Who qualifies as a 'proper teacher?'

On the morning of the 25th anniversary of completing my introduction to TEFL course, I got one of those new email things from someone who’d been on the course with me and with whom I’d kept in occasional touch.

Congratulations!  You’ve been teaching for a quarter of a century!

A nice enough message but in context rather perplexing and I wrote back ‘You too!?!’ only to be corrected: ‘No, I’ve taught one year twenty five times.’

One of those moments for reflection, not least because I was into my fifth year of running the Trinity College Diploma TESOL course and had often noticed that the minimum entry requirement of two years full time English Language Teaching was on the arbitrary side. 

Of course, you have to set some minimum figure and 960 teaching hours is as reasonable as any but if those 960 hours are all delivered to the same level of monolingual learners following the same course book (a plausible enough scenario post Cert TESOL or CELTA) do they really give you the variety of backgrounds you need to embark with a good chance of success on a Diploma course? 

Perhaps they do; and I’m not suggesting we impose on teaching professionals requirements they couldn’t necessarily meet; 960 hours ELT is 960 hours ELT.

All of fifteen years further on (and it genuinely has been 15 years of teacher-training not one year x 15 times) I am again reflecting. 

English Medium Instruction (EMI) and Content & Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) have entered the vocabulary, if not the experience, of most ELT professionals and indeed, CLIL has a prominent place in the 2014 edition of Richard’s and Rodger’s ‘Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching’ [CUP].

To the outsider, EMI and CLIL look like different names for the same thing; they are not.  The difference is not merely pedagogical but also philosophical.

EMI is not language teaching: there may well be some incidental language learning beyond specific academic subject terminology but that is not the same as conscious, systematic language teaching.  I have worked with EMI teachers in the UK and abroad and whatever the kaleidoscopic differences in their teaching situations there is one constant picture: they see language as an obstacle to teaching and learning.  They see themselves (believe me, I still hear it routinely) as ‘proper teachers’ not EFL teachers.

CLIL, if properly designed, planned and delivered, is ELT.  Not 100% ELT – that’s not what learners want or what teachers are best placed to offer – but ELT it is, and in my experience 96 hours of CLIL can teach a teacher more than 960 hours of standard ELT.  If I were still running a Diploma course, I would with open arms welcome teachers with two years full time CLIL teaching experience

As for the EMI teachers: is there no hope of redemption?  Well, it’s getting on for the season of goodwill to all, even to ‘proper teachers,’ and I think there is; if only because their learners deserve it.  EMI teachers with many years of experience have – I’ve seen it -  not only acknowledged but actually embraced ELT aims & objectives and practical procedures when approached through CLIL (which when all is said and done is 50% proper teaching.) 

What EMI teachers have to do is convert to CLIL; no need to renounce their faith entirely and become EFL teachers, but to see a bigger and rather different picture.  The Language side of CLIL is the grace which can open up a new and more fulfilling professional life even for teachers who have with conviction delivered one year of EMI x 25 times.

There is a qualification which most EMI teachers have never looked at but which can unlock years of potential in the context of teaching academic subjects to students whose L1 is not English.  It is Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test Module 4: CLIL.  What TKT: CLIL does is give due respect to Content teaching, with all its excellent work on cognitive processes, and add the second language awareness which EMI teachers have lacked. 

An EMI teacher who has taken TKT:CLIL is empowered to look back on however many years of academic subject teaching and reflect: ‘my international students could have learnt my subject better if I’d:

• been aware that my use of ‘get on with’ and ‘out of the blue’ might confuse them;
• realised that the word ‘record’ can be pronounced in different ways;
• presented ‘isosceles triangle‘ orally before I wrote it on the board;
• taken key words out the text and made sure they knew them;
• let them read the text through quickly before focussing on detailed content;
• started and finished the lesson with them speaking to one another.’

Do you know, it wouldn’t be all that great a leap of faith from there to have the most convinced proper teacher taking into account that phrasal verbs and idioms may distract or that phonological features have a significant impact on understanding and production.  We might even see them incorporating procedures like pre teaching lexis and setting skim and scan reading tasks – even adding activate and other ELT lesson stages to their lessons: we can dream.

Do EMI teachers want to convert?  Of course most of them don’t!  Learners, though, need them to and we grown ups have to rise above petty differences for the sake of the children. And it’s TEFL/TESOL that has to take the lead. 

How do we get proper teachers to come to us?  Probably not by stamping our feet and saying ‘we’re the proper teachers, not you!’  We can’t in all honesty expect qualified and experienced teachers to take an NQF level 5 CELTA or Cert TESOL, however much it might benefit them and their learners.  The NQF level 7 Diploma, though, is a different matter. I think those of us in mainstream ELT should reach out to EMI teachers and say ‘we recognise your teaching experience and expertise and if you are prepared to go as far as taking a TKT:CLIL course and show that you can reflect on what we do and on why and how we do it, we’ll welcome you to our top table.’

It’s my job to represent Cambridge Assessment English so I naturally want teachers to take DELTA but I am prepared to say that Trinity College Diploma in TESOL will do just as well. Come on, it’s the interests of learners we’re interested in: either Cambridge DELTA or Trinity College Diploma TESOL will make teachers better teachers.

Vincent Smidowicz

Vincent Smidowicz has been a TEFL/TESOL pro for over 40 years and in that time has ‘quite frankly just about done it all.’  He’s been a teacher trainer since the early 1990s and has delivered workshops in 30+ countries.  In recent years, Vincent has become more and more involved in EMI and CLIL – explained in the article – and would rather like to spend the autumn years of his ELT career watching people working together (rather than against one other) for the good of their  -  actually, our  -  learners.  Vincent these days represents Cambridge Assessment English as an examinations consultant but recognises that Trinity College and Cambridge have equivalent qualifications to offer teachers and urges us all to work together for the good of our learners.

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