Teaching English to the World

History, Curriculum, and Practice

George Braine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781135603489
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teaching English to the World: History, Curriculum, and Practice is a unique collection of English language teaching (ELT) histories, curricula, and personal narratives from non-native speaker (NNS) English teachers around the world. No other book brings such a range of international ELT professionals together to describe and narrate what they know best.

The book includes chapters from Brazil, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. All chapters follow a consistent pattern, describing first the history of English language teaching in a particular country, then the current ELT curriculum, followed by the biography or the autobiography of an English teacher of that country. This consistency in the structuring of chapters will enable readers to assimilate the information easily while also comparing and contrasting the context of ELT in each country.

The chapter authors--all born in or residents of the countries they represent and speakers of the local language or languages as well as English--provide insider perspectives on the challenges faced by local English language teachers. There is clear evidence that the majority of English teachers worldwide are nonnative speakers (NNS), and there is no doubt that many among them have been taught by indigenous teachers who themselves are nonnative speakers. This book brings the professional knowledge and experience of these teachers and the countries they represent to a mainstream Western audience including faculty, professionals, and graduate students in the field of ESL; to the international TESOL community; and to ELT teachers around the world.

1

The English Language in Brazil—A Boon or a Bane?

Kanavillil Rajagopalan

State University at Campinas, Brazil

Cristina Rajagopalan

Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Inglesa-São Paulo, Brazil

Brazil is the largest country in South America and boasts the eighth largest economy in the world. Its gigantic territorial dimensions—proudly remembered and fondly sung in the country’s national anthem—and plentiful natural resources make it a major player in the geopolitics of the continent. The 8,511,965 square kilometers of its territory make Brazil the fifth largest country in the world, with a population density of barely 18 persons per square kilometer—one of the sparsest in the world. If that is not impressive enough, consider the following comparative statistics: Brazil’s population, currently estimated at approximately 170 million, inhabits an area that is more than twice the size of western Europe, and has borders with all but two of the twelve other countries that, together with it, make up the continent of South America (Instituto Brasiliero, 2003; Sistema Estadual, 1999; United Nations, 2000).¹

Like its neighbors in the South American continent, Brazil belongs to what Kachru (1988) called the “expanding circle” of countries with respect to the use and status of English. In the last 20 years, the language has become increasingly prominent in the daily lives of Brazil’s citizens. Judging by the number of schools offering courses in English, whose numbers and enrollment figures rise exponentially every year, it seems safe to say that this trend is here to stay.

History of ELT in Brazil

The rise of English to the status of Brazil’s number one foreign language is a fairly recent phenomenon in the country’s history, which began with the discovery of the land in 1498 by the Portuguese seafarer, Pedro Alvares Cabral. Traditionally, that status belonged to French, which was avidly sought after by the nobility during the days of the monarchy. At that time, a knowledge of French meant social status, and those who could afford to had their children educated in France, while those who were less well off at least made sure that their children had private tutoring in the language (Souza Campos, 1940).

The unequaled prestige of France as the nation’s favorite role model, and of French as the repository of cultural finesse and sophistication, is evidenced by the fact that when Dom João VI, the reigning monarch, instituted by ordinance the teaching of French and English in public schools on June 22, 1809, steps were initially taken to introduce the teaching of French, on the grounds that, as the universal language, it should be an integral part of education. And when, in 1889, the radical wing of the Republican Party pressed for a popular uprising to topple the monarchy, its charismatic leader, Antônio da Silva Jardim, invoked the memory of that exceptional year in French history, 1789, that had heralded the era of popularly elected governments all over the world. Until fairly recently, the Brazilian elite has continued to look to France as the center of intellectual stimulation and cultural refinement (Pinto, 1986).

In his diagnostic study of higher education in Brazil, Souza Campos (1940) observed that “the French language was one of the first foreign languages, if not the very first, to be taught [as part of the normal curriculum] in the country. For this reason, practically all of Brazilian intellectuals speak the language” (p. 161). Even today, one does not have to look very carefully to find traces of French influence in Brazil’s cultural life. A sizeable part of the intelligentsia, most notably academics, writers, senior civil servants, and jurists, have had some grounding in French in their formative years. When Itamarati, Brazil’s foreign office, decided a few years ago no longer to require its trainee diplomats to become proficient in French, and instead made a working command of Spanish a prerequisite for overseas assignments, there was a general hue and cry, not only from the French government but also from the local elite.

To complicate matters, the language issue is intertwined with the geopolitics of the region, as indeed it is in many other parts of the world. English is typically associated with the hegemonic power of the United States and with what many in South America view as a takeover of their continent by their mighty neighbor in the northern hemisphere. This growing resentment often takes the form of complaints, voiced in the popular press, that the sort of culture being disseminated together with the spread of English—Hollywood blockbusters and American pop art and music, for example—is pastiche and blasé and aimed at mass consumption and quick profit. The implication is that it pales before the high culture that Brazil used to receive from continental Europe, and is therefore a clear sign of a cultural degradation underway worldwide.

Records from the national archives show that early interest in the teaching of English was largely due to growing ties between Portugal and Great Britain. These ties meant that, from January 1808 onwards, Brazilian ports were open for trade with Britain, with the blessings of Lisbon. As a result of Napoleonic expansionism, the Portuguese imperial family courted the friendship of France’s enemy, Britain. The British responded positively, with an eye on the enormous commercial prospects such a friendship would present. In 1807, France invaded Portugal, forcing King João VI to flee to Brazil with a British naval escort. In 1810, the king signed new treaties with Great Britain, giving it trade preferences and “privileges of extra-territoriality.” In 1831, the new statutes of the Academias de Ciências Jurídicas do Império [Imperial Academies of Juridical Sciences] incorporated English into the school curriculum and stipulated basic knowledge of the language as a prerequisite for admission to its courses (de Oliveira, 1999; Souza Campos, 1940).

Since that time, the importance of English has grown by leaps and bounds in Brazil, but ambivalence about it has grown as well. The cold war between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that followed the end of World War II meant increased concern on the part of successive U.S. governments over political developments in South America. Having lost Cuba to the communists, the United States was determined to keep the rest of the hemisphere from being taken over by leftist governments. Many members of Brazil’s intelligentsia are vociferously skeptical and suspicious of U.S. pretensions vis-à-vis Latin America, and openly critical of Brazil’s programmed entry into the U.S.-dominated, free-trade zone. “The entire continent [of South America],” writes sociologist Emir Sader (2001), “is under the threat of becoming a free trade zone for North-American corporations” (p. A3).

It is not surprising, therefore, that the English language has become an ambiguous symbol in the mind of the average Brazilian. On one hand, it is part and parcel of daily-lived reality, appearing on billboards and neon signs, in shop windows and newspaper and magazine ads, and in more restricted discursive spheres, such as information technology and electronic commerce. Most middle- and upper-class Brazilians know that their children must acquire an adequate command of English or they run the risk of missing out on opportunities for the better paid jobs offered by multinational corporations.

On the other hand, many in Brazil are understandably concerned about the possible negative consequences of the unbridled advance of English into the country’s cultural scenario (Rajagopalan, 2000, 2001). Massive borrowings from English into Portuguese, the country’s official language—there are, in addition, some 180 or so indigenous languages (Rodrigues, 1993)—has understandably fomented worries in some sectors of the intelligentsia about the capacity of the vernacular to withstand what is perceived by many as a systematic onslaught on its integrity and long-term survival. Increased use of English words, even where Portuguese equivalents are readily available or vernacular substitutes with a local flavor could easily be coined, continues to disturb those who have resisted learning English for whatever reason (Segismundo, 2000).

This atmosphere of distrust and dismay is, as we have seen, further aggravated by the widespread perception of the advance of English as the most visible sign of the growing influence of the United States in South America. Newspaper columnists are given to adding fuel to the fire by constantly reminding their readers of the big-stick diplomacy that successive U.S. governments have been perceived to have practiced in their ‘backyard.’

The ELT Curriculum

English is taught in Brazil as part of the regular curriculum at primary and secondary levels, but its fortunes have remained at the mercy of the whims and fancies of the bureaucrats and politicians who make the policy decisions at the federal and local levels of public administration. The Guidelines and Basic Principles Act of 1971 (da Costa, 1986) highlighted the importance of “not overlooking the ‘deprovincializing’ role of foreign languages in the context of a life style becoming genuinely international against the backdrop of a world rapidly shrinking in response to the impact of technology and means of mass communication” (p. 42). But such enthusiastic proclamations of the advantages of introducing the teaching of foreign languages at the school level have seldom been followed up by concrete measures designed to raise standards, such as investment in teacher training and materials production.

At the level of the states, the disparity is even more striking. A closer look at what happened in some of the more advanced states in the south and southeast gives a rough idea of the none-too-encouraging state of affairs insofar as ELT (English Language Teaching) in state schools is concerned. In the State of São Paulo, for instance, a June 1980 resolution made English and French optional subjects in the primary-school curriculum. It was up to the students (and their parents) to decide whether they wanted to have lessons in a foreign language (da Costa, 1986).

However, this did not guarantee that those who wished to learn either of these languages were able to do so. The methods used by mostly unprepared, grossly under-paid, and understandably unmotivated teachers showed little influence from the advances made in applied linguistics and teaching methodology. In the last 2 years of primary schooling, the students were exposed to an average of three classes per week, of 50 minutes duration each, administered mostly through old-fashioned methods such as grammar translation. As the students moved to middle and higher secondary levels, they had 2 hours of English lessons per week. A survey undertaken by da Costa in the early 1980s revealed that most teaching was either text- or teacher-centered, with the pupils’ active participation limited to parrotlike repetition of chunks of text from set books read out aloud by the teacher (da Costa, 1986). A similar survey conducted in 1988 in the north-eastern state of Paraíba revealed the following breakdown of classroom activities: grammar 32%, translation 30%, reading 17%, writing 12% and speaking 9%. (Victor & Melo, 1988). And, ironically, in the same country where the education specialist Freire (1970) had made an international reputation for his ground-breaking research into the failure of mass education in many developing nations, teaching in general still followed what he had condemned as the “banking approach”: teachers mechanically going about their jobs, attempting to fill the heads of their pupils with knowledge in the apparent hope that it would grow over the years like a bank deposit.

But the worst was yet to come. A 1984 resolution concerning foreign languages transformed their status from ‘disciplines’ to ‘activities’. The ensuing confusion as to what the change in nomenclature really meant was resolved a year later, when a second resolution stipulated that the teaching of foreign languages was to be considered a mere activity from then on. Among other things, this meant that student progress was to be evaluated, not on the basis of conventional examinations, but by taking into consideration the interest evinced by students in class as well as their perseverance. Evaluation of any kind was to be undertaken solely for the sake of better monitoring of overall results and planning future courses of remedial action (Viola, 1996).

Interestingly however, the opportunity to study English as an elective subject was extended to even those remote rural areas of the state where conditions had traditionally been even more precarious. This suited the interests of the bureaucrats at the top, who could celebrate steady statistical progress in their annual reports. But, if anything, those numbers only helped to camouflage the actual appalling conditions of teaching in those schools, and the growing disenchantment among students and teachers alike. As Viola (1996) observed:

The much-vaunted democratization of education appears, therefore, to attend to the insistent demands from traditionally marginalized sectors of the population for equal opportunities merely by providing them with the material conditions, given that the kind of teaching offered to the socially underprivileged classes still leaves much to be desired and is all too frequently downright discriminatory. (pp. 112–113)

Viola’s (1996) words confirm a somber diagnosis of the educational scenario made by Celani (1984), one of Brazil’s leading applied linguists and a pioneering figure in ELT:

The (recent) educational reform, after having identified the democratization of education as its main objective, paradoxically created an extremely elitist state of affairs when it rendered the possibility of learning foreign languages, with reasonable chances of success, unavailable to all but a handful. (p. 32)

English is also offered as an elective subject at the universities in Brazil, the earliest of which, such as the prestigious University of São Paulo, date back to the 1920s (Maza, 1999). These courses are primarily geared towards forming future language teachers. In the 1970s, several postgraduate courses began to be offered, with the Catholic University of São Paulo announcing the country’s first M.A. (and, later, Ph.D.) program in Applied Linguistics. In subsequent years, a handful of other universities opened M.A. and Ph.D. programs in English, with an emphasis either on applied linguistics or on literature. (As is often the case elsewhere in the world, there is frequently a standoff between the two as well.)

However, it is not at all clear that these concerted efforts at improving standards have produced the desired results. Thus, we find scholars like Machado (1989) complained “despite all the innovations, the teaching of English is going through a difficult phase” (p. 69). Speaking specifically about her home state, Rio Grande do Norte, the author notes “College students do not seem to be interested in L2 courses as much as they did in the past” (p. 65). She also presents statistics showing “a significant decrease in the number of students graduating in English” (p. 67).

In view of the utter precariousness of ELT nationwide, and the urgent need to help university students gain access to the cutting edge scientific and technological information available in journals and elsewhere, an ambitious English for special purposes project was launched in the late 1970s with the active collaboration of the British Council. The project set out “to improve the use of English by Brazilian researchers, science teachers, and technicians, e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The English Language in Brazil—A Boon or a Bane?
• 2. Learning and Teaching English in the People’s Republic of China
• 3. English Language Teaching in Germany: A Reflection of the National and Universal Importance of English
• 4. English Language Teaching in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR): A Continuous Challenge
• 5. Facts and Beyond—Teaching English in Hungary
• 6. English Language Teaching in India: Colonial Past vis-à-vis Curricular Reform
• 7. Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Indonesia
• 8. English Language Teaching in Israel: Challenging Diversity
• 9. English Language Teaching in Japan
• 10. English Language Teaching in Lebanon: Challenges for the Future
• 11. English Language Teaching in Poland: Tradition and Reform
• 12. Teaching English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Slowly but Steadily Changing
• 13. A Success Story: English Language Teaching in Singapore
• 14. Teaching English in Sri Lanka: From Colonial Roots to Lankan English
• 15. English Language Teaching in Turkey: Challenges for the 21st Century
• Author Biographies
• Author Index
• Subject Index