Subproject 03: Training the trainers and teachers to implement the program of learning English

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Subproject 03 Training the trainers and
teachers to implement the program of learning
English

• Policies of introducing foreign languages early
  in school

• Experiences from Greece and other parts of Europe

• Professor Bessie Dendrinos

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Early Foreign Language Learning policy

• New research findings showing that Early Foreign
  Language Learning (EFLL) may have positive
  effects on
• Language awareness
• Intercultural awareness
• Tolerance to linguistic and cultural diversity
• Scholastic achievement
• Europes aims for the development of
  multilingualism for
• social cohesion
• mobility within the EU for work and study
• economic benefits

Introducing foreign languages in primary schools
has been described by Johnstone (2009) as
possibly the worlds biggest policy development
in education
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EFLL in Greece

• A recent top-down decision responding to the
  demands of the general public to provide in
  public schools
• foreign language education leading to the
  development of communicative competence in
  English (82 of respondents), but also in other
  languages (German 67, French 32, Italian 41,
  Spanish 44)
• skills that would allow students to get a valid
  certificate for their language proficiency before
  they graduate
• not to have to pay for these services (not
  offered outside the public school system)

Making the FL course a core component of the
school curriculum and offering quality FL
education is a long-standing demand of Greek FL
teachers, who have also been urging for years
that school FL education be linked with the
national foreign language exams and KPG the state
certificate
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Why is English chosen as the 1st foreign language
in most countries in the world?

• Choosing English is
• a naturalized, obvious option
• a result of pressure from stakeholders (i.e.,
  parents)
• responding to global pressures for a world-wide
  English-speaking workforce
• assuming that it will facilitate upward social
  mobility opportunities for their children
• aiming to secure for LL opportunities for work
  and study in different countries

In the widespread tendency to introduce foreign
languages in primary school, English is the first
choice in 85 of the cases in Europe.
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Challenges of introducing an EFLL policy

• Minimum input vs. language immersion
• Top-down policies
• Ad hoc policy decisions
• Political vs. pedagogic goals
• Lack of teacher preparation for EYL
• Gap between policy implementation (policy vs.
  practice)
• Lack of adequate research on
• How young (language) learners learn
• How teachers teach to young language learners
• Response of stakeholders
• Literacy practices of ELL pupils
• Ramifications of starting to learn English at an
  early age

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Cross country differences in policy aims

• Regarding the purpose of the ELL programme (in
  some countries the purpose is to teach language
  itself, in others to develop communicative
  competence and still in others to introduce
  children to foreign language and culture as part
  of international understanding
• Regarding how policy is implemented and how much
  control over policy implementation there is by
  educational authorities
• Regarding policy implementation assessment

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EFLL policy in Greece 1

• Top-down political decisions on consultation with
  experts
• Curricular policy developed as top-down and
  bottom up
• Diverse groups involved in policy making had
  different goals (political and pedagogic goals
  were negotiated)
• Specialist teacher preparation for EYL was
  minimal
• Continuity of teachers involved in the programme
  could not be secured
• Could not secure that trained EYL teachers
  would teach the same programme from one school
  year to the next

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EFLL policy in Greece 2

• Consistency between policy implementation but
  gap between policy and practice by about 25gt35
  of the teacher population (the first year of
  implementation)
• Research data made available to policy makers
• Total control over policy implementation by
  educational authorities but no evaluation and
  accountability
• Programme internal and external assessment

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More differences in EFLL programmes

• Who teaches ELL
• What the ELL teachers experiences are
• What teacher training/ development programmes are
  available
• school infrastructure
• hours of teaching (how many hours a week, how
  hours are distributed and how time is used)
• Learner / parent expectations across countries,
  regions (rural and urban areas)

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English for Young Learners (EYL) in Greece

• Specialist teachers teach the foreign language
• Foreign language teachers in Greece in the EYL
  programme
• have had mainstream training during Initial
  Teacher Education at University (focusing up
  until recently on secondary school students)
• about 15 have been through MA programmes for ELT
  
• about 50 have had experience with primary school
  students
• Teachers are being told and shown what to do and
  teacher education online courses are being
  developed
• School infrastructure is poor in some schools but
  it is improving
• For the time being, English is offered twice a
  week for 40-45 minutes each session

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Greek learner, teacher and parent expectations

• Young Greek learners start out by expecting to do
  in the English class what they do in their other
  classes. Some are disappointed that they dont
  and others like it.
• Teachers start out by expecting to teach to a
  book, and inexperienced or older teachers find it
  difficult not to deal with reading and writing
  from the start
• Some parents believe that their children wont
  learn English in school, some expect the class in
  school to be the same as in private language
  schools (preparing students for proficiency
  testing), some want to collaborate with the
  English teacher (for better or worse)

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Challenges EFLL programmes present

• curricular materials and their availability
• bottom up materials development and materials
  variability
• training for the use of materials/books
• multimedia packages for teaching and teacher
  training
• control and differentiation
• attitudes toward the specialist teacher (language
  level of non-specialist teacher)
• attitudes toward the language
• stakeholders position to the programme

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Challenges in the Greek EYL programme 1

• Curricular materials were developed through a
  bottom up approach
• A curriculum framework was created and is now
  being completed with can-do statements which are
  being developed on the basis of classroom
  practice
• The syllabuses are a-posteriori created
• Materials for the 3 first years in school
  (created by experienced, competent EFL teacher
  practitioners, with high proficiency in English)
  were evaluated by experts, evaluated as they were
  tried out, reformulated on the basis of classroom
  experience.

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Theoretical basis of the curriculum

• The Greek EYL curriculum draws on literacy
  theories and aims to develop the literacies
  pupils in the first primary grades need to
  develop
• Which literacies? Those that they need in any
  given social context (including the school).
• Actually, in todays world, they need to develop
  MULTI-literacies.

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What does the term multi-literacies refer to?

• It refers to two major aspects of language use.
  The first has to do with
• the different ways people create meanings in
  different social and cultural contexts, contexts
  which increasingly demand multilingual,
  multicultural and multimodal communication
• The effect of these demands on school education
  is
• that literacy teaching should turn attention away
  from teaching the rules of standard forms of any
  single language, to helping learners be able to
  create appropriate meanings in diverse contexts
  contexts which involve people from different
  cultures, life experiences, social background,
  education, etc.

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What else does the term multi-literacies refer
to?

• The second aspect of language use the term
  multi-literacies refers to relates to the
  multimodality of texts That is, texts whose
  meanings are shaped not only with language (oral
  or written) but also with visual, audio,
  gestural, tactile and spatial patterns of
  meaning.
• The effect of this aspect is that language
  learning (or else literacy) pedagogy does not
  focus its attention on the linguistic and
  especially the written text alone. It brings into
  the classroom multimodal representations, and
  particularly those typical of the new, digital
  media.

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The overall aim of the Greek EYL curriculum

• It is geared towards developing young learners
  self-respect and respect for the Other
• It points to pedagogical practices which are
  meant to cultivate in pupils appreciation towards
  their mother tongue, towards other languages and
  especially the target language
• The overall aim of the curriculum is to help
  young pupils develop their social literacies and
  the gradual development as meaning makers through
  using English as the medium of communication
• It seeks to have learners involved in
  experiential learning activities that capitalize
  on their creativity and revolve around language
  games or familiar, fun communication events.

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The overall pedagogic aim 1

• One of the basic pedagogic aims of the curriculum
  is to help learners limit the self-centredness
  that is typical of their age and to make them
  feel that they belong, they are members not only
  of their family and social milieu, their town and
  country but also of a world where people
  communicate and act differently but at the same
  time have a lot in common.

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The overall pedagogic aim 2

• One of the basic pedagogic aims of the curriculum
  is to help learners limit the self-centredness
  that is typical of their age and to make them
  feel that they belong, they are members not only
  of their family and social milieu, their town and
  country but also of a world where people
  communicate and act differently but at the same
  time have a lot in common

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Pedagogic aims

• Self- and social growth
• Development of social skills
• Development of co-operation skills
• Development of respect for one-self
• Development of respect for individuals or
  groups that are linguistically and/or culturally
  different
• Development of intercultural awareness
• Cognitive growth
• Development of analytic and synthetic skills
• Development of learning strategies
• Development of visual perception
• Development of auditory perception
• Development of inductive and deductive skills

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Social and communication aims

• Tolerance to social and cultural differences
• Learning to understand and accept differences
• Learning to appreciate the role of ones own and
  others mother tongue and culture
• Learning to appreciate the role of English as an
  international language but also the role of other
  languages
• Learning how to make parallel use of two or more
  languages effectively

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Approach to teaching and learning

• Use of an eclectic approach (a combination of a
  number of approaches, of language learning
  methodologies and of various techniques) that can
  attract learners interest and attention
• Selecting activities conducive to the broader
  pedagogical aims
• Selecting fun activities and creative tasks that
  involve learners in various ways of approaching
  and processing the new language
• Taking into consideration learner profile, the
  curriculum promotes a learning by doing approach,
  whereby language is viewed as social practice,
  and learning is best achieved through experience
  and interaction
• Promoting interaction in socially appropriate
  ways, through oral activities being taught to
  understand and produce speech in English
• Initially, language learning is restricted to
  making sense of individual words and phrases,
  always used in social and linguistic contexts,
  and then it expands to understanding and
  producing chunks of speech and on to
  understanding stories, songs, etc.

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What to do and how

• The EYL can-do statements on what young
  learners are expected to be able to do relate to
  the what and the how.

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Can-do statements

• Can recognise visuals (e.g. pictures) and relate
  them to sounds (words, phonemes) or gestures
• Can recognise differences between sounds
• Can pronounce simple words intelligibly
• Can recognise and use basic intonation patterns
  (e.g. distinguish a question from a statement)
• Can understand and use simple formulaic
  expressions (Hello/Hi, What is your name? Thank
  you)
• Can understand and respond to simple
  instructions
• Can ask and answer questions on very familiar
  topics
• Can introduce themselves and interact in a very
  simple way
• Can describe people, things and places (using
  simple words) in terms of shape and size.

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Curricular materials 1

• The materials used to put the curriculum into
  practice are organized in thematic units drawing
  on pupils immediate social environment (home,
  school, places in Greece and abroad) with a view
  to learning how to express themselves about the
  world they know, using a different language.
• This material gradually expands in order to
  include broader cultural horizons. Yet, the
  rationale behind it remains the same. Young
  learners are expected to use socially-situated
  language within specific cultural contexts.

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Curricular materials 2

• Curricular materials are designed taking into
  account the needs of Greek learners of English
• Also, they are designed considering the
  differentiated needs of pupils who have different
  cognitive development, experiences, skills and
  knowledge, different likes and dislikes,
  different work pace, or just different ways of
  dealing with the new.

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Challenges in the Greek EYL programme 2

• Minimal training for the use of materials so far
  but there is development of online show-and-tell
  sessions and multimedia packages for teaching and
  teacher training are being developed
• Differentiation is encouraged and it is a reality
  (that could be described in both positive and
  negative terms)
• The specialist teacher is sometimes viewed as a
  stranger by the primary class teacher, which is
  discouraging, but if the teacher tries to fit in
  it is possible that s/he is well received
• The specialist teachers have to move to 2-3
  schools to cover the hours they are obliged to
  teach (up to 24 weekly hours)
• Teachers of the Greek EYL programme have to
  prepare their lessons but have a lot of help

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Challenges in the Greek EYL programme 3

• There are a lot of stereotypes about language and
  language learning, about English and what it
  means to know English by English teachers
• Greek stakeholders position to the programme
• Primary teachers and headmasters were initially
  negative for practical and pedagogic reasons
• EFL teachers were overwhelmingly positive
• Parents were initially rather negative

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Challenges in the Greek EYL programme 4

• There are a lot of stereotypes about language and
  language learning, about English and what it
  means to know English by English teachers
• Greek stakeholders position to the programme
• Primary teachers and headmasters were initially
  negative for practical and pedagogic reasons
• EFL teachers were overwhelmingly positive
• Parents were initially rather negative

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