The Twilight of Future English Teaching

When new occupation categorization of all kinds of service workers replaces the original categorization of blue-collar and white-collar, the economic system is changing. When we connect with friends via e-mail and messengers instead of letters or phone calls, the technology is improving. When students find information for research papers from internet rather than from books in libraries, the education circumstances is shifting. As an English learner and a future English teacher, whenever I received messages from the class discussion in English 20 and the reading, Academic Preparation in English Teaching for Transition from High School to College (1985), I was surprised with the trend of modern education which focus on communicative approach to integrate the four macro skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing with understanding literature. From the class discussion and reading, I gained several notions from different sections of the reading, as follows:

When we discussed about English has many dialects, as a non-native speaker of English and a future English teacher, I got shock about that the English that I thought is the global English is in fact not a global language. The population of English user is growing rapidly because of colonialism or international business. That is, English is growing not only because of the use of English native speaker but also the use of English non-native speaker. Moreover, this phenomenon infers to that English may develop into a dialect, a language spoken in a specific part of the world, in another country such as Singapore or Malaysia, where English is not a native language. However, it also brings up the debates of the identity and the value of their own native language. Thus, Philippine English, Chinese English, Singaporean English will emerge as the times require. Therefore, I am wondering if I can understand other English dialects. More specific question is that if I am going to teach English in one of those countries, will I understand them? The only thought that came up with my mind is that I may need to

read English written by various authors from the countries all over the world. It sounds kind of crazy but I am just curious about how other English dialects and the cultures would be. Maybe through the limited realization of other cultures, I may become more flexible and tolerant and will have learned to respect to their language as well as have found the ways to give my teaching.

The second notion I want to refer to is the English and the basic academic competencies. As mentioned in the book, the academic competencies students most need to approach their futures with confidence are reading, writing, speaking and listening, mathematics, reasoning, studying, using computers, and observing. Especially for the 21 century youths, they need to face the issue of employment, also due to the shifting economy, each group of them needs different levels of English knowledge to hold their career; that is, the different demands make an impact on English teaching. Therefore, a class context should depend on teacher, students, and the objective of the class. Based on this thought, when students need is changed and become various, teachers should make English learning become more multi-faced so that teachers can help students meet their goals. Accordingly, as an English future teacher, I should not only focus on the teaching methods or literature but also be aware of the social communication skills and culture manners. Even more, I need to have a concern about the society to enrich my teaching.

The interrelationship or interchange among the four macro skills is another notion made me reflectively. The receptive skills and productive skills weave among one another. We draw on the natural interrelation when teach the arts and skills of English. Language is the complicated invention of interrelated functions with the existed connections. For instance, we focus on writing and partly by means of speaking and listening resulting from reading. In one of the reading plans from the book mentions:

Look up at least two dictionary definitions of another of the words in Wilburs poem. Write a paper for the rest of us in which you assume that no one else has looked up that word. Explain how its meanings add to an understanding of the poem. This plan refers to transfer of learning between reading and writing. Reading and writing were considered as similar activities with learning transferring freely between the two processes. Furthermore, listening and speaking are also collaborative with each other. It was hypothesized that children who echo and produce sentences in response to an instruction to select the appropriate picture to match a spoken sentence would show greater verbal skill than those children who only listened to the correct response. In other word, the four macro skills should be intertwined with one another and transferred from one to another. Hence, we must pay attention to the balance between reading and writing within the English curriculum, and their integration with speaking and listening. The organizing principles of a curriculum should emphasize the interaction between and among receptive and productive processes and incorporate activities that include the related competencies of speaking, listening, readingand so to undertake with students a variety of experiences that offer practice in the interrelatedness of the receptive and productive features of language.

At the final part of the reading, the computer competency is raised, but the reading just simply states the importance of integrating computers in students learning. As we know, the impact which is caused by the improvement of technology will be integrated in English teaching. The Intel program is an example. Take the reading/research for example; the strategies such as scanning, skimming, or intelligent guessing of reading/research are not as essential as they were. Students now have internet to find their sources and they can get the help through the extra links in their reading. What they need to learn is the skills to do the research such as information seeking, source evaluating, decision making and further information tracking. The new technology is students need for the new generation; however, I still think those

traditional reading strategies are the fundamental skills for reading. Computers are effective tools helping both students learning and teachers teaching, yet English teachers should not only focus on the technology. No matter how much convenience computer brings to us, we still need to read from papers or screen and the application of computer even brings us more information to read and to evaluate. Thus, I personally think those fundamental are even more important than they were.

To sum, teaching should not sustained in a system but keep involving new notions based on students need. For meeting students goals, teachers should keep learning knowledge of other fields and keep revising their teaching. Use diverse teaching strategy to help transfer of learning. The teacher should not just presents with information but they are able to use information to read and write effectively, reason clearly, and think reflectively; guide students to become independent learners. If learning and passing down knowledge are designed with a single fixed content and departed from actual life scenario, the students have learnt no more than a new concept. It is not self-absorbed, internalized actual experience. Therefore, while conducting English lessons, the lesson content, strategy, and design need real, meaningful content as well so that students could engage in interactive learning with lesson contents, teachers, and other students. Furthermore, with diverse, repetitive, and application-orientated lesson activities proper language format could then be really learnt.