22 Dec
(Continued from yesterday) Primary and High School level Teachers and online learning
As the findings of a small-scale research suggest, COVID-19 crisis requires language teachers to spend more time and energy in lesson planning, e.g., PowerPoint Presentation. A freshly employed language teacher remarks: "We have to prepare a lot. Sometimes, the right picture must be hunted out to be shown on the screen to explain a point." Another experienced language teacher of a private high school, teaching writing in the interactive way, reported that though one period in online classes covers even a large number of students like over 400, the responses from his passive learners are very low (0.75 %) and that though individual attention can be checked, socialized language learning in online classes is a far way to go. On the other hand, one good point of online learning is that they could learn at home, feeling at ease in the favourable home setting. One teacher shared her experience: because each individual young learner has only virtual contact with his or her friends, if he is making too much noise, his voice has to be muted, which is one of the ways she has to resort to as part of the classroom management in the New Normal.
Primary level students and online learning
It was observed by a teacher teaching through online learning that children have no technophobia, and that they have learned solving technical problems through peer group cooperation. On the other hand, there were complaints about online learning that takes place for long study hours with no break between the periods. The learners find themselves glued to the screen. To quote a 6 Grader's words in her essay:
I personally don't enjoy online classes, they make me feel dizzy, sleepy and make my legs hurt. Not just my legs, my spine and my eyes hurt. By looking and sitting in front of the screen for 8 hours my eyes hurt and my legs got weak. Once, I can’t even walk, my legs hurt so much that it feels like a knife has stabbed my leg. Most of my classmates’ eyes got super red and some of them didn’t show up in online classes. As you may know, I’m a 6th grader and this is giving me depression. So think about it, if these online classes give 6th graders pain, of course the kindergarten kids will feel the pain too.
To make the things go worse, some parents are very ambitious in the sense that, as reported by a language teacher, they jam their kids' daily timetable not only with English classes but also with other online language classes like Chinese. One can imagine how the childhood of the digital generation is being spent with no time for playing games out in the open air. So both parents and teachers should seriously consider what psychological and behavioural problems of young learners could ensue from online learning.
Case study of an international school in Mandalay
Exposure to the target language is high; as a result, the performance of the young learners in English is brilliant, but the irony is the Myanmar young learners are so weak in the academic skills of the native language Myanmar that they have to take private tuition for Myanmar subject in off-class hours. In the post-COVID-19 crisis, the importance of the mother tongue should be re-considered. Respect to the Myanmar customs and culture, as well as the knowledge of the history of Myanmar, has been on decline. It is therefore suggested that during and post-COVID-19 crisis, ELT teachers need to overhaul the curriculum and syllabus, and introduce the balanced blending of the target language and the native language, customs and culture.
Changes in the prescribed textbooks
What the majority of teachers teach and how they teach are determined by textbooks (Akbari, 2008). Just a few weeks before the COVID-19 hit Myanmar, new English textbooks, as well as teacher trainings, were introduced to Grade 6, 7 and Grade 10.
We might take a brief look at the changes in the use of the textbooks prescribed in Myanmar over the last fifty years so that you'll get an insight into what has been going on in the context of teaching English as a foreign language here in Myanmar in comparison with the changes in the rest of the world. The emphasis, as you'll see, has for some time been laid on reading and writing, especially on reading as the main language input in the teaching-learning process. For example, the former matriculation textbooks of the 1960s were Six Tales from Shakespeare, and Annapurna, in which the assessment was made on students' performance in producing chunks of writings; thereafter, in the 1970s, a prescribed English text prepared by Myanmar scholars, in which the focus was made on learning the morphology and the assessment took place in the MCQ test; and then, in the 1980s, with the suggestion of the Minster of Education U Kyaw Nyein, an abridged version of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, which, paradoxically, imposed a great challenge both on the learners and the inexperienced English teachers, who found themselves grappling with the new text. Then, in the 1990s, there came Selected Myanmar tales, (written by Dr Htin Aung and K) which was later replaced by a new English text, which includes a blending of passages of factual prose, a Myanmar folk tale, an English short story, travelogue and an inspiring biography of Helen Keller; and very recently, a new English text, focusing more on familarizing the learners with the factual prose, reflecting the learning needs of tackling informative reading passages.
On the other hand, if compared with the coursebooks prescribed in the international schools, these textbooks have still been weak in textual enhancements, lacking colourful illustrations and attractive layout. It must also be pointed out that, though a few reforms have been made, because of the constraints of the text-bound assessment system, the majority of the matriculation teachers are exam-oriented in the delivery of the content. In the post-COVID crisis, a survey should be made on the feedback of the language teachers while new, fresh reading materials related to the pandemic and a new syllabus design that fits in online learning should be taken into account in the prescribed textbooks. These are the points to consider in the aspect of teacher trainings in the post-COVID crisis.
In conclusion, COVID-19 crisis has affected both primary education and higher education levels of Myanmar. When faced with such unprecedented crisis like this, multi-task forces should be formed, and all stakeholders, trained in effective management skills, are responsible for considering the present and oncoming challenges and should cooperate and collaborate to sort out the possibilities for achieving positive outcomes.
Reference
Akbari, Ramin. 2008. English Language Teaching Textbooks: Content, Consumption, Production. N. Harwood (ed.,) Palgrave Macmillan. 2014.
Lokethar. 2020.Teacher/instructor training in the context of education reform. The Global New Light of Myanmar. 17 December 2020. 8-9
Rahayu, Dwi. 2020. Students’ E-Learning Experience through a Synchronous Zoom Web Conference System. Journal of ELT Research. Vol. 5, No. 1, 2020, 68-79
Internet resources
https://www.englishuk.com/ facts-figures
How to teach English (with Scott Thornbury). https://www. youtube.com. Posted on 14 August 2019
By Dr Zaw Tun
