Language & Written Expression IV

Marianela Gomez – Fabio Scalese

Pair Paper

Students testify: How diverse do teachers make their

lessons?
By Gomez Marianela & Scalese Fabio

Introduction
Education at western schools has traditionally been conceived as the mere act of
transmitting information in a tedious unidirectional teacher-to-student way 1. During the
18th century, abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary and sentences for translation with
almost no oral work could easily be found in a current language lesson. Eventually, toward
the mid-nineteenth century different new teaching approaches led teachers and linguists
to write about the need for new perspectives and, henceforth, Speaking, Listening, Reading
and Writing were considered the four foundational skills of foreign language teaching. 2
In the case of Argentina, the approach proposed by the 2011 Curricular Design for
Secondary school regarding teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) states “El
enfoque que se propone este diseño curricular para el Ciclo Superior de la secundaria es el de
Aprendizaje integrado de contenido y lengua extranjera.”3, meaning that all of the four skills
should be integrated in a way that complements students’ knowledge with contexts related
to their cultures. Nevertheless, teachers of English usually find themselves giving the same
monotonous “fill in the gaps” or “write true or false” activities, instead of complementing
the Curricular Design goals.
The purpose of this study is to examine how frequently teachers of English in
Argentinian secondary schools apply their tools to integrate these mentioned four skills to
encourage students to gather valuable knowledge after each lesson. In order to obtain the
answers, 18 students from both private and state-run schools have been surveyed.

Theoretical Background
From the 1970`s, most ELT professionals have noticed that the teaching of
language skills cannot be conducted through separate and discrete structural elements. In
real life people do not use reading, listening, writing and speaking skills in isolation. 4The
Four Skills of language learners are considered to be a set of four capabilities that allow a
person to comprehend and produce the language for proper and effective communication.
These skills are:
 Listening: a receptive skill. It is the ability to accurately receive and
interpret messages in the communication process. There are two kinds of
listening situations: Interactive (where the learner has the chance to speak)
and Non-Interactive (where the learner does not have the chance to speak).
 Speaking: a productive skill. It is the ability to express one's thoughts and
feelings in spoken language. There are three kinds of speaking situations:
Interactive (discussion, dialogue), Partially Interactive (lecture), and Non-
Interactive (sermons and speech).
 Reading: Is a receptive skill. It is the ability of decoding symbols to derive
meaning from texts.
 Writing: Is a productive skill. It is the ability to convey meaning through
well constructed texts.

1
Jeannie Oakes, Martin Lipton (1st edition 1999) “Teaching to change the world” Chap.2
“Traditional Learning theories”.
2
Adriana Fernandez, “The Four Skills”, Page 45. ‘Ingleé s y su Ensenñ anza’.
3
The approach proposed by this curricular design for the upper secondary cycle is the integrated
learning of content and foreign language.
4
Pysarchyc, O. L & Yamshynska, N.V (2015). The importance of integrating reading and writing for
EFL teaching. “Advanced education” Chap.3, Page 78.

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Language & Written Expression IV
Marianela Gomez – Fabio Scalese
Pair Paper

Methodology
In order to carry out our investigation, eighteen students of English from
secondary school were surveyed. Nine of them attended a private school and the other
nine attended a state school in Western Greater Buenos Aires including Moroé n, Castelar
and Merlo. The survey consisted in three multiple choice questions. The aim of these
questions was to discover whether their teachers of English made their classes diverse or
not. The questions were written in Spanish since it is the students’ native language and the
surveys were handed out in both paper and digital format.

Results
Eighteen students of English from secondary school took the survey, of whom 9
attended a private school and 9 attended a state school. We compared the results between
private and state school. Once obtained, the results were ordered according to their
continuity in the English classroom.
- Reading activities were the most chosen activities in both private and state-run
school. Seventy per cent of the students from private school and 37% of the
students from state school carried out reading activities very often.
- Writing activities were considered as frequent as reading exercises. Thirty-
nine per cent of students from private school and 26% from sate school
answered they carried out this kind of activities very often.
- Listening activities were almost never carried out by teachers. The survey
revealed that 38% of students from private school and 47% students from state
school never carried out a listening activity.
- Speaking activities were the ones with least continuity in English lessons. Fifty-
one per cent of students from private school and 52% from state school never
carried out speaking activities.

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Language & Written Expression IV
Marianela Gomez – Fabio Scalese
Pair Paper

Conclusion
Even though we expected that private school teachers would make their lessons
more varied in comparison to state schools teachers, since the former ones could be
supposed to have better equipment, the results obtained from the survey showed that
most English teachers do not consider the four skills despite the fact that the curriculum
design highlights the importance of their integration in the English classroom.
We venture to provide some possible reasons for this disregard of varied practice.
When it comes to reading and speaking, we consider that their continuity is given by the
fact that students can be easily kept in their places, and because a lesson focused on
reading and writing may not require as much preparation as a speaking or listening
focused lesson may. Regarding the poor continuity of listening and speaking activities, we
dare say that it is given by a lack of confidence from teachers towards students.
In order to make the classes more dynamic, teachers should have full confidence in their ability
to prepare a lesson. They can start by introducing new activities as games, acting out
conversations and technology. Teachers can have students talk about themselves in many
different ways, to encourage English as well as encourage them to talk about things that are
personally interesting to them.
Technology changes by the minute, and as teachers they need to keep up with the
times in order to best prepare students for this changing world that they live in. Nowadays, you
can do anything you want with a cell phone so it is possible to work with audios and videos in
an easiest way.
Four skills activities in the English classroom serve many valuable purposes: they give
learners opportunities to create contexts in which to use the language for exchanges of real
information, evidence of their own ability and, most important, confidence.

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Language & Written Expression IV
Marianela Gomez – Fabio Scalese
Pair Paper

Bibliography

 Jeannie Oakes, Martin Lipton (1st edition 1999) “Teaching to change the world”
Chap.2 “Traditional Learning theories”.
 Adriana Fernandez, “The Four Skills”, Page 45. ‘Ingleé s y su Ensenñ anza’.
 Pysarchyc, O. L & Yamshynska, N.V (2015). The importance of integrating reading
and writing for EFL teaching. “Advanced education” Chap.3.
 Direccioé n General de Cultura (2006). Disenñ o curricular de Ingleé s , Segundo Ciclo.
Buenos Aires, Ministerio de Educacioé n.