New target models – the fluent bilingual speaker
Search for a lingua franca core
ELF
The ‘th’ sounds as in ‘thin’ and ‘this’
The contrast between long and short vowel sounds
Weak forms such as the words ‘to’, ‘of’ and ‘from’
Articles
Idiomatic expressions
ELF
Change in materials and syllabus content
Change in expectations – intelligibility not native-speaker accuracy
The death of the native-speaker?
The English escalatorA
ge
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Tertiary
Secondary
Primary
Pre-school
Increase in English-medium university courses
School-leavers need higher English proficiency
English increasingly used to teach curriculum at secondary school
English introduced earlier and earlier at Primary school
Expected proficiency increases
Age From to
6
8
10
12 A1 (IELTS 2.0)
14 A2 (IELTS 3.0)
16 B1 (IELTS 4.0)
A1 (IELTS 2.0)
A2 (IELTS 3.0)
B1 (IELTS 4.0)
B2 (IELTS 5.5)
C1 (IELTS 6.5)
C2 (IELTS 7.0)
Some possible long-term implications of trends
Teachers working with ever younger learners
The recent growth of English medium-courses at Universities will move down to secondary school.
Increasing use of CLIL at secondary school
Ultimately English teachers may ‘lose’ their subject
English is increasingly seen as a basic skill
Increasing irrelevance of native speakers and the doom of monolingualism
There are dangers in not keeping up but also dangers in not implementing effectively
“ The key to understanding the impact of global English probably lies in how well and how
strategically its implementation is managed in each country. There is scope for great success but
also for great disaster.”
Graddol 2006: 120
For Russia?What variety of English is regarded as authoritative?
Which language skills are most important? (Reading? Speaking? Interpreting?)
What is regarded as a suitable level of proficiency?
How and where will the language be used?
Is the motive for learning largely ‘instrumental’ or also ‘integrative’?
At what age should learning begin?
What is the learning environment (classroom only? Family? Media? Community?)
What are the appropriate content and materials for the learner?
What will be the assessment criteria? What kind of exams?
Graddol 2006: 82
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