While working at a university in Thailand, I was told directly by my boss
that too many of my students had high scores. My boss insisted that I fail
more students in my class. I was shocked and angry. I quit the job rather
than purposely fail dedicated students. Sadly, this mentality of “designing
for failure” is present in most school everywhere in the world. Schools
benefit from ranking and controlling students.
The grammar translation method also benefits the teacher but not the
student. By teaching grammar rules, the teacher can simply lecture from the
textbook. Because linguistics is a complicated subject, the teacher appears
knowledgeable and thus establishes a position of superiority over the
students. Even if the teacher is a non-native speaker with terrible English
ability, he or she can pretend to be an expert by teaching complex grammar
from a book. The shocking truth is that many non-native English teachers,
in fact, speak English very poorly. By focusing on grammar they disguise
their inability to speak well.
What about communication activities? Surely they are designed to help
students. Actually, they are not. These activities, as we discussed
previously, are unnatural. They are nothing like a real conversation, and
thus do not prepare students to have real conversations. However,
communication activities are great for teachers. The teacher puts the
students into pairs or groups and asks them to follow a textbook activity.
Often, the students simply read a written dialogue from the book or answer
pre-written questions from the book. The advantage for the teacher is that
once such an activity is started, the teacher can rest and do nothing. While
the students go through the textbook activity, the teacher relaxes. It’s a
secret among English teachers that communication activities are a great
way to waste time and avoid work.
One particularly horrible version of communication activities is the use
of movies. Used correctly, movies can be a powerful English learning tool.
Most teachers, however, simply use movies as a way to waste time. They
put in a movie, turn out the lights, and push play. For the remainder of the
class, the teacher happily does nothing. The students are usually happy, too,
