global trends: challenges and opportunities christian duncumb british council

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Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

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Page 1: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities

Christian Duncumb

British Council

Page 3: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council
Page 4: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council
Page 5: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council
Page 6: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council
Page 7: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council
Page 8: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

A world in transition

Society

Demography

Economy

Communications

Languages

Page 9: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

The educational revolution

Changing needs of society

Changing basic skills

Changing nature of knowledge

Social cohesion

Page 10: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Higher Education

Globalisation of universities

International student mobility

Transnational education

Page 11: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Global change

The growth of English

Page 12: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Which model?What variety of English is regarded as authoritative?

Which language skills are most important? (Reading? Speaking? Interpreting?)

What is regarded as a suitable level of proficiency?

How and where will the language be used?

What is the motive for learning?

At what age should learning begin?

What is the learning environment (classroom only? Family? Media? Community?)

What are the appropriate content and materials for the learner?

What will be the assessment criteria? What kind of exams?

Graddol 2006: 82

Page 13: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

A post-method world?

“There is no single way of teaching English,

no single way of learning it,

no single motive for doing so,

no single syllabus or textbook,

no single way of assessing proficiency and, indeed,

no single variety of English which provides the target of

learning”

Graddol 2006: 82

Page 14: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council
Page 15: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Global trends

But, there are some clear trends which have evolved and are

emerging:

•English for Young Learners (EYL)

•Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

•English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

Page 16: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

EYL

Age at which children start with English is lowering and being introduced with greater compulsion

Idea that it is easier for young children to learn languages

It gives students longer to learn English over their school careers. Critical mass?

Provides a potential transition to CLIL at secondary school and English medium learning later

Page 17: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

EYL dangers

•Needs specialist teachers who understand child development and are good at English. There can be a lack of such

teachers

•Expansion must be met with corresponding changes elsewhere in the curriculum

•Will result in a very mixed abilities entering secondary school

•Children need to be motivated for 10 years or more

•Failure at the early stage might have profound implications later

•So, “the expansion in TEYL signals a potentially major shift in ELT that needs to be taken seriously” (Cameron 2003:

106)

Page 18: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

CLIL

CLIL is different – focus on both content and language learning.

Not the same as English medium education

Combining language and content can help give more space to language

to achieve ‘critical mass’

Can be seen as the ultimate communicative methodology and fits in with

global trends

Growth has dangers

Page 19: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

But…..

Relies on basic language skills having been learned, usually at Primary level

Requires different skills of teachers

Changes the working relationships in schools

Difficult to implement unless the subject teachers have enough language.

Dangers if not done effectively. Students may end up not learning content and

language

Potentially excluding

Page 20: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

ELF

Fewer global interactions in English now involve a native speaker.

New target models – the fluent bilingual speaker

Search for a lingua franca core

Page 21: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

ELF

The ‘th’ sounds as in ‘thin’ and ‘this’

The contrast between long and short vowel sounds

Weak forms such as the words ‘to’, ‘of’ and ‘from’

Articles

Idiomatic expressions

Page 22: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

ELF

Change in materials and syllabus content

Change in expectations – intelligibility not native-speaker accuracy

The death of the native-speaker?

Page 23: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

The English escalatorA

ge

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Tertiary

Secondary

Primary

Pre-school

Increase in English-medium university courses

School-leavers need higher English proficiency

English increasingly used to teach curriculum at secondary school

English introduced earlier and earlier at Primary school

Page 24: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Expected proficiency increases

Age From to

6

8

10

12 A1 (IELTS 2.0)

14 A2 (IELTS 3.0)

16 B1 (IELTS 4.0)

A1 (IELTS 2.0)

A2 (IELTS 3.0)

B1 (IELTS 4.0)

B2 (IELTS 5.5)

C1 (IELTS 6.5)

C2 (IELTS 7.0)

Page 25: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

Some possible long-term implications of trends

Teachers working with ever younger learners

The recent growth of English medium-courses at Universities will move down to secondary school.

Increasing use of CLIL at secondary school

Ultimately English teachers may ‘lose’ their subject

English is increasingly seen as a basic skill

Increasing irrelevance of native speakers and the doom of monolingualism

There are dangers in not keeping up but also dangers in not implementing effectively

Page 26: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

“ The key to understanding the impact of global English probably lies in how well and how

strategically its implementation is managed in each country. There is scope for great success but

also for great disaster.”

Graddol 2006: 120

Page 27: Global Trends: Challenges and opportunities Christian Duncumb British Council

For Russia?What variety of English is regarded as authoritative?

Which language skills are most important? (Reading? Speaking? Interpreting?)

What is regarded as a suitable level of proficiency?

How and where will the language be used?

Is the motive for learning largely ‘instrumental’ or also ‘integrative’?

At what age should learning begin?

What is the learning environment (classroom only? Family? Media? Community?)

What are the appropriate content and materials for the learner?

What will be the assessment criteria? What kind of exams?

Graddol 2006: 82