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TEACHER TRAINING WITH CLOSED‐CIRCUIT TELEVISION
Author(s) -
Syoc Bryce
Publication year - 1959
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1959.tb01223.x
Subject(s) - citation , psychology , mathematics education , linguistics , computer science , library science , philosophy
How can we train more teachers to teach English as a foreignlanguage? This has been the c r y of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan since its inception in 1941. The Institute was originally founded to teach English to foreign students in an eight-week course known a s the Intensive Course. It soon became apparent, however, that a teacher-training program was necessary. The teaching materials and instructional techniques developed at the Institute were the outgrowth of the application of the findings of modern descriptive linguistics. For optimum success teachers specially trained in the use of these materials and techniques were required. Thus a new profession, the teaching of English as a foreign language, was born. In the early days teacher trainees at the English Language Institute could be carefully and almost individually guided by the Institute's founder, Professor Charles C . Fries. Eventually other universities entered the field of scientific teaching of English a s a foreign language and the need for teachers specificially trained in the necessary techniques has been snowballing ever since. In spite of the efforts of the English Lanugage Institute and other institutions to meet the demand, it has not been possible to supply the needed number of teachers to teach the socalled linguistic or oral approach. There is a continuing demand, not only from colleges and universities in the United States but from the far corners of the globe. Because of the shortage of trained personnel, many of the openings either are not filled or they are filled by linguists who have no special interest in English as a foreign language, by social o r comparative anthropologists who want an opportunity to get out in the field, o r by literature majors. They a re even filled by persons who have no other qualification than that they are native speakers of English! Since language learning and language teaching are skill subjects, this makes for a deplorable situation-almost as bad a s assigning a person to teach linotype operators when his sole qualification is that he can read a newspaper.