Jing Yixuan, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Background

Good ideas with no ideas on how to implement them equals wasted ideas.

Fullan & Scott (2014, p.8)

When you walk into a school at 6:30am and hear a cacophony of chanting in English coming from a string of classrooms on either side of the hall, each with a teacher ‘conducting’ from the podium, what might you think? This was my first experience when I began my research at a rural secondary school (Grades 7-9) in northwestern China, one of the least developed regions in China. I grew up in this region and as a child I did exactly what these students were doing. Hearing them, I felt nostalgia, yet at the same time concern -- are students still learning the same way as I did thirty years ago?

Over those thirty years, China has modernized and is striving to ‘消灭贫困 (eradicate poverty)’. At the same time the government has sought to transform education through the new national English curriculum (NEC) for compulsory education (grades 1-9). A key component of NEC is task-based language teaching (TBLT). TBLT is an approach that focuses on the communication of meaning by using tasks that provide purposeful usage of the language being learned, and that draw on learner’s linguistic and non-linguistic resources to achieve a communicative outcome (Ellis, 2018). Internationally, TBLT has become an established approach to second language teaching (East, 2020) and has been widely adopted in many Asian countries (Dao & Newton, 2021).

However, language teacher professional development (LTPD) for TBLT remains underdeveloped (Ellis, 2018). In China, teachers of English are guided to use tasks through top-down training programs delivered off-site through lectures which introduce the curriculum and methodology, followed by demonstration lessons. My research project and personal interest focused on how well such programs prepared teachers to use tasks in their teaching, and, if there are weaknesses, what could I, as a researcher and teacher educator, do to help?

The classroom

There are three grades in a Chinese secondary school: Grades 7, 8 and 9. In this rural school, each grade consists of around 17 classes and each teacher is assigned to one grade-level. Classrooms are crowded, with over fifty students in each class neatly fitting into their small chairs and desks. It’s difficult to move around the classroom without bumping into someone’s elbow. Every chair is taken, and so when I observe a lesson, I have to bring my chair with me.

The Chinese classroom

My project

My project focuses on teacher professional learning and development for TBLT. As mentioned earlier, TBLT is prescribed in the national English curriculum for compulsory education as a means to transform the nation’s English education from knowledge transmission to abilities to use the language.

In my project, I participated fully in the life of the school to gain the trust of the school and deepen my understanding of the lives of the English teachers. The school administration was enthusiastically supportive of my project. In fact, they wanted me to work with all 30 of their English teachers. But since I was in close contact with the eleven grade 7 teachers and my time was limited, this group was my primary focus.

When it came to lesson observations, teachers occasionally felt a bit anxious even though I assured them I was just observing and not judging. My observations focused on how their teaching aligned with the NEC requirements for a task-based approach. I observed lessons taught by ten of the eleven Grade 7 teachers. I also gave small lessons (15-20 minutes) at the request of other teachers, with each of these sessions using some form of TBLT. These experiences of standing in their shoes were valuable for me in my ongoing work with the teachers.

Two patterns of instructional practices

Observing the teacher’s lessons revealed two common approaches: grammar-translation and present-practice. The grammar-translation approach was typical in lessons where the teachers were teaching grammar or vocabulary.

If they were starting a new lesson, the teachers would normally start with ‘new words’. For example, in a lesson about weather, words like ‘rain, snow, wind’ would be taught using pictures and with students repetitively chanting each word three times, including spelling it out and ‘air-writing’ the words (using fingers in the air) (e.g., snow – snow -s-n-o-w- snow). After the new words, they would move to sentence structures: how is weather today/what is the weather like? The teacher would ask these two questions and students would answer them (e.g., it is raining) chorally or individually. After drilling the new words, the class would do listening and reading activities that emphasized the target grammar structures and vocabulary.

These rural classroom sessions were poignant to me as the instructional approaches were so like the ones I experienced as a secondary school student nearly thirty years ago. Though the students worked hard (coming to school at 6:30 to read aloud English words/texts) and the teachers tried their best, this way of teaching was not meeting the expectations of the curriculum and nor was it preparing these rural children for the challenges of a highly competitive society in which English proficiency is a valuable currency.

Collaborative teaching

I came to the school with a set plan as to how I would introduce the teachers to TBLT. But as I got to know the teachers and learned about the issues they faced, I realized that my plan, concocted while absorbed in library research, needed to change. I did not want to impose on the teachers by being the ‘expert’ who conducted centralized (lecture + demonstration lesson) training. Wouldn’t this be modeling the very pedagogy that I wanted to encourage them to depart from?

Nonetheless, after a month at the school I felt comfortable with the teachers, and they with me. For example, one of my task-based lessons was enthusiastically received by a class of the weakest students, who were, by the way, singled out by their teachers and formed into this temporary class for me, to see what I could do with them. I designed simple tasks for these ‘weak’ students, and they responded well, which was surprising to their teachers! When I saw those young lives come alive, their eyes full of excitement for something they were interested in, I was inspired to help the teachers to do something different and potentially transformative in their English classrooms.

My interaction with the teachers of English and their students evolved into what I later called ‘collaborative teaching’. By collaborative teaching, I refer to the teaching activities that I (the teacher educator) and the local teachers planned, designed, and delivered together as equal partners. This includes collective reflection and discussion after the lessons. Along the way of collaborative teaching, I integrated tasks and the idea of task-based language teaching, which were presented in class by drawing upon the strengths of both of us: the local teachers’ teaching experience and knowledge of their students and local culture; my knowledge of task-based language teaching and higher English language proficiency. For example, for each collaboratively taught lesson, I might take the role in setting the scene for the topic of the lesson, while my partner would be responsible for grouping the students and assigning different roles for different students. We would shift responsibilities as appropriate, always remaining flexible and drawing upon each other’s strengths.

In such a way, I did not treat the rural Chinese teachers of English as a blank slate. Instead, I respectfully allowed them to draw on their knowledge and experience, and I nurtured an understanding of how to teach with tasks by adapting activities they were familiar with from their textbook and by planning, teaching, and reflecting side by side with them.

When I was teaching, I naturally related to the students as both a communication partner and teacher. As the teachers saw these roles in action, they too diverged from their traditional role of ‘the sage on the stage’ (Fullan & Scott, 2014) to a more facilitative role of guiding and communicating with students.

Collaborative teaching was warmly accepted by the teachers. After five collaboratively taught lessons with one teacher, another teacher invited me to work with him in his class. The school also appreciated the collaborative approach I was taking. As one of the principals said, “Never before would a teacher educator walk into a classroom and teach”.

Final words

In this article I described what I observed and how I responded at a rural secondary school in the least developed region of northwestern China against the background of national English curriculum reform that mandated TBLT. Based on lesson observations and interactions with the teachers and students, the local teachers of English and I, the teacher educator, developed the approach of ‘collaborative teaching’ for teacher professional learning and development for TBLT.

The English-as-an-international-language matters to the rural Chinese communities as ‘English has become one of the main mechanisms for structuring inequality in developing economies’ (Graddol, 2006, p.38). For rural Chinese students, English provides them with a key to access higher education and wider societal opportunities through competing with their urban peers.

The implementation of pedagogical innovation (good ideas) is a complex endeavor requiring an entrepreneurial spirit. There is not one single best way. But as teacher educators, we must try not to let good ideas be wasted.

References

Dao, H., & Newton, J. (2021). TBLT Perspectives on Teaching from an EFL Textbook at a Vietnam University. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 99-126.

East, M. (2020). Task-based language teaching as a tool for the revitalization of te reo Māori: One beginning teacher’s perspective. The Language Learning Journal, 48(3), 272-284.

Ellis, R. (2018). Reflections on task-based language teaching. Multilingual Matters.

Fullan, M., & Scott, G. (2014). Education PLUS The world will be led by people you can count on, including you! Collaborative Impact SPC: Seattle, WA, USA.

Graddol, D. (2006). English next (Vol. 62). British Council: London.