GOODBYE TO ‘LANGUAGE’ TEACHING
Sat, Feb 19, 2011
GOODBYE TO ‘LANGUAGE’ TEACHING
Malcolm Venter
The final version of the CAPS for English Home Language in the FET Phase has done away with a separate language paper in the formal examinations. Instead this has been incorporated with the Literature Paper and reduced to a mere 50 marks.
This has serious implications for English teaching. We all know that teachers teach to the final examination. This means effectively that language (comprehension, summary, language structure and usage) will be neglected- and especially language structure and usage, as the summary counts 10 and the comprehension and language usage section together totals to 40 – most probably 30 + 10. Which teacher is going to spend much time on teaching language structure for a mere 10 marks? This means that 10 marks will cover spelling, punctuation, formal grammar, correct grammar, critical awareness, register, direct and indirect speech, abbreviations, acronyms, active and passive mood, etc!
This is a radical deviation from a long-standing tradition – something which should not be done lightly and without consultation, and something which, like the sudden introduction of OBE, will be regretted in time to come.
Add to this the fact that the CAPS advocates that there should be no separate ‘language’ lessons – all should be taught incidentally through reading, writing, speaking and studying literature – and one realises that one has a recipe for disaster on one’s hands. Either these will not be taught because they are not included in the biweekly lesson plan, or they will be taught badly, in an ad hoc manner with no logical progression of knowledge. Furthermore, who wants to stop in the middle of a challenging poem and teach apostrophes or nouns or the subjunctive mood? That would be the best way to get learners to loathe language teaching and would spoil the whole atmosphere of the literature lesson. (This does not preclude referring to terms and concepts that might have been taught in a language lesson.)
It will not help if it is argued that these things will be taught – and maybe examined – lower down. One cannot expect that, by Grade 9, learners will have grasped all that needs to be grasped – and at a deep level of understanding.
If one then considers that those who matriculate under this system and go on to become language teachers will, in most cases, study only literature at a tertiary level, one is faced with the situation where language teachers are meant to teach language concepts with a Grade 9 level of knowledge. (This is already largely the case – and in future it will be even worse.)
The decision is disturbing and should be reconsidered.
This is a frightening decision and one that will be regretted (and then we will probably have yet another clumsy change of curriculum). Language teaching is essential in order to teach learners to express themselves adequately in the business and academic world. It is not good enough to rely on the proposed ad hoc approach as it will obviously be ignored for the reasons given by Dr Venter.
Employers and university educators are bemoaning the lack of language skills displayed by recent matriculants. This decision will exacerbate the problem. Was there no consultation with teachers and other stakeholders? Is it too late to change this ‘final version’?
I cannot understand the reasoning behind the change in curriculum either. I value the fact that I was taught Latin from Std 4 ( grd 6 ) as it provided a deeper understanding of English language structures. Without a solid background, students will change English into a phonetic language. What a shame.
Well, now that I’ve actually SEEN the document, I have a different view. In fact, it is true that we access a language best through reading (What the Molteno project was about), and, if we are honest with ourselves, there is really very little language that remains to be taught in the last 18 months of school. I know that I have focused on lit – and after all, lit is the way we extend our experience and share values and cultures, and, indeed, become better human beings.
I think we have probably had a knee-jerk reaction to the clandestine way in which the new statement has been revealed to only a few.
The crucial point, of course, is if the language WILL be taught in the Senior phase. We’ve all taught Grade 8s who seem to have no language skills, apparently because the intermediate phase is so busy ASSESSING that there is no time to TEACH!!!!
My only concern remains that there are aspects of language – especially those dealing with the manipulative power of language – that are too complex for the average 15 year old to grasp. These things will still HAVE to be taught higher up the school, something that conscientious teachers will surely do.
If we get that right, then we can look forward to developing bright young minds who will be more than ready for tertiary studies and life.
Let’s give the CAPS a chance!!
Alison, my friend, I think you’ve missed the point that the sudden decision not to examine the ‘language’ aspects in a separate paper is the real point of contention. You should know that, of these are not examined, they will simply not be taught. This does not mean examining grammar, etc in isolation – but in context, as has been the practice for many years.
Dear Malcolm
Something said to me in my second year at Rhodes:
“They learn to pass but not to know. They do pass, but they don’t know.”
I hadn’t escaped me that language is not going to be tested in a discrete paper, but, looking at the current language paper, I wonder if that is likely to be such a disaster. After all, the answer to many of the questions is “no-one cares”.
I agree that the real issue is the “sudden”, not the “not to examinine”. Let’s not confuse the two issues.
Alison, I think it’s both. And, remember, if the current paper is inadequate, that can be improved.
May I start by allaying the fears of all of you colleagues who thought the CAPS were throwing out the language: The three papers are back, and so is a directive for teaching grammar.
Having started safely, may I, at this late stage, tread the current.
I am grateful that colleagues like Allison saw the different approach to grammar as something that can be done. As Alison correctly points out, the intensive teaching of grammar would have been left to the Senior Phase. In Grades 10-12, learners should mainly be applying what has been learnt in the previous phase, not learning language rules from scratch. The argument then was, there is so much language in all the other skills – speaking, reading and writing,than in a single grammar period. For me to respond, I had to make sense of the arguments presented, which are structured in the form of paragraphs, long and short sentences. If learners could be taught to recognise the language in use, in the texts they produce and read, then learning shall have taken place. If a learner can be guided into recognising manipulation and emotive use of language in any argumentative text, than they shall have started learning. They shall have started growing to the fact that a newspaper article is a reflection of the journalist’s interpretation of the matter reported on, rather than the truth.
The approach sought to re-introduce use of existing texts to reinforce learning how use the language. A forty minutes spent teaching changing the sentences from direct ot reported speech is time lost if a learner is not able to identify the same structure when mom tells them, ‘your father said that you must water the garden.’ This approach would keep the English teacher awake, removed from drearily repeating the rules to learners who could rather be identifying the rules in application. The challenge all of us would face would be to change the mindset of teaching aspects in compartments, but see them as an interwoven ball of learning that keeps turning on its head. There would never be a single period in which prepositions are taught, as prepositions encountered in every text dealt with would be interrogated continuously. We would not teach for examinations, but for truly being able to apply the language structures learnt. The fault, dear colleagues, was not in the then suggested approach, but in ourselves as we still teach for examinations.
While the matter is laid to rest, it is my contention that teaching grammar in isolation is no guarantee that learners will become better users of language.Were it so, things would have long been different. We should have given it a chance.
Bully for you and the Department for being prepared to listen to teachers. This is how education planning and change should work! I still think that there is tendency to assume that separate language lessons necessarily consist of dealing rules in isolation. That is bad teaching. What I believe that, while one may certainly refer to language issues when reading, writing, etc, one does need dedicated language lessons. However, these should be contextual and related to real life. In other words, one creates contexts specifically for dealing with an issue. For example, when teaching adjectives, one could use jokes, newspaper reports, literary extracts, playground conversation, and so on. This gives one the best of both worlds – ensuring that the language matters are taught (and that they are taught sequentially rather arbitrarily as they arise) but at the same time one is placing the teaching of language in a communicative context. This, I believe, is what we should train teachers to do.
I am appalled that after the debacle of OBE, the National Education Department seems to have learnt nothing at all. One can of course improve language skills through the reading of literature, but one cannot teach these same skills solely through literature. It’s almost like suggesting that one can learn basic mathematics through readings in quantum physics!
Grade 11s in this country are currently being taught how to use the apostrophe, knowledge that should have been acquired in the Foundation Phase of Education.
Why is it that our Ministry of Education wishes to pander to the lowest common denominator? As with the previous dispensation, the agenda of the present incumbants seems to be to keep the people stupid!
Language neither drops like manna from heaven, nor is it absorbed through a process of osmosis. It has to be taught. There are no short cuts, as Dr Venter so rightly points out.
Excellent! How very true. I especially liked the last paragraph.
The big problem in this country is that second language English speakers are doing English Home Language so Primary School is spent learning to speak the language while also learning to cope with a number of subjects in this language. This means that we always teach basic grammar in grades 11 and 12.
I should like to endorse the comments of both maxine Ward-Cox and Prof. Rosemary Gray. Currently tertiary level students struggle to write simple sentences in English, let alone write an academic essay. The proposed changes to the curriculum will reduce students’ language ability even further.
agree wholeheartedly with Syd’s comments. Not learning language structures will seriously disadvantage learners who wish to studdy linguistics and language at tertiary level.
I think it will hugely disadvantage the other 10 Home languages as well. Our many of our languages are still developing and the learners need to learn language structures to assist in that development.
My SiSwati colleagues have already begun to complain
I think that DBE has misread the need for streamlining and gone for the lazy route. Even in FAL the language aspects are not covered as well as they should be.
The proposed abandonment of language teaching per se in SA schools’ curricula is simply a further dumbing down of education’s standards. What price serious analysis of literature or precise oral and written communication in the absence of a knowledge and control of syntax, inflexion, spelling etc?
This amounts to the dereliction of one’s core function as a teacher of language – in this case of ENGLISH, the world’s premier language. Who dreamt this one up!!
Me and my chinas jes wanna no wot you larnie ous is hakking on about? B4 U use 2 concerntr8 on when 2 use “lend’ n “borrow” but its ovviaas that me n my mates, as educ8ed unnergradu8s of the Class of 2011, can learn it from that ou toppie Polony more eezier than sitting their in class with some borr-ing educ8r tuning us the diffrence. If you can borrow me a copy of Hamlet, ill gooi you a 4taste of how good we can achoir this skillz. ‘2 B board outta your skull by grammar or 2 B infused and Xsited by litricher – that is the Q&A!’
Nothing can ever be final in academic and a scholar’s life – not even in policy matters.
The decision to do away with language teaching is hypocritical, bacuase it overlooks the educational reality of South Africa. Most students attending high schools go to university and other tertiary institutions underprepared in language. Therefore, they need to be taught and need to develop their langauge skills in order to grapple with their educational studies.
A lesson needs to be learnt from most Southern African Development Countries (SADC), which have emphasised the learning and teaching of language structures and have devised a balanced approach between lanaguage and literature. In this way, one needs to master the structures of the English language before he or she can meaningfully deal with literature.
It is ironical that CAPS has decided to away with langauge teaching. Surely, we all know that, one needs to know language before one can read and write. The importance of the knowledge of language structures in this regard, cannot be overemphasised.
The decision is, therefore, counter-productive and needs to be reviewed.
As a book editor, I am appalled at this. How does one explain ambiguity, etc, to an author if there is no common ground, no shared language of the rules of grammar? This is especially disconcerting, since many writers already reveal a complete ignorance of the way language functions.
It works both ways – many of the authors I consult in my creative writing research complain that editing skills in SOuth Africa are in short supply. Many authors are often correcting their editors because the introduce errors into manuscripts! When writing a grade one textbook where there was often only a line or two of text on the page, I was appalled how many concord and punctuation errors slipped through the final edits. If we do away with language teaching we will have an even smaller pool of these skills in our publishing industry as well as with our teacher trainees.
This is tragic thinking! I happened to be in high school in the 70s and this approach was in place back then. I left school knowing very little of grammar and, when I started teaching, I had to learn it from scratch.
The text books that have come out over the past few years (OBE-based)seem to take a similar approach. All sorts of English is crammed into a chapter and there is very little “meat” in terms of language skills.
They are turning English into a Maths Literacy-type of subject.
There is, though, nothing to stop us from teaching solid grammatical skills in class, regardless of CAT. It just means that we do what we have been doing for so long: going above and beyond the syllabus.
I’m curious though: were any actively-teaching English teachers consulted on this issue?
Mark W
Having seen the October draft only, I am unaware that the Language Paper (exams ) has been done away with. This would indeed be worrisome. I have no doubt that good educators will teach language as they see fit; it is impossible to teach all language in an integrated manner.
Certain skills need to be taught and drilled: the older generation can spell receive and relieve because they learnt the rule!
Please supply info about the link to study the lastest CAPS document !
Have not looked at the new CAPS (Did not know there was a revised CAPS – is it me or the does the East Cape Education Dept strike again?)
One comment that comes through time and time again that really concerns me – that English (all) teachers teach to the final exam and therefore won’t teach anything that isn’t examined. For as long as I can remember, I have taught children to become useful, sensitive, knowledgable citizens of the real world – and on the whole I have geared my activities to that end. I’m not sure that I have ever taught what a loose sentence is (1 mark in the final exam) but my children do know the compounding effect of a sentence with multiple “ands”, and the manipulative power of language!! Isn’t it time we grew up and did what we know is RIGHT and not what the honchos try to justify their outrageous salaries by telling us to do??? Oh – and I will ocntinue to insist that my children know how to write an accurate sentence – and have fun doing so.
What a sad day for language teaching in our schools.
English Home Language teachers have always been people who have taught their ‘subject’ in creative and pupil-friendly ways. In my experience, they have the pupils’ best interests at heart. When OBE was forced upon us, very little actually changed in the English HL classroom.
We should not have been surpised about the revised CAPS document foisting untenable pronouncements on us. Curriculum development in this country is SADLY lacking; in the true sense of the word, Curriculum development is a long-term process that involves careful research, followed by insightful planning and workable policy.
I fully support Syd Gosher’s sentiments, as well as many other comments above. Should Language ultimately be virtually abolished in the final summative assessment, I for one will STILL teach language.
Home Language will become completely skills based to the detriment of weaker students, particularly those who are doing Home Language English but don’t speak it at home. That section of the exam will now be a lottery for them and they will see no point preparing for it. In the future, second language students will know more about grammar than first language students, an embarrassing situation for those who might go on to teach English. And what about the length of the exam paper? The literature paper is a mammoth exam. To think that students first have to do comprehension, summary and arbitrary language before they can focus on poetry, drama and novel is bizarre. The IEB paper includes the poetry as part of the language exam but at least the rest of the literature is part of the writing exam which also provides transactional writing ideas in context – a fair option. I just can’t believe that people in charge of English would have agreed to lump language and literature into one exam, and without consultation.
I agree, Linda. It is insane to expect pupils to do language and literature together. Whoever dreamed this up certainly does not teach in a classroom. If they did, they would be aware of the realities of teaching today.
I agree with Linda and Brian on all counts, especially the reminder that many students who are not English-speaking enrol for English Home Language. This is a frightening fact that is often forgotten.
I also wondered about the length of the proposed literature(plus language?) paper – what a poorly thought-out policy decision! But then, what’s new?
If only the education department would stop with introducing untried and untested philosophies by some new idealist or seemingly even worse dumb down the education of our children because they have to justify why so many of our students are still failing. Does anybody know who did dream this up as I would like to hear their reasoning. My other problem with the teaching of the English language today is that our children do not write. I have a child in Grade 6 and they do very little essay writing. Its all very well to read the language but practising how to use it is as important. I almost feel this is where the gap in spelling and grammar is showing itself in later learning.
It is critical to consider that in many cases, school leavers proceed to tertiary education where they are not only required to make sense of what they read, but also to translate thie read information into notes,reports, and academic essays: the latter in particular, a very challenging form of writing.
If learners have no solid foundation in grammar,syntax, punctuation and style, they have no hope of writing to the required standard,and to miss the reality of the outcome of this for students i.e. constant subject failure, is in my opinion, unforgivably foolish.The impact of this poor student development and performance in the broader economic sphere is incalculable.Businesses demand excellence in reading AND writing in every professional role: I simply cannot make sense of why a poem by , say William Blake, is seen as a more suitable vehicle for teaching reading and writing, than simple old fashioned grammar teaching, which uses far more everyday, appropriate and accessible texts.Business in not about reading plays, novels and poems.
As a lecturer at CPUT with 17 years experience, it is soul-destroying to see the utter hopelessness of students without “proper” schooling: they either never leave the starting block as they have no idea what the race is all about,bail out long before the end out of sheer unfitness for the task, or end up begging the lectuer-as-coach to help them at least reach the finish line: there is no question it will be with any great honour should they eventually get there. Students scrape through university, and enter the business world very poorly equipped for the stringent demands of reading and writing business-realted text.
I challenge the policy makers to mark a set of first year essays: they will be shocked by what they see.At least 50 % of the students will fail,and only a handful will score a disntinction.The vast majority of what students write is intelligible and useless for purpose: NOT because the students cannot read literature, but becuase he cannot WRITE proper sentences, and has no concept of style.
It is also critical to remember that very few of our students intend to become writers or teachers of language: they intend to become businessmen and women: so their language learning should NOT be primarily through literature, but through the far more secular and appropriate texts used in the language teaching periods, and examined in the language exam.Business texts are often even more complex and challenging than a Shakepearean play, which a students can swot up in Macrat without ever actually reading the full play text: but not so something in a financial report,minutes of a meeting, the Business Times, or Financial mail and the like.
I do not agree that we are facing potential disaster: our very high failure and functional illiteracy rates are indicative that disaster has already struck. The question now is what can we do to fix things: clearly starting with baby steps again, slowly and carefully teaching the basic skills, and building up to more complex reading and writing using meaningful texts, utilising time more efficiently, and being guided in all of this by “proper” assessment methods i.e. test grammar in the language paper, makes far more sense.
I feel deeply disturbed, not only as an educator, but as a citizen of a country whose long-term economic well-being and international competitiveness our educational policy-makers seem so determindely and narrow-mindedly hell-bent on destroying. For heavens’sake: may reason ultimately prevail!
Agreed. However, as a result of the criticism, some concessions have been made in the latest version of the CAPS (still to be gazetted): it now indicates that there may be separate language lessons, and the language paper has been re-instated. It still remains of great concern that these could have been outlawed in the first place.
English has always been a meaning making business for me.I teach grammar and language structures all the time especially when teaching learners to translate their thinking into words /sentences/paragraphs/essays.Surely the impact and influence of initial language learnt must be understood by teachers so that their teaching is more meaningful and relevant?