Old Wine in a New Bottle: BEd in English

Language Teaching Major Courses

Mekonnen Disasa

May 2023
 My motivation
• My teaching experience with PGDT (Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching)
students from 2013-2020
• Students appealed to me to teach them the four skills, not how to teach
the skills
• “We don’t know English; how can we teach it?”
Lack of
• basic reading literacy skills
• vocabulary
• grammar
• pronunciation, and insecurity to utter anything in English

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 Reasons
• INADEQUATE for these reasons:
a) As can be seen from the list of the courses, they were
not designed with the objective of producing English
language teachers. Apparently, they were meant to
produce degree-ready English language graduates.
b) The objective of BEd in English language teaching is
to produce effective English language teachers.

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 Reasons (cont’d)
It is vitally important that those who are trained to
become future teachers of the English language
master the four macro-skills - listening, speaking,
reading, and writing in order to attain a sense of
professional purpose and confidence in the language
(Brumfit, 1984; Nation, 2007)
.

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 Courses-lopsidedness
Non-Skill Courses Skill Courses
•Literature 5 (14) Oral Skills
•Linguistics 1 (3) •a) Listening 1 (2)
•Ancillary courses 4 (11) •b) Speaking 3 (9)

Micro- Skill Courses Literacy Skills

•Grammar 1 (3) •Reading 1 (2)
•Vocabulary 1 (2) •Writing 2 (6)

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 What do we learn from the data?
• Non-skill and ancillary courses accont10 (53%),
whereas skill courses are only 9 (47%).
• PGDT English majors were the victims of the mix-up.
• Foreign language learning can be defined as intensive
and extensive process of getting and using oral and
literacy skills
• In line with Comprehensible Input (Stephen Krashen,
1989), and Comprehensible Output (Merrill Swain,
2005).

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 My views
Non-Skill Courses: literature and linguistics are not
relevant to the teaching of English language skills.

Oral Skill Courses (listening and speaking) are

underrated despite the long established foundational role
that oral language plays in learning to read and write
(Castles et al., 2018; Dougherty, 2014; Lervage et al.,
2018).
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 On the courses
Listening Literacy Skill Courses
•Silent Period Listening •Basic literacy reading
(Stephen Krashen, 1983) •Intensive and extensive
•Non-reciprocal listening •Critical reading
•Reciprocal/Interactive Writing Skills
listening •Basic writing skills
•Intermediate writing skills
•Advanced composition
•Spoken English courses: 3
Micro-Skill Courses: Grammar and
courses of 9 credits
Vocabulary

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 What is in the dictionary?
 Meaning (recent to old)
 Syllabication
 Pronunciation in IPA
 Word origin
 Word class
 Conjugation of irregular
verbs
 Derivate word forms
 Plural forms of irregular
nouns
 Count and mass nouns
 Collocations
 Frequency
 Level of usage: formal informal
 Synonyms and antonyms
 Synonym discrimination
 Phrasal verbs
 Prefixes and suffixes
 English sentence patterns
 Guide to pronunciation
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 A Gimmicky and Labored Course
“Classroom English for English Language
Teaching”
•It is gimmicky in that it is designed to attract attention as
if it were a new brand of English
•It is labored because it has been pushed and elevated to
the level of a full-fledged English language course.
•The so-called “Classroom English” refers to phrases,
chopped and short sentences
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 An omission
Language testing and assessment

•This course plays a significant role in language

teaching as a means for teachers to identify learners’
needs, gauge their strengths and weaknesses, as
wells to document their progress.
•Language testing also helps teachers to determine their
performance as teachers and lesson planers.
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 Conclusion
• The Harmonized Curriculum needs to be repurposed
appropriately for BEd English majors if the Colleges of
Education are to produce able and stable English language
teachers.
• Alternatively, the Colleges of Education should be free to design
English language courses tailored to the needs of their students.

• In the absence of supportive English language learning

environments like ours, the students are mainly dependent on
their major courses for language input and output. Thus, oral skill
courses (listening and speaking), and literacy skill courses
(reading and writing) need to loom large to become the center of
attention for Bed English majors. 12
Thank you!

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