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HANDOUT REFERENCE

KWL:
KWL stands for What I Know, What I Want to Know, and What I Have Learned
The five macro skills in English are: listening, speaking, reading, writing and viewing.
Listening and Speaking goes together because a person cannot learn how to speak if
he/she does not know how to listen.
Reading and Writing goes together because one can use reading to:
1. support experiences
2. expound ideas from experiences
3. add to a persons vocabulary
4. get knowledge from different perspectives
And in turn, these benefits in reading may be transferred to skills
in writing.
FLUENCY AND ACCURACY:
English is the language of international competition.

Kids in China, and possibly in different parts of the world, learn English as young as 2
years old. And by the time they are 10 years old, they are already fluent.

Fluency is the ability to use a certain language well. However, for some, being fluent
means only to speak in an American way even if it is not whats important because so
long as one is understood, whatever accent a person is using, his/her spoken English is
fine.

Internationalism the belief that it is good for different countries to work together
Considering foreign English language learners, internationalism is
opening the country to a language that is considered as a standard
for all, that is, English (the language of international competition).
to look at a country not only from standing and living in it, but
from outside of a country as well.

For adults, learning a new language is more of a struggle. The reason for this is
connected to what experts call as Window of Opportunity. The Window of Opportunity
looks at the different age range where a child best learns a certain skill because his/her
brain is still very elastic and adaptive to new information. And for learning a language,
experts say that 0-13 years old can easily adapt or learn a new language. Of course,
there needs to be constant exposure and practice. On the other hand, adult learners will
take approximately seven (7) years to learn a new language; although it may still depend
on a learners learning pace e.g. fast learners = less number of years to learn new
language; slow learners = more number of years to learn new language.
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In China, because they take learning English seriously, even business professionals are
trying their best to learn English. They work until 6:00 in the evening and study until
12:00 midnight. And even if they are already working professionals, because they grew
up learning zero English, they still have to go through the basics of pronunciation,
phonics, etc. but it has not deterred them from learning English.

On a different note, even if China has considered English as the language of

international competition, some are still not fluent for many possible reasons:
1. They do not see the value in learning English because they live in China.
2. Even if they learned English in school, they have not used and practiced the language.

The usage of a language is important to learning it. However, there are still a number of
schools, not only in China, that treat English as only a subject that a student needs to
pass solely for being academically good. The academically good English may be good
as students are able to pass assessments in English and they are able to write in English.
But the foremost idea of why people learn a language is not targeted and focused on,
that is, LANGUAGE(English) AS A COMMUNICATION TOOL.

Drilling students with grammar lessons, memorizing all the necessary rules to write
good English may, at some point, be helpful, especially in exams. But the question still
stands: Will you be able to use English in daily communication? Probably not. As the
case in most students, they study English for many years (drill and memorize pattern)
but after exams, they forget the language.

Each year, Korea and Japan spend billions of money for English education. However,
there is still a struggle in using it for communication purposes; partly because, English
education is taught from a very traditional perspective of teaching of a language.

When your English study is grammar-based, you end up taking a lot in but your English
output (e.g. speaking) is limited. So not only do you not understand when someone
says something in English, but you also dont know how to respond. If you dont know
how to respond, the flow of communication slows down and the less likely that English
language learning is REALLY applied.

A solution that English Language Learners, even experts in English Language Teaching,
propose is a more practical approach, that is, the communicative and context-based
approach. It may be hard, but it is what students need to acquire more language.