Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Learning English In The School

My wife and I come into contact with students from a wide variety of schools regularly. We observe that students from the same school often speak English in the same way. As a rule, students from the elite English medium schools do speak English better, and many of these schools are run by Christians or Catholics. Obviously the students are heavily influenced by their teachers and the school culture.

Too often, however - and sadly - students from the same school make the same mistakes, in pronunciations, spellings, grammar, ... For that, the teachers must also be responsible.

From this point of view, getting into the right school is important. And the parents know that. There are, of course, students who rise above the circumstances because of their own effort and determination (or their parents’). But it is much harder; and because of that, they deserve our respect. They also demonstrate that our destiny is in our own hands.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So how did you find students of my school? Did they make same mistakes in English?
Yes, we need a language rich environment, we need the langauge to be learned through immersion, and with coordination using the language as the medium of instructiion across the many subjects if the language has to be learned effectively, but not through an ad hoc way of teaching one or two subjects through the language. There is so much misconception in this medium of instruction issue. Ann

StephenC said...

I did not have your students in mind when I said it. Don't worry about it. :)

By the way, I agree with you.