John Kemeny, 60, mathematician
I believe that education will continue to be one of the important areas for computer applications. I have, however, two major preju-dices against computer-aided education. They are, first, that the computer is a very expensive substitute for a book, and, second, that it is a very poor substitute for a teacher. It is much more sensible to
let students read a page, or better a chapter, of a book on their own and then go to the computer terminal to be drilled or tested. CAI programs are most effective for rote learning and mechanical drill.
Dan Bright, 23, primary school teacher
There are too many old- fashioned people in the teaching pro-fession and it's difficult for them to communicate with kids. It's a pity they don't go to conferences and learn about new teaching methods. After all, it's natural for kids not to worry much about spelling or adding up rows of figures. It's obvious to anyone that English spelling is just a convention and any pocket calculator will count much faster and more accurately than the human brain. It's hard to interest kids unless you can show them that what they learn is useful to them.
Jill Adams, 13, schoolgirl
The teachers get annoyed with me if I don't do my homework. But it's difficult to concentrate when the telly's on all evening. A few of the boys and girls in my class work but a lot of them never do any-thing. They say there's no point in it. There are some subjects I like, and a few of the teachers are all right, but you don't want everybody to call you a teacher's pet.
(From: Fowler W. Incentive Themes. Surrey, 1980.)
Act out the interviews in class.
Figure out the problems raised by the speakers. Give your opinion and tell the class how you would solve those professional problems.
III. The average rate of success in learning a foreign language achieved by learners today is probably much higher than that of their parents. Still language teachers continue to speak of means to improve the ease and effectiveness of lan-guage learning through modifications in their ways of teaching.
1. a) Read the following text to figure out the author's approach to foreign-lan-guage teaching. Do you think there is such a problem?
Every day I see advertisements in the newspapers and on the buses claiming that it is easy to learn English. According to these adver-tisements, with very little effort on the student's part, he will be able to speak the language fluently in three months or even ten days.
There is often a reference to Shakespeare or Charles Dickens to en-courage him even more. When I see advertisements like this I don't know whether to laugh or cry. If it were as easy to learn English as they say, I would have to look for another job, because very few qual-ified teachers would be needed. But a large number of people must believe these ridiculous claims, or else the advertisements would not
appear.
It is natural for students to be attracted to methods that will teach them as quickly and efficiently as possible. But it is difficult for any-one to explain in simple language why one method is better than another, and it is no use pretending that anyone has discovered a perfect way of teaching English in every possible situation. Some experts even say that there are as many good methods of teaching a language as there are good teachers, because every teacher is an individual with his own personality. No doubt this is true to a certain extent, but it is not very helpful .to students.
For a long time people believed that the only way to learn a lan-guage was to spend a great deal of time in a country where it was spoken. Of course it is clear that students who go to England to learn English have a great advantage over others, but a large number of students go to the opposite extreme and think they can teach them-selves at home with dictionaries. But it is wrong to assume that each work in English has a precise equivalent in another language and vice versa, and it is impossible for any translation method to provide stu-dents with the natural forms of a language in speech, let alone pro-duce good pronunciation and intonation.
A great deal of teaching is still based on behaviourist psycholo-gy. Behaviourists are fond of making students repeat phrases and making them do exercises where they continually have to change one word in a sentence. If we were parrots or chimpanzees, these methods might be successful. A large number of theorists seem to think it is a pity we aren't because it would make it easier to use their methods.
In my personal opinion, no one can ever learn to speak English or any other language unless he is interested in it. Human beings, unlike parrots and chimpanzees, do not like making noises unless they understand what the noises mean and can relate them to their own lives. It is worth remembering that language is a means of com-munication. What people want to say and write in another language is probably very similar to what they want to say and write in their own. What they listen to and read cannot be a formula. It must be real.
There is another relevant point worth mentioning here. We need other people to talk to and listen to when we communicate. If what we are learning is strange to us, it will be helpful if there are other students around us who can work with us and practise the unfamil-iar forms with us in real situation, talking to each other about real life in real language.
(From: Fowler W. Incentive Themes. Surrey. 1980.)
Make a round-table talk to discuss the points raised by the author. The leader should keep the ball rolling and bring the participants to working out the main techniques of teaching communicative competence.
People who like to study don't always fit into the modern scheme of things,