RECENTLY, we saw a university staff pronouncing “salmon” wrongly in an educational video. In the video, which went viral, “salmon” was pronounced as “see-men”. Some thought it was funny, others watched with glee, and the university’s English lecturers and officials were red-faced with anger and embarrassment.
This gaffe may offer insight into what we should do when managing language education. First, any kind of online teaching should always have an expert to monitor the contents.
We do not know whether the person in the video is an English language teacher. If she is an English language teacher, there is nothing wrong in seeking the opinion of those who are more able to vet and approve the teaching contents before uploading.
If she is not, she needs an English language expert for guidance. Have we not heard the expression “A little learning is a dangerous thing”?
Another lesson that we should learn from this incident is that teaching should be left to the experts. Many people think that because they speak English well, they can teach the language. And, some think teaching English is easy.
Once, during an academic meeting, someone said a person does not require a PhD in English to teach English. With this type of mentality, there is little wonder that there are many “self-proclaimed qualified” people teaching the language, hence, the “see-men” gaffe.
A person who is fluent in English may not know the phonetic notations required to teach the language in a second or third language context.. Some pronunciations must be done in strict phonological terms, which involves vowels, diphthongs, consonants, stress or syllabic. A person must learn this first to teach English pronunciation well. Had the person in the video known these terms, the glitch would not have occurred.
There are many levels and aspects in language teaching. It involves reading, testing, listening, speaking, pronunciation, translation, and writing. And, in each of these elements, for example, writing, there are many levels of instruction too. There are many forms of writing — thesis, article, report, essay, feature, document and many more. Some prefer to categorise writing into expository, persuasive, descriptive and narrative.
Thesis writing is best taught by someone with a PhD. The rigour of a PhD makes one more fluent and suited to teach the subject. Therefore, how can one say a person does not need a PhD to teach English?
Another lesson from this gaffe is that the hiring manager or hiring department of an organisation must be well equipped in the recruitment, selection and hiring of staff.
If an English teacher is to be hired, it is not enough to merely look at the resume. The candidate must be interviewed to analyse his teaching ability, speaking skills, knowledge of language structure, writing and others. For example, I once interviewed a person who had 18 years of experience teaching English in schools. But, this person could not be hired because when asked to narrate her day in the past 24 hours, many errors were made.
How is it that a language teacher is not fluent to speak outside the classroom? The person must have relied heavily on “teacher talk” to teach the language.
There is nothing wrong with teacher talk. Teacher talk falls within the hierarchy of speech, which is acceptable and usually used by foreign language teachers to teach. It has its own linguistics adjustments to ensure lessons are understood easily by learners.
So, from this, we find that there are those who teach English who cannot speak English fluently outside the classroom. This means that they speak the language only to teach in class but not fluent enough to maintain a conversation in English. To teach English subjects, for example, reading for critical thinking, one needs fluency far beyond “teacher talk”.
I also used to receive emails from those interested to be English language lecturers. Many of them had higher than 3.5 CGPA. But, I found that their emails had errors and the English used did not sound like natural English to me. How can such applicants teach English writing?
To avoid similar gaffes, we need to hire qualified and fluent speakers and writers to teach English. University staff must be humble enough to seek help to improve their knowledge. Half-baked knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance.
MEGAWATI OMAR,
Academy of Language Studies,
UiTM, Shah Alam.