أقصد من كتابتي لهذه المقالة النقدية الكشف عن ظاهرة أثارت فضولي وكذلك فضول مفتشةمتدربة، وهي تدهور تدريس اللغة الإنجليزية في الثانويات التأهيلية العمومية مقارنة مع الثانويات الإعدادية. وقدحاولت إعطاء بعض الأمثلة لهذا التدهور، ثم قدمت بعض الحلول التي أراها ناجعة لتدريس ممنهج ومرتكز علىأسس بيداغوجية صلبة و مقاربات تربوية وعلمي

BEN EL HACHMI, Mostafa

Arabic

Revues Scientifiques Marocaines

25Connaissances Pédagogiques N° 1معارف تربوية  - العدد األول ArticlesTEFL in High Schools and the Urgent Need to Step inMostafa Ben El HachmiEnglish Department Chair / CRMEF – TANGIERSملخص: أقصد من كتابتي لهذه المقالة النقدية الكشف عن ظاهرة أثارت فضولي وكذلك فضول مفتشة   متدربة، وهي تدهور تدريس اللغة اإلنجليزية في الثانويات التأهيلية العمومية مقارنة مع الثانويات اإلعدادية. وقد حاولت إعطاء بعض األمثلة لهذا التدهور، ثم قدمت بعض الحلول التي أراها ناجعة لتدريس ممنهج ومرتكز على أسس بيداغوجية صلبة و مقاربات تربوية وعلمية In this critical essay, I intend to reveal a true-to-life diagnosis of the current TEFL situation in public high schools belonging to the school district (delegation) Tanger-Asila, judging from my humble experience as the Head of the English Department in CRMEF during approximately 13 years. By holding sporadic meetings with ‘’inspectors’’ of English during some assigned missions in the Academy of Tetuan and elsewhere, I became strongly convinced that something should be done so as to save the teaching of English as a foreign language in Public High Schools because the current situation is far from being satisfactory. My decision has been corroborated by a meeting with an inspector-trainee, who was doing some fieldwork research. She had a chance to visit a large number of schools both in Tangiers and Tetuan and she has drawn the same conclusion when comparing TEFL in Middle school and High school. I seize the opportunity to thank her now for her indirect contribution in this essay.  After visiting many teachers in many schools, the inspector-trai-nee was extremely alarmed at the wide chasm in systematic teaching between the two different types of schools. We discussed the phenomenon together and we found out some reasons behind the difference. Though I was aware of the 26Connaissances Pédagogiques N° 1معارف تربوية  - العدد األول Articlesdifference, I let her speak first for fear of impressing her analysis. She said that TEFL in Lower secondary schools is highly ‘’systematic’’ and orderly as it is based on sound pedagogical approaches and methods and that teachers know what they are doing and why they are doing it that way. Whereas in high scho-ols, TEFL is rather ‘’chaotic’’, devoid of any didactical background and lacking many aspects leading to language learning efficiency. Indeed, there are some exceptions to these observations in some ‘’niches’’ where systematic quality teaching seems to survive but they are few. Metaphorically speaking and jo-kingly, we referred to TEFL in lower secondary schools as the ‘new bride’ and that of high school as the old ‘widow’, and that clearly shows to what extent the gap is extremely wide between the two as far as efficiency is concerned.® WHAT ‘S REALLY BEHIND THIS DEGENERATION IN HIGH SCHOOL TEFL? In a modest analysis, I have ascribed this deterioration to many factors; some of them are inherent in the teacher’s personality and knowledge, while others can be attributed to the flaws of our whole educational system. Most teachers in High schools are approaching retirement age and seem to give up the required efforts to teach effectively and lack the excitement to teach English the way it should be taught  according to the ‘official guidelines’ stipu-lated by the Ministry of Education and made clear by the ‘Inspectors’. Those teachers who are still younger but fall in the same category seem to have lost the spirit and the zeal due to other factors such as school atmosphere. Once teachers are demotivated, one cannot expect positive outcome from them; this non-committal behavior results from external variables like the school admi-nistration easy-going reaction to disruptive students, a very low level class..etc, to cite just few causes. Once, I had a friendly ‘altercation’ with a teacher when I observed that he was lecturing and dictating grammatical rules to his students to copy down and then asking them to do the corresponding exercises in the textbook, gi-ving no chance for them to communicate and interact in the target language in a productive way, though there were some who eagerly raised their hands for that purpose. After my remarks, he was kind of offended and said: ‘’ I’m pre-paring these kids for the final Bac exam, which is WRITTEN, so why the hell should I care about oral expression since there will be NO oral evaluation?’’.27Connaissances Pédagogiques N° 1معارف تربوية  - العدد األول ArticlesAlthough there was some veracity in his argument, I told him that since that was a language class, we could have heard some students’ own examples. The absence of Visual Support is quite alarming! In another case, I was amazed to witness a teacher trying to explain the word ‘’waiter’’ to Common Core students using context. I counted the time spent on that; it took him nine minutes of ‘babbling’ and yet not more than five pupils managed to get the right meaning (the same pupils translated the word to others to put an end to the standstill situation). At the end of the lesson, I told the teacher:’’ If you had had a picture of a waiter, or if you had resorted to some ‘histrionics’ acting out of a waiter’s performance by placing a book on your flat palm and said ‘do you like coffee or tea?’, you wouldn’t have spent such a long time in vain thus increasing your TTT. She accounted for her option by saying that it would be a shame to use pictures in high schools and that those students were too big for that. This is preposterous; I do not know where those un-founded justifications came from. I just advised my fellow teacher to see a documentary available on line in which the American ex-vice president Mr. Al Gore delivers a presentation on Global Warming and its expected harm for our planet. Mr. Gore came well-equipped with all the Visuals you can think of, and yet he is not talking to small kids in the kindergarten but to a large audience of Doctors, engineers and experts from many different countries. (Hence, the importance of Visuals in conveying meaning and getting the mes-sage across) On a third occasion, I attended a grammar lesson wherein the teacher contented himself with presenting the structure being taught on BB using time-lines and separate sentences for students to copy. Then he quickly mo-ved to the task of checking understanding through written exercises. When I asked him why he hadn’t done some practice, he exclaimed:’’ Are you kidding me?!, this is a ‘Science-math’ class; it would be foolish to make them repeat after me; parroting is beneath such smart pupils. I couldn’t digest those alle-gations; I simply came to the conclusion that this had become a CULTURE. TEFL has gathered enough harmful misconceptions and positionsthat allow teachers to opt for the policy of ‘’doing it the easy way’’ without resorting to the pedagogical views and didactical procedures.  28Connaissances Pédagogiques N° 1معارف تربوية  - العدد األول ArticlesTo make matters worse, some of those teachers who are leading High school TEFL to the grave, do not teach in the same way when they go for some pri-vate tutoring in private institutions. Such schizophrenic demeanor!For these reasons, the CRMEF English Department has trouble finding the right host teachers for its trainees among the schools suggested by the Ministry. We were obliged to sift through those ‘’niches’’ to try to find eligible candidates; I seize the opportunity to express my gratefulness to the ones working with me cur-rently for their great assistance and for being among the ‘exception group’.® SUGGESTED RECOMMENDATIONS TO REMEDY TO THE SITUA-TION1- We wish the Ministry of education would never take any initiative to ap-point teachers with NO pre-service training. However, when there is a great need to fill in some vacancies (now that many teachers will have retired by 2020), the Ministry will have to embark on a huge budget-laden project in order to train those university graduates with no pedagogical training. They should undergo in-service training which could exceed two years and that this work should be evaluated and graded with the possibility of not appointing those showing no inclination and seriousness towards the teaching profession. (This sounds inhuman, but it’s a strategy and there is NO place for emotions if we are to save our educational system from degeneration)2- We propose compulsory in-service for all TEFL teachers in a sort of conti-nuous training, no matter how experienced they are. This is to refresh their memories and update their pedagogical background. Such training is to be followed by an evaluative session. 3- One may argue that the above recommendations are too ‘’idealistic’’ and not realistic. Indeed, they seem so. However, it’s up to the Ministry of educa-tion (with the help of its partners from the private sector) to prepare a daring scheme for that mission. First, the role for CRMEF centers should be recon-sidered and redrafted. They should include not only trainees but also full-fle-dged teachers according to schedules made by the Academy. Second, the num-ber of ‘’Inspectors of English’’ should be enough to cover the expected number of teachers to be trained and retrained. If an ‘inspector’ had only 20 teachers to supervise, he would be able to do more than what his foreign counterparts do overseas. 29Connaissances Pédagogiques N° 1معارف تربوية  - العدد األول ArticlesI mean we do have ‘qualified’ and competent corpus of supervisors that could make a difference in the educational arena, but we cannot expect a lot from someone who is assigned to supervise a whole province with so many tea-chers, let alone the problem of commuting, which is oftentimes unpaid. We are looking forward to changing a long established negative impression that a supervisor is there to ‘catch a teacher red-handed or to explain a ministerial circular or write reports of promotion and give grades. Rather, the primary mission is to train teachers and sharpen their skills by imparting and sharing with them his knowledge. Nowadays, the supervisor cannot do these things because of the current situation described above; he is not to blame for that.4- Reward and chastisement policy:Any scrupulous individual believe in the saying ‘’the right person in the right place’’. Therefore, some teachers deserve to be rewarded somehow as they contribute to the social and economic development of our country. This reward can consist of a pay-raise, a certificate of recognition, or a promotion imparted to him/her from the school district (delegation), academy or the Ministry. This will act as a driving force for those teachers to continue to work hard and for others to follow suit. Nevertheless, those who fail to do their jobs properly for any reasons must relinquish their place for some other novice teachers and seek another trade. The authorities should help them do that by warning them twice before taking the final decision of their dismissal. Someone who cannot assume the classroom responsibility had better leave if he thinks he is a good citizen who cares about the future generation of our country.In my modest contribution to this magazine, I have tried to describe the dire situation of TEFL  in many public high schools by giving some illustrations, then I suggested some solutions thereof hoping that someday there won’t be a big difference between lower secondary schools and high schools as far as SYSTEMATIC QUALITY TEACHING is concerned.

TEFL in High Schools and the Urgent Need to Step in

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TEFL in High Schools and the Urgent Need to Step in

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