The Cambodian English Language Teaching and 21st Century Skills

The Cambodian English Language Teaching and 21st Century Skills

Philosophy, Theory, and Practice

I. Introduction

Picure from AVOS.ORG

English language teaching methods are crucial for learners as well as teachers to achieve effective learning outcomes.  Different approaches have been applied for teaching to different groups of students. As argued, some approaches are more effective than others when they are deployed to some certain learning groups. Direct Method, the Audiolingual Method, Total Physical Response and Communicative Language Teaching are among approaches having been used in English teaching. Communicative Language Teaching emphasized on communication through interaction where personal experience is of importance for the contribution to the classroom learning and where fluency is the main focus for communication (Brown, 2001). 

With this regard, it is important to understand what approaches are used to teach Cambodian students and why those are used. We conducted an observation to explore the approach used by a teacher to teach English to students. 

This case study is to do with primary data which we collected through the observation conducted in a classroom at one private language school. The objectives of this study include, but not limit to, the understanding of the approach used in the English language class, techniques deployed in accordance with the approach, classroom management, and teacher’s philosophy. To achieve these, the classroom observation and two interviews with the teacher – pre- and post-interviews – were the method of this study. The sample of this study was based on network, which means the teacher participant was chosen by our network. To be ethical, consent forms which stated the purposes and activities of this study were sent to the observed school and the teacher participant, which both the observed school and the teacher participant voluntarily agreed to participate in this study.

The study was conducted in three main steps. First, the pre-interview was first done to explore the general information from the teacher participant about the environment of the classroom, number of and diversity of the students, the teacher’s philosophy, the rapport between the teacher and the students and the expected learning outcomes. Second, this study was proceeded to the class observation. One of the teacher participant which took one and a half hour was used for the observation. With privilege, the lesson plan was also handed to us that we were able to observe both the activities in the class and, at the same time, the names of techniques that were being used. Third, the post-interview was conducted to confirm some information including the different classroom environment on the usual classes and the observed class, the reasons why some planned activities were not achieved and the perspectives of the teacher participant of her teaching.

II. Findings and Discussion

 2.1. Classroom and Learning Environment 

Within the class that we observed, there were 22 students in the age range of 12 to 20s and we noticed that those students’ proficiency was similar to one another except a few students who were older and seemed to be slow learners. From the teacher participant’s perspective, that matter was because of their age. Once they were older, they tended to feel inferior of losing face if they made mistakes because they thought the older should be better than the younger.

Most of the time, seats were arranged in U-shape to make teacher walk and notify students’ activities easily, and it sometimes changed to pair or group settings depending on the teaching activities.

Classroom environment was comfortable as the room was clean with good equipment and there was no external noise distracting during teaching time. However, for the learning environment, some students were passive and afraid of answering the questions or participating in class activities, especially sharing idea in the front, which made the class silent sometimes. In that case, the teacher selected the students to answer directly. Because students were hesitate taking part in the tasks given, it wasted the teaching time, and one technique in the lesson plan was cut off due to the time constraint. 

2.2. Teaching Methods

The teacher mostly used the inductive teaching approach as she started the lesson by allowing students to discuss on the topic and discover the language points first before introducing the grammatical rule which is “To Infinitive”.  Also, we agreed that she adopt the Communicative Language Teaching approach as she promote the fluency more than accuracy. During the students’ sharing time regarding their ambition, she did not catch the students’ grammatical mistakes except the mistake on ‘To Infinitive”. Moreover, teacher had the students talk and discuss more with their friends than just sitting and listening to teacher explanation, which provided students more talking time.

2.3. Teacher and Student Rapport 

Throughout the interview and observation, we found out that the relationship between teacher and students was good because teacher played a role as a facilitator in class guiding students to do the activities planned. Most of the time, teacher encouraged students to participant in class activities and gave students freedom to share their ideas; therefore, the techniques used were mostly less-controlled and freer techniques. During the interview, she said that controlling students’ responses would limit or hinder students from being creative.

Comparing between the interview and the observation, it can be seen that what the teacher had mentioned and the actual class had some gaps. First, the activities that the teacher had planned to do within the observed session were not all completed as there was not enough time to cover the last activity.  

2.4. Learning Outcome and Philosophy 

The lesson plan indicates two main objectives to achieve of the class that was observed:(1) Talk about their ambitions with their friends using to + verb + infinitive; and (2) Write sentences about their ambitions using to + verb + infinitive. The class enormously achieved these learning objective because the students could have time to practice speaking and write sentences using To Infinitive form.

Regarding the teacher expected learning outcome which is the ability of students to communicate using English language effectively, the class was actually in accordance with this. This trains students to speak every day and to write for communication. 

The teacher philosophy is also in parallel with the expected learning outcomes.  “My ultimate goal is making students learn and most importantly for them to enjoy the lesson; so that they feel excited and happy coming to school. I want to make them feel that coming to school is what they like doing every day,” said the teacher during the interview. 

2.5 Discussion

Throughout the investigation, it can be assumed that the approach the teacher deployed for her teaching is Communicative Language Teaching Approach. The interaction in the class mainly aimed to achieve students’ speaking improvement. The class consisted of various speaking activities including group and pair discussions and individual speaking times. As we witnessed during the observation and as clearly stated in the lesson plan provided, students’ speaking times occurred throughout the class. Students were encouraged to discuss in the group as well as with their peers. For instance, teacher paired up students to discuss about the differences of the sentences highlighted in the course book. Another evidence is when teacher showed pictures and asked students to discuss and talk about their dream goals they want to achieve. This also links to another evidence showing that the CLT was the approach the teacher used. Personal experience learning is valued through this approach. The teacher applied this as her class activity. Students were encouraged to discuss their life goal, who they wanted to be. The teacher provided some clues to students by showing some pictures of businesspeople, artists, managers and politicians. Students, then, were encouraged to share who they wanted to be and to provide reasons why. This kind of speaking activities aimed not only achieve the speaking fluency but also accuracy. The accuracy was not the main facts of the class, as it is also one of the elements of the CLT approach. The teacher indirectly wanted to introduce students with To Infinitive grammar points. Instead of writing the form of the grammar point on the whiteboard, the teacher allowed students to speak about their life goal which involved the To Infinitive. For instance, students said, I wanted to be a teacher. In this sense, students could be able to use “to be”. 

III. Conclusion and Recommendation

The observation and interview in classroom were conducted in the purposes of understanding the approaches used in Cambodian schools, the teacher’s perspectives and classroom and learning environment. Throughout the investigation, it found out that the class we observed was taught in Communicative Language Teaching approach (CLT) where the teacher adopted communication activity as the main focus, personal experience as the learning process and fluency over accuracy. 

Our observation allowed us to see a few things to be improved as well. Since the class itself consisted of students with different ages, the integration inside classroom was not yet satisfactory. The teacher should understand the needs of all students and find solutions to unify everyone for learning purpose. Second, the classroom was not really active. The teacher should work to promote the sense of volunteerism where students are internally encouraged to speak and share their perspectives toward to topic discussed. 

We are fully aware that there is limitation for this study due to time and resource given; however, this study’s findings are of significant importance for the reflections to new language teachers or new teachers to be. We recommend a further study should take place where the number teacher participants should be increased and where bigger scale of study should be conducted. By studying several teachers and observe different classrooms and schools, the result will provide significant sources to compare which methods of teaching work better with Cambodian students. 

Reference
Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy (2nd). United States of America: Pearon.

Written by Uk Dararath and Nhep Kimleang