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[Song&Dance]

WARNING: THIS IS AN EXTREMELY NEGATIVE POST!

ESP = English for Specific Purpose

We can teach a parrot to say " Poly want a cracker." The parrot has no idea who Poly is. No idea what a cracker is and no idea if Poly really wants a cracker. But the bird can "talk."

Chinese university oral English textbooks and listening comprehension audio tapes are loaded with set phrases and speech patterns that are learned by Chinese students who acquire no more undetstanding than the parrot.

Corporate traing takes this to a higher level, ESP.

Useless!

What many proponents of set phrases, speech patterns and ESP overlook is the need for a good foundation in general English first.

�While there is a need for specialist terminology, the greatest need of international employers is to have employees who can communicate successfully in English. Thus, communication and accommodation should be emphasized in language instruction; the mastering of perfect grammatical forms is an added bonus that can be reserved for later refinement. Flexibility is just as important as the mastering of prescribed forms, if not more so. In order to communicate to communicate across international boundaries, students must learn to adjust to their interlocutor in order to facilitate understanding. Moreover, because of the growing use of English as a global lingua franca, students of the language need to be exposed to a wide range of English accents in order to increase their abilities to understand the people they are likely to encounter in an international career. Furthermore, it is not only formal but informal language skills that should be practiced at university; students should be made aware of the different genres and registers in English, so that they can determine the appropriate use of the language in the various situations in which they are likely to find themselves. �. Finally, students should be taught skills that allow them to mediate between languages and cultures. Thus an intercultural approach is needed in language teaching, so that future employees are �able to view different cultures from a perspective of informed understanding� (Corbett 2003:2) An approach that has the goal of successful intercultural communication at its core will prepare students for the relatively unpredictable needs of language use in corporate Europe.� Erling and Walton 2007, English at work in Berlin, English Today Volume 23 Number 1

A foreign expert was introducing himself to individual students in a middle school class and the dialogue went like this:
FE: Hello. My name is Bob. What is your name?
Chinese English teacher: Prompts the student with something in Chinese.
Student: My Chinese name is xxx. My English name is Bill.
FE: How are you Bill?
Chinese English teacher: Prompts the student with something in Chinese.
Student: I am fine. How are you?
FE: I am fine thank you. Nice to meet you Bill.
Chinese English teacher: Prompts the student with something in Chinese.
Student: Nice to meet you too.
After this exchange occurred with six or seven students, always with the prompting of the Chinese English teacher, the foreign expert changed the dialogue ending. The following occurred:
Student: I am fine. How are you?
FE: I am really very tired and I wish I were not here teaching this class.
Student: Stares at FE with frightened �deer in headlights� look.
Chinese English teacher: Silent
Student: Turns and looks at Chinese English teacher.
Chinese English teacher: Shrugs shoulders
Student: Turns to foreign expert and shrugs shoulders
Are the middle schools merely programming robots? May it never be!

"While my specialty is using artificial intelligence to make human-like robots, my worry as a university president is that we are turning our graduates into �robots'," said Wang Shuguo, President of Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) Beijing Review., Education Feared to Raise Robots http://www.bjreview.com.cn/special/txt/2007-08/31/content_74644.htm (accessed July 10, 2008)

Teaching for interviews, IELTS or TOFL is simply programming the robot for a specific purpose.

[eddy-cool]

An excellent post that tickled me through and through.

The surprising fact is that out of 100 Chinese English parrots some 10 to 25 do actually succeed in becoming so bilingual as not to need their mother tongue as a crutch to understanding English.

We should focus on the remaining 75 to 90 percent, though...

[Song&Dance]

Two young ladies were speaking Chinese during a class break. I approached them and asked them to use English at all times in my classroom.

One girl looked up and said "Oh professor, we were speaking in English, our English pronunciation is so poor it just sounded like Chinese."

THAT WAS NOT A MEMORIZED SET PHRASE. LOL