From ESL to ELT: A Shift in Teachers' Perspectives - Research Paper

Introduction

There is a trend in changing points of views of teachers as regard English language teaching, particularly for the last two decades. The educators have developed varying perspectives on the new roles of English language teaching. Some of the educators hold views that current English language students are conversant with more than one language and that English is neither a lingua franca nor a second language to them. The notion has changed the concept from English as a Second Language to English for Speakers of Other Languages. Some learners take English as a course not because they do not know the language but because they want to change it from the western context for use in international settings. Generally, the ELT classroom is facing issues concerning "world Englishes." Educators adapt to the changing trends in ELT classrooms by using the right authentic texts and setting a clear focus of the lessons to make students think critically rather than just mastering language skills.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Additionally, there is a trend in changing the goals of ELT because learners are no longer focusing entirely on language skills and mimicking native English speakers but are somewhat interested in fostering social responsibility. Therefore, the teaching of ELT in modern classrooms must involve concepts about global issues to help learners provide solutions to societal problems. Educators must learn to deliver content that allows learners to acquire language skills that are useful for participating in destructive activities such as global crime networks and issues about environmental damage. Indeed, ELT educators are currently focusing on the need to produce responsible members of society. They have realized that teaching ELT is not merely the ability to provide students that can simply imitate native English speakers. ELT educators need to produce proficient linguistic experts and critical thinkers with the capability of applying various concepts to serve as constructive change agents in society.

Furthermore, there are changes in teaching approaches, and ELT educators are no longer required to use the traditional grammar-translation methods when communicating language during teaching. Currently, the focus of language teaching has undergone transition, and learners need only the meaningful use of language in diverse contexts. The current century is referred to as the Post-Methods Era, which requires that ELT discussions should be based on electric approaches instead of a single approach (Sun 8). Generally speaking, there is an overall trend whereby ELT classroom has adopted a coherent and pluralistic approach to teaching ELT in the school (Lewis and Aleta). Therefore, educators focus on maximizing learning opportunities and promoting negotiations during class discussions and interactions in social contexts (Sun 9). This is part of the contextual language input whereby learners integrate language skills to attain social relevance as a way of becoming self-empowered.

Besides, there is a trend in the changing teaching content, curriculum design, and assignment, all of which make the ELT classroom interdisciplinary. Teachers currently focus on content-based language instruction while incorporating content and language integrated learning (Sun 9). Such changes require educators to apply cross-curricular and cross-disciplinary content delivery when teaching learners in the ELT classroom (Sun 9). The new approaches ensure that students gain the knowledge of the content and the English language. Concerning content delivery, learners should make use of materials from multicultural authors to ensure the inclusion of multicultural content that makes the students fit in both local and global environments. Therefore, they gain interdisciplinary knowledge in multicultural contexts; hence, they can address both local and global critical challenges in society. Curriculum design has taken a completely different approach that is based on the content and topic themes to provide both language and content knowledge to learners. The new procedures have indeed broadened both learning standards and outcomes because learners not only require language skills but to show the ability to apply critical thinking in real-life situations. This implies that ELT classroom should provide students with both learning processes and the product. ELT educators must now rely on the learning standards and expected outcomes as guidelines to curriculum design and classroom instruction, and all these should be based on accountability and assessments.

Possible Solutions to The Issues

Students Require Appropriate Authentic Text

Intermediate learners are students that require conversations to include authentic texts such as pictures, images, and mp3 or mp4 materials. Teachers should give learners in their intermediate level exceptional attention to equipping them with the right skills for speaking English without hesitancy. By so doing, learners will acquire proficiency and attain fluency when speaking in English. Intermediate learners experience several challenges during learning, although what their teachers perceive as the most problematic is the diversity in the learning environment (Leyre). Therefore, the learners have wide and varying gaps that teachers should fill because the language expertise requires an in-depth understanding of the content. Dealing with such discrepancies can help ELT learners to put language into context and construct appropriate meanings of new vocabulary. The use of proper authentic text in teaching gives intermediate learners a robust internal motivation that improves their levels of understanding during conversations (Al-Rashdi and Al Azar 251). The motivation will retain many students who will continue with the learning process rather than dropping out due to insufficient time for sustained motivation and concentration when teaching quality content.

Other than the appropriate authentic text, integrating English with technology equips learners with the right skills for effective communication. Therefore, computer literacy provides the proper knowledge and skills used in computer-mediated text structures rather than the ones mediated by traditionally printed books. The internet is an inseparable trend in teaching English to intermediate learners (Leyre). Interestingly, it has revolutionized human cultural development because the intensified application of information and communication technology (ICT) makes information accessible to the learners. ICT has brought new possibilities of leveraging technological expertise in teaching the English language to intermediate learners. Teaching resources that are based on technological innovations such as YouTube, online radio, and television and popular movie clips can be used to sharpen the learners' gist. Such technological advances are excellent media that can be used to illustrate several spoken English since they demonstrate the exact pronunciations and mannerisms that are used to develop speaking and listening skills (Khoa hoc and Dung). Teachers also use documentaries, interviews, and educational narratives to coach intermediate learners on how to tackle difficult spoken English words.

Setting Out Clear Focus for The Lessons

The age of globalization requires ELT teachers to communicate correctly in English and set priorities to learning goals according to learners' needs. Precisely, teachers should set out clear aims and objectives of their lessons to enable students to grasp the correct vocabulary and put them into usage using the right grammatical structures. Aligning teaching aims and goals with the needs of students provides them with the required techniques for communicating in English, which is ultimately a foreign language in their lives. It is upon the teacher to sharpen his/her language acquisition skills to ensure that the ELT classroom is lively and interactive. To attain this, the teacher must apply cognitive academic language procedures to ensure that his/her professional instructional skills positively impact the learners. Ideally, the alignment ensures that the intermediate ELT learners acquire educational, social, and cultural knowledge of the new language as they practice the use of various vocabularies in their right contexts.

The teacher's focus is to make intermediate English learners competent in developing language skills to become top achievers both in classroom settings and in real life. This implies that students are interested in attaining English language proficiency, and this aim should never be overlooked. ELT teachers should strive to improve the conversational skills of learners to enable the latter to devise solutions to their classroom challenges while focusing on the succinct expression of ideas.

Focusing on the aims and objectives of the ELT lessons impacts students' academic prowess positively. For instance, the teachers will evaluate the individual objectives of intermediate English learning courses. The lessons will focus on nurturing the students to acquire self-pride and self-identity based on phonological and cultural heritage. Conformity to the lesson's goals and objectives ensures that students attain higher levels of proficiency that improve their reading, writing, and speaking skills. Additionally, they achieve listening abilities that make them well-rounded in speech regardless of the context. Another key objective is the need to equip intermediate ELT learners with the prerequisites for reading and understanding the key ideas presented in any king of intricate text (Leyre). Therefore, they will be competent in taking part in the productive and short conversations that require the application of the correct language and inferring the core ideas necessary for oral communication. Learners will have the opportunity to prove that they can control multi-faceted grammatical structures.

Procedures for Achieving Lesson Aims in The Current ELT Classroom

Lead-in: a lead-in is an approach that takes between 2 and 3 minutes to enable the teacher to set the context for activating the schemata and engage learners by first attracting their attention. The approach first triggers appropriate prior understanding to have an overview of what students already know to employ strategies for learning new ideas and concepts. The focus is the pre-existing information, which reinforces the relationship and insights about what is taught in class and the learners' prior knowledge. The educator can use the already known ideas to put the upcoming lesson into context based on the relevance of the topic. Teachers should make use of their ideologies not to activate irrelevant prior knowledge because such information can only confuse learners (Dulgerci). Therefore, educators can use lead-in to engage learners to ensure that the latter use English vocabulary effectively as they prepare for their reading sessions during comprehension.

Pre-reading: ELT educators should use the first 2-3 minutes of the lesson in pre-reading to prepare the learners for the text and make the comprehension more accessible. Pre-reading sessions motivate learners and make them eager to read the entire understanding (Emami and Lashkarian 112). Activities involved in pre-reading include asking several questions according to the title and semantic mapping.

While-reading: educators should give learners adequate time of between 8 and 10 minutes to read and synthesize the text. They should ensure that there is no challenging gist as leaners strive to infer the meanings of new vocabulary as they are used in sentences. While reading, students will understand how various technical words have been used in context, and the teacher can ask questions about related terms such as synonyms, antonyms, and pictures as they relate to the comprehension (Dulgerci). Educators should put learners in pai...