One size doesn’t fit all

A group of Wall Street Institute students discuss the supernatural with centre service manager Sarah Jakiel (see inset).

It is not an easy field to follow, however. As the demand for English has exploded, so has the number of institutions teaching the language. They can vary dramatically in their approach, their level of professionalism and, not surprisingly, in their results. In Thailand, for example, you will find programmes where almost everyone learns English to a very high level of proficiency and others where no one does.

Each situation is different and it is fascinating to see how individual institutions cope with their own particular circumstances. Recently the learning post paid a visit to two English language programmes aimed at two very different clienteles.

It almost seems unfair to seek out an English programme at a British-oriented international school. The teachers are invariably native speakers, classes are small, resources are plentiful and the children often come from privileged families.

Shrewsbury student Nopdhanai Hon Jiraphongtrakul (middle) takes care in forming his response to a question as fellow student Thanakorn Boss Chinpeerasatian and language centre director C.J. Crowley look on.

But the challenges are real nevertheless. This is particularly true for a brand new school like Shrewsbury International where all students above the kindergarten level have transferred from other schools, some of them, schools where Thai is the medium of instruction.

Many of these students need additional English before they are able to take a full load of regular classes. Moreover, they need to learn the language quickly and to a very high standard. The aim is for all students to be in mainstream classes within a year, hopefully sooner.

That is the role of SILC – the Shrewsbury International Language Centre. It is there that students get the intensive language training they need. Significantly, as SILC director C.J. Crowley points out, they do so as full-fledged members of the Shrewsbury community.

“They wear the same uniform. They use the same facilities. They are attached to their year-group class. Their name is on the door. There’s a place for them when they’re ready. That’s very comforting for parents and the children. More importantly, it gives them a target. They get their skills up to speed and there they go,” Crowley relates.

Actually, SILC students already spend up to half their day with their regular class, taking maths, ICT and courses like music or physical education. They also join in school activities with their classmates, Crowley says. “But SILC is their base. This is their home.”

The differences between SILC students and full-time students can be subtle Crowley says. “I think it would be hard sometimes to distinguish a child on the SILC programme from a child in the full programme. You would need to look more closely, particularly in the area of literacy. They may be able to decode to a comfortable level, but not comprehend, not predict, not to take guesses on what’s going to happen next – in other words to not be fully confident in their comprehension of the text.

“Secondly, they might be restricted in terms of what I often refer to as writing stamina. They can produce a sentence or two sentences in rough copy and then they can redraft and edit and produce a paragraph or two. But it requires tremendous stamina and experience to produce more than that. That’s the second thing we work on a lot.

“A third area is in speaking. By that, I mean speaking for extended periods. They can give short, sometimes monosyllabic answers, answers which don’t reveal sufficient detail or depth. That’s an area we work on,” Crowley relates.

Given the demands of the curriculum in the upper levels of the school, SILC only caters to students from year one through year eight. The task for older students, Crowley says, is often just too great.

“I think there are sets of factors that come into play which make things quite challenging. They have to cope with the demands of an IGCSE programme which is extremely broad. They have to study history and geography in a language which is not their first language,” Crowley explains.

Small classes are essential for SILC students, he says. “The main focus is on getting the best out of the individual. We have some really specific programmes for individuals. We have teaching assistants sitting alongside them and coaxing the language out of them in terms of spoken English and in terms of literacy.”

The SILC curriculum, Crowley says, is tied very closely to the curriculum of the main school. “I would say that in large parts of the day it’s very similar except we do it slightly slower and in more detail. And because of our smaller numbers, we have the time to go over things more than once and attack them in different ways.

“The children from year three to year six follow the same reading programme that they use in the junior school, so they’re exposed to the same sort of demands and excitement of that reading programme.

“I think there is a strong sort of methodology behind what we do,” Crowley observes. “We model it, do it and do it again in different ways. I think a little, often, is the key thing.”

But language acquisition requires more than simply sitting in the classroom, Crowley says. “We believe that language is best acquired by doing things and using the language, so we do have a lot of trips and excursions. We try to use the river as much as possible. For example, we went to the national museum by boat.

“We also have assemblies about four times a week. During those assemblies they make their own plays, sing their own songs, read their own poems. They report if they were in a school basketball match or if they played golf for the school. We have beautiful certificates each week for class progress – for pronunciation, for reading, for spelling, for handwriting. Those assemblies celebrate achievement and I hope they act as a great motivator,” Crowley says.

If there are challenges in teaching English to children, the challenges are many times greater in teaching adults. Not only have adults lost much of their capacity to assimilate a new language naturally from the environment, but they often lack the time to make use of the skills they retain.

Wall Street’s modern language lab plays a central role in the delivering the curriculum.

It is just this market where the giant 30-year-old Wall Street Institute franchise has made its name. Offering personalised learning programmes with flexible timetables, the company has tripled in size over the past eight years to almost 400 centres in 24 countries. As of July, that includes Bangkok, Thailand with the opening of the country’s first Wall Street centre on Silom Road, a short walk from the Saladaeng BTS station.

Probably the most common outcome for adults learning English is failure. According to Michel Le Quellec, a director of the Bangkok centre, the main reasons are a lack of a precise objective and clear purpose, boring teaching methods, a lack of encouragement, and the inability to track their results accurately.

That won’t happen at Wall Street, Le Quellec promises. “If you come to Wall Street, you will learn how to speak English. We guarantee the results. If you follow the method, you will make it.

“We’re going to give you a method where you can come whenever you want. You are going to be in a total English environment. Because the method is varied and because we can track what you do, you don’t fail,” he asserts.

“You take our entrance test and we tell you where you are today. Where do you want to go? Most students want to go to level 12 or level nine at least. So if you sign for level 12 and today you are in level seven, we agree that you will be there in a certain time period.”

As any long-time practitioner will instantly recognise, there is nothing really magical to the approach. The key to the Wall Street formula is a very familiar technology. It’s the language lab – albeit a modern and super efficient version. The methodology is equally familiar; the grammar-based ‘listen, repeat and record’.

But this is a 21^st century rendition that utilises a language lab that the pioneers could only have dreamed about. For one thing the hardware (computers) and software (lessons on CD-ROM) actually work – flawlessly. There are none of the equipment failures and annoying tape rewinding delays that plagued the early years.

Gone too are the mindless, repetitive grammar drills that bored generations of students subjected to the audio-lingual method in the 60s and 70s. In their place is a sophisticated and entertaining multimedia programme that is controlled not by the teacher, but by the learner.

“The main priority of Wall Street is speaking and listening,” explains Sarah Jakiel, the Bangkok service manager.

“It is international English, so students also train their listening by hearing different accents – Japanese speaking English, Germans, Americans, British, and so on. Then we get them to concentrate on improving pronunciation and to be able to speak comfortably.

“They start out studying in the speaking centre. They’re using the same software that’s used everywhere in the world with Wall Street. It’s an interactive system. They’re listening to different stories (similar to a long-running soap opera) and different activities.

“They’re also speaking back to the computer. The computer gives them model pronunciation and they can hear their own pronunciation and how well it matches,” Jakiel relates.

It is here, says Jay Bunnag, another Wall Street director, that the computer can be more effective than humans.

“The students are not used to hearing themselves speak English and they don’t have the confidence to speak out loud. With the computer they can study individually in a semi-private setting and they can get accustomed to vocalising. That helps a lot of people,” he says.

Wall Street is not only computers. Students also interact with teachers and bi-lingual tutors. After completing a unit with the computer, for example, students meet with a native-speaking teacher for a one-hour “encounter” session.

“The first two to three minutes, you’re just chatting, saying hello,” Jakiel explains. “After that, we check the homework. We also ask them for any questions – about the computer, any words, any vocabulary, grammar issues. Then there are activities that go from specific to communicative. The first are a few oral drills practicing anywhere from two to five grammar points. That is followed by communicative drills. Every encounter usually has a role play as well.”

Encounter classes are limited to a maximum of four students, Jakiel says. Students also periodically participate in slightly larger complimentary classes which focus more on conversation.

Rounding out the classes are the social clubs which are set around a wide variety of themes and activities. “Last night we had 26 people for office yoga,” Jakiel recounts. “We had a yoga master coming in and the students learned words like ‘nostril’ and ‘inhale’ and ‘exhale’ and ‘retain’. We do movie nights where we watch Hollywood movies and we also do debates and discussion clubs.”

On a day to day basis, however, the key human faciliators are clearly the outgoing and helpful bilingual tutors – like Oranuch (Bow) Rojsuwanichakorn. They are the ones who give incoming students their first lesson with the computer and they are always available for questions and conversation.

Having finished high school in New Zealand and graduated from the Bangkok University International College, Bow is fluent in English, a language she insists on speaking with all students above the entry level known as the “survival stage”.

“If they keep speaking Thai, I don’t think they learn much,” Bow explains.