Teaching English in a Secondary School !

Well, we are in september beginning a new school year.

I’m the only person left in the department, EVERY BODY IS NEW.

Some of my previous colleges have moved to other schools, another has health problems…

There have also been an important change, as a new Management Board has recently entered in our school.

So things will slow down again… :

But this summer I came across with some interesting articles on getting teenagers speaking in secondary schools. I recomend them to anyone interested in ELT!!!

They are from a web  called Teaching English from the British Council

Getting teenagers to talk

Increasing student interation

Teaching Speaking Skills 2- Overcoming classroom problems

Speaking and elementary learners

Evaluating speaking

Evaluating speaking-part 2

Both appeared this summer in the Catalan edition of EL PAIS newspaper:

“La selectividad tendrá prueba oral de inglés en 2012”

M. RUIZ DEL ÁRBOL – Madrid – 10/07/2008

“The students who are at 3rd of ESO will be the first to have to pass an oral exam of English or any other foreing lamguage when the have the seletivity Exam in the school year 2011/2012” declared Eva Almunia, the Secretary of State for Education, when she presneted the Real Decreto Project which changes the Seletivity exams.Almunia states this reform will cause a deep chage in the methodology on this language teaching…

“El inglés no arranca en la escuela”

FERRAN BALSELLS – Barcelona – 24/07/2008

This is a summary:

Less than a half of the Catalán students have a basic knowledge of English when they finish their secondary school. This level does not fulfill our domestic labour market.

A study carried by The Catalan Education Board with 4th of ESO students in 2006 concluded that only 40% of the students passed the oral basic level exams established by the EOI.

This level mentioned before wouldn’t be enough, according to EOI, to achieve a job where English was required. It only enables a person to ask for a drink in a pub in London but he/she would have some difficulty to ask for the change… and all this at a very slow pace.

The article finishes with the Catalan Conseller d’educació, Ernest Maragall, who explains that we will have to wait some years, not until 2015, to see the results of  their  project  aiming to stimulate the foreign languages learning started by the Education Board in 2007.

But teachers claim they are tired of the government’s promises, they feel the same as they were in the nineties with big  multi level groups inside a same class and  despite of the  omnipresence of the ICT’s  and globalization only a few students achieve a good level of English, most of them only achieve a good one by taking private lessons outside school.