1.- We understand that you have been working as a language expert in Chile.

What are your impressions about the

English teaching setting in our country in terms of strengths and weaknesses?

According to MINEDUC students are supposed to reach the Council of Europe Level B1, or ALTE 2,
when they leave high school, after 4o Medio (I was the one who suggested the level, in April 2003, when
I was working on the Plan Ingles for Sergio Bitar, which later became Programa Ingles Abre Puertas).
I’m attaching (last page) the results of the 2004 so-called MINEDUC ‘Diagnostic’ Test (in fact, it was a
proficiency test, not a diagnostic test), which was given to state school students, to discover the reality in
Chile: how near or far from this target level the students in state schools actually were.
As you can clearly see, the results were a disaster, but not a surprise. Almost all the students were
completely off the official, international scale: their scores fell into the new lower levels created just for
Chile ! Out of all the students, less than 6% reached the target set by MINEDUC (me), and only 5% of
the 4o Medio students reached the target (and this is after many years of English) !
Of course, there are many reasons for this. But having 45 students per class is not the reason (this is the
excuse many teachers use). Nor is it a question of too little time, which is another excuse teachers use
(in fact, there is enough time in the state school system to get students to CoE Level B2, or ALTE 3 !).
There are at least three important, real reasons.
One is the complete lack of direction (since I left it in 2006) from MINEDUC’s Ingles Abre Puertas. When
I advised MINEDUC we had two priorities: professional development, and the setting of standards.
When I worked with MINEDUC, from 2003 to 2006, I was responsible for the professional development
(desarrollo) of English teachers. I believe I was very successful in creating a more positive image of
English and English teaching: I set up the networks (redes) system for teachers of English, and also
introduced the English ALTE courses for teachers, which are still being offered by universities all over
Chile. But the other important strand of Ingles Abre Puertas was supposed to be the setting of standards
for English, for students and teachers. It’s important for everyone – school directors, teachers, parents,
students – to know what level of English should be reached after 8 years of learning it (ie by the end of
4o Medio). The original plan was to introduce a standardised test for students of English in 4o Medio in
2007, and then include English in the PSU a couple of years later. But I knew that the woman at
MINEDUC who was supposed to be in charge of that part of the project did not have enough expertise to
be able to do it, although she pretended to be an expert. Now the deadlines have gone and nothing has
been done about standards. So no-one in Chile knows what should be expected: teachers do not know
what level they are supposed to get their students to; parents do not know what level their children
should be at; school directors do not know if their teachers are doing a good job or not. It’s a mess !
(That woman is now, unfortunately, the academic director of Ingles Abre Puertas. She is supposed to be
the expert in ELT ! So there is no hope that things will get any better !)
Another factor is the very poor quality of the initial education (pre-service) programmes for teachers of
English in Chile. All the programmes (mallas) are about thirty years out of date, and contain
components/modules which are redundant, but lack others which they should contain. Universities are
still pretending that grammar, and phonetics & phonology, are the most important things to learn. That is
absolute nonsense ! In my ten years in Chile, I have not seen one adequate programme anywhere in
Chile: there are no good ones but lots of very bad ones !
Another reason is the fact that English teaching in Chile is still basically focused on teaching the
grammatical rules of English, in Spanish. If you look at the question and the responses from the
questionnaire which was given to the teachers in Oct 2004, you can see what they said about using
English in the classroom. Less than 5% of the teachers are using English all the time in the classroom !
Students learn more English from a teacher talking in English that they do from the language units in a
course-book, particularly the most important thing of all: vocabulary – the words, phrases, expressions
or ‘chunks’ which are needed.
Then there are other factors. Facilities and resources in state schools are very poor (lack of appropriate
classrooms, not even cassette players in many schools). Unfortunately, and I have to say this because
it’s true, many teachers are simply not doing an adequate job: they are unimaginative, boring, and de-
motivating. They do not prepare their classes. Perhaps it’s because they are tired, ‘burned-out’,
exhausted by working so many hours for a low salary (that is a more important factor than the number of
students in a class), and with few other rewards or recognition. Teachers are always criticised by the
government and the media, and of course they are discouraged by this (I wish the media would blame
the real culprits for the mess – the universities – but they never do). Perhaps, too, many teachers never
really wanted to be teachers in the first place, but they didn’t have high enough grades to do something
else at university. (I’ll talk about this more when I answer Question No 6.)
The course-books which are issued by MINEDUC are not chosen for the right reasons, the people who
choose them are not people with enough expertise to do it, and – worst of all – MINEDUC provides no
training whatsoever in how to use the books appropriately.

That’s enough for now, but you can see that the problems are complex !

2.- What do you think about starting the process of acquisition at an early age?

You use the word ‘acquisition’. You may or may not know that Stephen Krashen, who became very
famous from the 1970’s to the 1990’s for his hypotheses (The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, The
Monitor Hypothesis, The Natural Order Hypothesis, The Input Hypothesis, and The Affective Filter
Hypothesis) made the distinction between ‘learning’ and ‘acquisition’ in the Acquisition-Learning
Hypothesis. What he was saying is that although people ‘learn’ a language from formal teaching (eg in a
classroom), they learn probably more, and more easily, from just been surrounded by the language and
‘acquiring’ it in that way (for example, children learning their own language, or someone going to a
foreign country). Other linguists have challenged his distinction, but there’s a lot of truth in it.
The problem in Chile is that it’s very difficult to ‘acquire’ English. There is so little English to ‘acquire’,
and ‘acquiring’ a language also takes time. If you were studying English in England, or the USA, as soon
as you left the classroom you would be surrounded by even more English. But that’s not true in Chile
(and that’s one of the problems with English teachers only using Spanish in the classroom ) !
There is still no proof that starting teaching English earlier is better, and if the conditions are not right, it
can be a disaster ! In Chile, in the state system, conditions are bad even for English from 5 o Basico to 4 o
Medio. Until recently, there were over 2000 so-called ‘English’ teachers working in 5o Basico and 6o
Basico in state schools who did not speak any English, and who did not have the right kind of
pedagogical training for teaching children. Imagine how terrible it would be if English was compulsory
from 1st grade ! Already children in 5o Basico are saying that they ‘hate English’, which is very sad, but
what they really mean is that they hate the teacher, or the way the teacher is teaching.
If you start teaching English early (for example, at Kinder or even Pre-Kinder) you need:

• teachers who are specially trained to teach very young children, and very, very motivated
• teachers who have a very, very high level of English
• classrooms which are full of colourful displays in English
• the right kind of furniture (desks and chairs) for small children
• lots and lots of motivating story books, songs on tape/CD, etc
• strong parental support

Unfortunately, none of the state schools have anything like this (but some of the private schools do –
see my answer to Question No 12).

Here, once again, the universities are very, very guilty ! Even though English was made compulsory in
state schools from 5th grade almost ten years ago, there is not one university in the whole of Chile which
offers a proper extended initial education course (pre-service) for primary teachers of English – they are
all still training secondary school teachers (I know some universities offer a kind of diplomado or a
course with a mencion but they are all inadequate courses). That is a disgrace and I think it’s criminal !

I think that this answers your Questions No 3 and 9, but I’ll talk more about this in my answer to
Question No 12.
3.- How could we reach the goal of starting the teaching of English at an early age in terms of teaching materials
and methologies?

see above

4.-
a. According to communicative teaching practices, EFL teachers should use English inside their classrooms most
of the time. Has this goal been accomplished in public schools?

see above (Question No 1)

Whatever you might have been told at university, the Communicative Approach (CA) never came to
Chile (or most of the rest of the world). Having some pair work or group work activities in your class is
not CA ! Chile is still firmly in the grip of the Grammar Translation method, and will probably stay there
for another twenty years at least !
For the CA to work, you need:

• teachers with a very, high level of English (especially vocabulary), who use English 100% of the
time in the classroom
• teachers who understand and really believe that learning English is much, much more than
learning the grammatical structures
• teachers who do very little, if any, correction, because they understand that making mistakes is a
perfectly normal part of learning a language (or anything else) and it is not a sin!
• teachers with very, very good management skills (they have to be able to plan, organise and
control/coordinate activities which require a lot of moving around and talking in the classroom)
• teachers who are very, very motivating, with lots of original and creative ideas to get students
involved
• teachers who have time, and are prepared to spend a lot of time, creating and preparing activities
for their students

As you can probably guess from my list, this does not happen in many places !
So, in answer to your question: first, the CA is not, and never has been, used in Chile, not even in the
private schools. And second, as you saw from my answer to Question No 1 and the questionnaire about
using English, most teachers are using Spanish.
I also know this because all last semester I was working with Year III students at a university in
Santiago, on their Practica Inicial Progresiva. I was absolutely shocked and saddened at what I saw in
some state schools: teachers using Spanish 100% of the lesson, teachers who were really, really boring
and bored, completely unmotivating and unmotivated. Of course, when my students tried to use English
when they were teaching, they had lots of problems !

b. There are many students who come from different realities in Chilean public schools, so they have different
levels of English.
What do you propose in this case? How can teachers use the target language with children who have never been
exposed to English?

I have seen – not many, unfortunately – some very, very motivated and motivating English teachers in
Chile, even in the state system. They do use English, successfully, with their students. This is what is
needed:

• teachers who feel confident enough about their level of English to use it to teach English. I have
seen some very, very good teachers whose level of English was far from perfect, but they were
using English all the time, and so their students were really learning a lot. No student is going to
 learn English from a teacher using perfect Spanish, but they are going to learn English from a
teacher who is using English, even if it’s not perfect English. It’s not true that students will learn
bad English and never be able to unlearn it (that’s a myth created by people in universities who
do not know what they’re talking about !)
• teachers who are highly motivated themselves, and really enjoy teaching, and therefore are
motivating for their students
• teachers who know how to manage large, heterogeneous classes (it’s not helpful to talk about
‘mixed ability’ because if a class has more than one student it must automatically be mixed
ability). In other words, teachers who know how to plan, prepare, organise and coordinate/control
language-learning activities involving 40-45 students (unfortunately, most universities don’t seem
to think this is important, and don’t start talking about it until Year IV !)
• teachers who have a lot of empathy, are completely ‘natural’ in the classroom (in other words,
they don’t pretend to be better or more important than they are), and who treat their students with
respect and expect to be treated with respect too (these kinds of teachers usually are treated with
respect, and do not have discipline problems).

5.- What strategies can be used by English teachers that must deal with many students (40-45) in public schools?

see my answer to Question 4 above

6- If there are lots of students in a classroom (40-45) you suggest as a very good idea to work in groups, but what
happens when these students are too noisy and they do not show respect for anybody? (This is a very common
situation in public schools).

I think I’ve answered this question in different places above.

The point is that if students have boring, unmotivated and unmotivating teachers who are not prepared,
they will react negatively. Respect is a two-way thing ! I myself taught large classes (in all my teaching I
never had less than 35 students) in very difficult schools in the UK. In fact, I began my teaching in a
prison for very, very delinquent teenage boys. They had the potential to be the worst possible students
because they had criminal records for violence, robbery, mugging, breaking into house and cars, etc.
But I never had any discipline problems with them !

Remember, too, that many students hate school and are unmotivated in general, not just by English.
There’s a bit of a crisis in Chile, which is why there are student strikes and tomas, and the government
has been forced to create a so-called Expert Commission to investigate education in Chile
(unfortunately, many of these so-called experts are the same people who created the problem years ago
!). If students are not motivated by English classes, try to imagine what they are like in Maths, or
Language ! It all depends on the teacher ! The teacher has the power to motivate or demotivate
students. In fact, English can be one of the most exciting subjects in the school curriculum, IF the
teacher is an effective one.
The point I’m making is that a ‘good’ teacher could make an interesting lesson just using a dirty,
cigarette-filled ashtray. A ‘bad’ teacher could have all the resources in the world, and a PhD, and still
give a terrible lesson !

The problem, as I keep saying, is that universities just don’t pay enough attention to this kind of issue.
Somehow they don’t seem to understand that classroom management, and how to motivate, are
probably the most important things you can learn when you are training to be a teacher. But
universities think it’s more important for students to learn whether a fricative is voiced or unvoiced, or
about Chomsky’s transformational grammar and the ‘tree’ diagrams. Believe me, that kind of knowledge
is virtually useless in the classroom !
7.- You mentioned in EducarChile.com that the starting training of English teachers at the university is essential.
What do you mean by a competent English teacher? What courses would you add to improve their teaching
background?

I’ve also answered this above in my other answers.

But here’s a list of what universities are doing wrong and what they should add that is not there:

Wrong:

• Gramatica Inglesa I to IV (or even VI in some universities !). Antiquated ! It should be called
Lexico-grammar and it should really emphasise lexis and NOT grammar !
• Phonetics & Phonology I - ? Antiquated ! One semester is more than enough, and it should be
called Pronunciation.
• Methodology should be called Pedagogy and it should begin in Year I (in Spanish at first).

Should be added:

• More semesters of ELT pedagogy, beginning in Year I. These should focus in detail on
management issues: discipline, motivation, planning, organisation, working with large,
heterogeneous groups, etc’
• A whole semester on Assessment & Testing (something the universities don’t think is important,
and which – consequently – is a huge problem for teachers and tends to be done very
unprofessionally and inadequately).
• A whole semester of detailed Classroom-Based Research, in which students have to investigate
some issue of ELT (it could be how teachers teach vocabulary, correct mistakes, manage
activities, etc etc). First they should read (chapters from up-to-date books, and articles in
journals) about their chosen topic of investigation, then do detailed classroom observations with
extensive ethnographic notes, and interview teachers and students so that there is a
‘triangulation’ for their observations, and finally write a mini-thesis of about 3000 words.
• At least two semesters of corpus research, with a focus on lexis (vocabulary).
Mike McCarthy, probably the world’s greatest expert on both grammar and vocabulary, said
recently that “Corpus research is the most important development in ELT in the last 25 years.” I
think all the university professors and administrators in Chile must have been asleep when he
said it, because none of them are doing anything about it !
• A system of properly trained mentor teachers, so that when students go on teaching practice,
they have a supervisor who is teaching in English 100%, who knows how to supervise
appropriately, and used up-to-date teaching principles and techniques.
• Students should not be allowed to graduate as English teachers with a level of English less than
CoE C1 or ALTE 4.

8.- What is your opinion about the Critical Period? Is there a Critical period for foreign language acquisition?

The debate about this has been going on for years. There does seem to be period when it’s easier for
children to learn a language, but I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that a certain age range is the best.
It all depends on so many other things, including home environment, parental support or lack of it,
school environment, the pedagogy used, etc etc

9.- What do you think about the current Chilean educational programs which establish that English teaching starts
from from 5th grade in public schools? Can the government improve the teaching of English in Chile if children do
not have the opportunity to learn it from the first years?
See answers above.
If you don’t have the right conditions (see my list above) you can do so much damage by introducing
English too early.

The decision to start English at 5th grade was a political one. No-one in MINEDUC bothered to consider
the fact that there were no teachers for 5th and 6th grade – they just made the decision and made it law.
Directors were forced to find ‘English’ teachers wherever and however they could. I know of one school
where a woman was told that she had to teach English to 5 th and 6th grade in March just because she’d
been to Miami for a two-week holiday in January !

And, as I said, even now – ten years later – universities have still not woken up to the fact that they have
a responsibility to train teachers to meet this new demand ! (In fact, I think they simply don’t have the
expertise to be able to offer these kinds of courses).

10.- Is grammar necessary when teaching English? Should grammar teaching be implicit or explicit?

Universities in Chile continue to brainwash their students – and therefore future teachers – into thinking
that grammar is important. It’s keeping ELT in Chile in the 19 th Century. Until all the so-called grammar
experts have left the universities, and there are some lexis experts (there is only one lexis near-expert in
the whole of Chile, but dozens of people who think they are grammar experts).
I worked in universities in Hungary almost twenty years ago and they were already doing important
research, with colleagues in the UK, into lexis. Now, even twenty years later, there are still no
universities in Chile doing adequate research into lexis. Grammar is like a terrible sickness or plague in
Chile ! It seems to affect everyone and there’s no cure – just a vicious cycle which repeats itself with
each new generation of English teachers !

11.- Do you think that public schools can be as good as private schools at teaching English?

I think I’ve answered this, too, above, but I’ll also mention it when I answer the next question, No 12.

12.- Why do you think that private schools are "that good" in English?

Generally speaking, most (but definitely not all) private schools are doing a better job of ELT than state
schools.

I work quite a lot with the Windsor School, which I’m sure you know. I realise that English does begin
very early in the Windsor, but the school has all the requirements I listed above (answer to Question No
2).
You only have to go into the school to immediately see the difference between that school and most
state schools. The school where my Practica Inicial Progresiva students in Santiago went for their
teaching practice had paint peeling off the walls, damp patches where water had leaked through
ceilings, and had not been decorated for years. There were piles of broken desks and chairs in the
corridors and at the back of classrooms. There were broken windows everywhere, and bare walls in all
the classrooms, or graffiti. You could feel a sense of decay and neglect everywhere. It’s very hard to
motivate even the most enthusiastic students in places like that ! When you enter the Windsor School,
the classrooms are beautifully decorated with bright, colourful displays. Furniture is new, and the right
size for the children. The pre-kinder and kinder areas are designed and arranged to be motivating for the
children.
The English teachers at Windsor really do work as a team. They are highly motivated and extremely well
organised. They enjoy learning, they go to conferences, workshops, and try new things. They are
constantly up-dating their own knowledge and expertise. You can sense their motivation. And they have
real rapport with the children.
When I took my Practica Inicial Progresiva students in Santiago to the school to meet the Director and
UTP, the very first thing the UTP (a woman) said to my students was this: “I only have two English
teachers. One of them is OK, and the other one is very bad and I want to get rid of her”. !!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact,
the two teachers hardly speak to each other. Sometimes they would not let my students into their
classroom. The attendance in their classes is about 50% or less every day.

Another reason for the ‘success’ of private schools is that most of them are very selective about who
they allow to teach. One of their requirements is often a higher level of English than is normally expected
by municipalities (DAEMS, DEPROVs – the sostenadores) in the state system. In other words, they take
the best students leaving university.

So, there you have some very good reasons why private schools like Windsor can succeed. They are
able to achieve as many as forty-five students passing FCE (CoE B2 or ALTE 3) with a high-level score
each year.

13.- There are some problems in public education related to money to hire English teachers. Sometimes there is
just one English teacher who is in charge of 14 grades and the school does not hire teachers because that matter is
"none of their business". What can you say about? DAEM is the department in charge of hiring teachers, but it
seems that they are not really concerned about the important role that the English language is playing nowadays.

I tried many, many, many times to get MINEDUC to communicate more with the DAEMs and DEPROVs
(and also with the universities with Pedagogia en Ingles programmes), and explain to them what we
were trying to achieve in Ingles Abre Puertas. But somehow Chileans (sorry !) are not good at
communicating (or they don’t se the importance of it) so everything is done at the last minute, usually in
a rush, without proper preparation, and without everyone understanding exactly what is going on. So
MINEDUC never did it (because of politics it’s complicated, anyway).
Part of the problem is that when Pinochet put the management of teachers in the hands of the
sostenadores, he created a big gap between MINEDUC and MINEDUC policies, and the people who
actually have the money and the control of contracts and policy. To give you an example, when I created
the Networks (redes) and the professional development programme, I travelled all over Chile giving
workshops for English teachers. But many teachers, even when they belonged to a Network, and should
legally have been allowed to go for professional development, were told by their director or the
sostenadore, “No, you can’t go to the workshop . You are being paid to teach in the classroom !” This
happened all over Chile. Add to this the fact that what you say is true: many sostenadores do not care
about English.

Another part of the problem (and this happened to me a lot at the beginning) is that many people in
education said, and still say, things like: ‘Why is English getting all the attention and all the money ?’
‘Surely Maths and Spanish are more important than English !’ ‘Students in Chile can’t even speak their
own language properly and they’re supposed to learn English – that’s stupid !’ This was made worse by
the fact that when I got the Networks really going, they became very active. So, in 2005, out of the 30
applications which were accepted for MINEDUC grants, 28 were from English teacher Networks. Of
course there was a huge protest from other teachers of other subjects, but the fact was that they had not
shown any initiative, whereas the English teachers were really motivated, active and organised.
Combined results for Listening and Reading MINEDUC’s 2004 ‘Diagnostic’ Test

ALTE Level Council of 80 Basico 4º Medio

Europe students students
CR level
These two, much lower levels were Pre-breakthrough no 10.4 % 4.4 %
created just for Chile, only for this test. Lower breakthrough equivalent 66.5% 44.6 %
They are not recognised levels.
These six levels are the internationally Breakthrough A1 20.0 % 37.2 %
recognised levels of language, for all 1 Waystage A2 2.4% 8.8 %
modern European languages.
Students leaving high school in Chile 2 Threshold B1 0.7 % 5.1 %
(ie after 4o Medio) are supposed to 3 Independent user B2
reach CoE Level B1, or ALTE 3. 4 Competent user C1
5 Good user C2

The `Diagnostic´ Test was designed specifically for Chile by UCLES ESOL (and took into account the
students’ ages, language-learning experience, cultural background, etc)

The test comprised:

• 40 Reading questions (items)
• 20 Listening questions (items)

The test was administered in Oct 2004 in 350 state schools, in all regions and socio-economic areas, to
approx. 6000 students in 8o Basico and approx. 6000 students in 4o Medio.

There was also:

• Student Questionnaire: 29 questions
• Teacher Questionnaire: 50 questions

From the teacher questionnaire:

How often do you use % of

English in the classroom ? teachers
Never/almost never 14.7
Less than half the lesson 54.6
More than half the lesson 26.1
All the lesson 4.6