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In Russian schools, it takes at least seven years to learn English. It would seem that during this time it is quite possible to master the language to the level of a native speaker. Why, after final exams, our children (like us!) can hardly connect a couple of words and are completely lost when a foreigner on the street asks: “Could you tell me the way to the Kremlin?”
How is it that an excellent student cannot use English in practice, and even the most inveterate loser, having studied at the courses for only a year, begins to speak a foreign language calmly? It’s not at all that the teachers in the school are bad, but the courses are good. The reason is in the curriculum itself. A school teacher, even the most talented and creative, is obliged to follow it. But this program, the foundations of which were formed back in the 1950s, has become outdated over the past 70 years and no longer corresponds to modern realities.
Lack of speaking practice
When the English school curriculum was being developed, young Soviet citizens were supposed to know the language more theoretically than practically. The future builders of communism did not need to speak English and understand it by ear, and the very likelihood of a dialogue with a foreigner tended to zero.
This determined the entire training scheme. The traditional system prepares the student only for writing and reading. Very little time is devoted to conversational practice: at best, a student recites a topic from a textbook by heart at the blackboard once a month or says five to six phrases a month. Many people do not take part in any live dialogue during the years of training. Even less attention is paid to listening: the majority of schoolchildren have never heard the speech of native speakers, have not watched films and cartoons in English as part of the lesson.
Language ceases to be something abstract and abstract, it turns into a way of communication.
This leads not only to gross errors in pronunciation, but also to the development of a language barrier: the student knows what he wants to say, but is afraid to do what he has never done before.
If the school focuses on theory, then most courses use a communicative technique. Russian is used to a minimum – teaching is immediately conducted in English, and the student has to speak it at least 40-50% of the entire lesson time. From the very first lesson, he learns to listen and speak out, to select and use words that had previously been a dead weight in his memory. Language ceases to be something abstract and abstract, it turns into a method of communication – which in fact it is.
Fear of error
Which of us did not go cold with horror when he heard: “Two in the diary, parents in school”? The whole school system is built on the fear of failure. Of course, knowledge needs to be assessed somehow, but when every inaccuracy leads to a decrease in grades, teacher sarcasm and ridicule from classmates, the student begins to be afraid of mistakes. And the easiest and surest way to avoid a mistake is to do nothing at all: don’t stick your head out, don’t raise your hand, don’t take the initiative, don’t try to use new words.
This only reinforces the language barrier, and years later people adhere to the same tactics, although no one else is going to shame and ridicule them for the erroneous use of the Present Perfect.
There are no grades in the courses, and this very quickly relieves fears. In modern English schools, for example in , knowledge is evaluated not by marks, but by a progress scale: attention is focused on what the student already knows, and not on what he made a mistake.
Lack of motivation
Why should a student learn English at all? For parents, the answer is obvious: in order to enter a good university, find a job in a serious company, and in general, it will come in handy in life. But for a fifth grader, both university and work are a matter of such a distant future that this “motivation” simply cannot work. It seems to children that centuries separate them from adult life with its worries. They are aimed at an instant and pleasant result: watch a cartoon or video of a popular blogger, read a comic, play a game on a computer, sing a song in English, make friends with a foreigner.
A teacher working with a child individually can create a program taking into account his interests
Alas, most teachers dismiss these goals as too frivolous. Often they do not imagine what can become a motivation for their students. The compilers of textbooks do not know this either, and it is impossible to reflect all the new trends that appear and disappear every month in a textbook.
Only a teacher who works with a child individually can create a program taking into account what the student is interested in today: the adventures of Spider-Man, unicorns or making slime (“lizuna”) at home.
Academic approach to grammar
Writing out words with translation in a column, time tables, emphasis on structure and rules, colossal amounts of information that you just need to memorize – these techniques are familiar to everyone who studied English at school. This method was developed back in the XNUMXth century, but it was created for the study of “dead” languages, primarily Latin and ancient Greek.
The students were asked to simply memorize all the rules in order to read the classical works later. No one was going to carry on a conversation in ancient Greek. Perhaps this approach is not bad for learning these kinds of languages for scientific work, but it is categorically not suitable for mastering English.
In the Russian school, everything begins with theory – and, in fact, ends with it. In schools in those countries where almost the entire population speaks English almost as a native language (for example, in Finland, Holland and Sweden), they start with practice – conversations, games, watching cartoons. Theory in the form in which it is taught in our schools is studied only by students of philological universities. And some eight-year-old Axel will never tell you how Future-in-the-past is formed, but, without hesitation, he uses this time correctly.
Outdated vocabulary
A school teacher is a profession, maybe a respected one, but, alas, not very profitable. Most of the teachers have never lived abroad, never left Russia, and never interacted with native speakers of modern English. In addition, a serious extracurricular workload: checking homework, writing reports – leaves the teacher not so much time for self-development.
That is why teachers themselves often do not know what is happening in the language today. They perceive English as a kind of unchanging structure, but the language is constantly changing. Many words from textbooks are long outdated and sound archaic and funny to native speakers.
For example, no one has been using “shall” as a future tense for a long time, except in interrogative sentences. Greeting “How do you do?” for an Englishman it sounds as old-fashioned and absurd as for us “My respect, sir!”. Instead of “rather” (quite) they have been saying “quite” for 30 years already, and the word “refrigerator” (refrigerator) can only be heard from the lips of an 80-year-old lady – those who are younger have long used “fridge”. And there are many such examples.
Schoolchildren are not taught to speak freely, understand spoken language, and formulate thoughts. All this can be obtained only in courses and individual lessons.
This is not to say that the program does not change at all. However, the changes concern only the form, while the content remains the same. Schoolchildren are not taught to speak freely, understand spoken language, and formulate thoughts. All this can be obtained only in extracurricular courses and individual lessons in the communication methodology.
Today, schooling is focused on writing tests and preparing for the exam, and not on using English in everyday life. A person who has been trained for several years to take tests can pass the exam perfectly. But the ability to tick off the correct answers will not help him overcome the language barrier, begin to understand different accents and express his opinion in the language of the BBC.