Why are teachers so ignorant about language?

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. – Donny Miller

There are many English language teachers for whom terms such as the imperfect, finite vs. non-finite
verbs forms, polysemy vs. homonymy, the perfective vs. the perfect, aspect vs. tense, nominal
clauses, isolating vs. synthetic languages and so on are, and remain, mysterious. Anyone who has
trained teachers above initial certificate level will have little difficulty vouching for the truth of this
proposition.
Making matters considerably worse, of course, is that much of this ignorance is wilful. It is a choice.
The purpose of this article is to consider the sources of this ignorance and the choice many make to
remain stranded in the outer darkness. Ignorance should embarrass but appears not to.
Teachers’ ignorance about the nature and structure of language(s) is partly ascribable to
methodological influences, partly to changing teaching settings and partly to poor training.
One at a time:

Methodological influences
The first paradigm shift:
For much of its history, language teaching relied on translation into and out of the learners’ first
language(s) and the target language. The teaching of English was, in general, no exception. Known
as Grammar Translation, although it characteristics were more varied than a single name implies, the
methodology assumed that to learn a foreign or additional language, it was necessary to:

a) analyse its grammar in relation to the grammar of one’s first language, learning to apply the
rules of the grammar of the target language, and
b) have to hand a reasonably large lexicon of words and phrases translated out of one’s first
language.

The method currently has few theoretical adherents although it remains the dominant methodology
in many school systems throughout the world and its influences can be perceived in much that
happens in classrooms in other settings.
In order successfully to deploy the methodology, it is obviously necessary that the teacher knows
both the grammar and lexicon of the target language and the grammar and lexicon of the learners’
first language(s). In the classroom, the method is recognisable by a good deal of explanation in the
first language of the learners followed by a translation exercise and the keeping of translation
notebooks.
The influences of educationalists such as Berlitz and the focus on the so-called Direct Method (i.e.,
the teaching of the target language in the target language) put an effective end to this need. Thus
were teachers spared the chore of knowing anything at all about their learners’ first languages.

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The second paradigm shift
During the 1960s and 1970s, what came later to be called the Communicative Approach was
developed based on an understanding that the target of language learning should be the ability to
do things in the language rather than access its literature and cultural base. The method, in its
strongest form, now watered down to the extent that it is barely recognisable, removed the focus on
teaching grammar and structure completely and thus relieved teachers of the responsibility to know
anything about the grammar and structure of the target language either.

Changing teaching settings

Although some language teaching and learning took place in the societies in which the language was
spoken (one might cite the instruction of Huguenot immigrants in England during the 17 th century
and the instruction manual developed by Guy Miège (1685), Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre
l'Anglais1), until fairly recently most language instruction took place in the learners’ own countries.
This is, of course, still overwhelmingly the case. It is only within the last few decades that very much
English language teaching has, in fact, taken place at all in an English-speaking environment and such
a benefit is still confined to those who can afford the often very considerable outlay that studying
overseas incurs.
Although in a small minority of teachers of English, those functioning in native-speaker settings are
usually first-language speakers of English. Lately, thankfully, this is beginning to change with greater
labour mobility, especially in Europe, for teachers to come to the UK to teach. Although non-native
speakers of English, such teachers frequently command English to impressively high standards and
are often educated and trained better than their native-speaking colleagues. Above all, many of
these teachers actually understand the grammar, discourse and phonological systems of English and
are able accurately to analyse what they teach. For many of their English-speaking colleagues, this
cannot be claimed. Too many have a rudimentary knowledge of their subject and rely on their
native-speaker intuition to present acceptable models and deal with error.
Another setting-specific change is in the numbers of native speakers teaching overseas in non-
native-speaking environments. The development of initial (preparatory, to give them their old title)
qualifications in ELT has contributed to the trend. Large numbers of variably qualified native
speakers now work in almost all the major countries of the world. Maley2 states it this way:
there is an uneasy division between local non-native speaker teachers, often with long
training, experience, and expertise, who often work in the state system, and native-speaker
expatriate teachers, often with minimal qualifications and experience and only a temporary
loyalty to their country of sojourn, and who usually work in the private sector.
As temporary residents, many of these teachers do set about learning the language(s) of their
students. Many do not. Some of these teachers take seriously their trainers’ admonitions
concerning the preparatory nature of their qualification and strive to develop. Many do not. Many
of these teachers, unqualified and unemployable in their home countries, have only the sketchiest
understanding of language in general and English in particular. They side with the I-can-speak-it-so-
I-can-teach-it school of thought.
(On the other side of the coin, learners, too, in many countries have become less homogenous and it
is not at all rare to find multi-lingual groups in schools in countries whose general populations are
monolingual. Arguably, that is an additional reason to learn something about languages in general.)

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Poor training
A less obvious contributor to ignorance is training.
A case in point concerns the world’s most popular initial training course, the Cambridge CELTA,
which will be discussed here although it should be noted that other initial training schemes are very
similar in content and intent. One aim of these courses is for participants to acquire a knowledge of
“Basic concepts and terminology used in ELT to discuss language form and use” and be able to
“demonstrate a basic working knowledge of how the verb phrase and the noun phrase are formed
and used in English”. Later, the syllabus has as an objective for trainees to “understand some
features of connected speech”.
With reference to the learners’ first languages, the syllabus also contains the target ability to
“identify some significant differences between their own language and a foreign language, and
demonstrate in practice their understanding of the relevance of some of these differences for the
teacher and learner”. All references are to the published CELTA syllabus document3.
Note how carefully hedged and minimalist all these targets are: some features, some significant
differences, Basic concepts, a basic working knowledge and, even more worryingly, a foreign
language (i.e., only one) etc.
Only a fragmentary and oversimplified knowledge of English structure can be gleaned from such
courses. Anything beyond the scope of a grammar for an intermediate learner of English is outside
the remit of initial training courses and no understanding of how languages are related and
structured at a macro level is required at all.
Schemes of this sort, already poor and unambitious in relation to subject knowledge, suffer from a
further debilitating handicap. At initial level in particular (but not confined to this setting), tutors are
frequently trained by colleagues in house or in sister institutions, overwhelmingly in the private
sector. Making matters worse, tutors on many of these courses are themselves graduates of such
programmes, frequently in the institution in which they now deliver them. Having assumed that the
knowledge they have been given of language in general is adequate, they now proceed to assign
subject knowledge to the background and deem it less important than observable procedural (what
they would call ‘practical’) ability.
There are reasons for the persistence of degraded training:
a. Initial training courses are profitable. In some cases, institutions remain financially viable
only because of a constant supply of untrained native-speakers of English looking for work
overseas that pays better than grape picking. Profits accrue, too, to the accrediting bodies
and to the many organisations who exploit people’s naivety concerning the nature of
qualifications by offering unrecognised and worthless on-line courses.
b. It is tempting to feel that one can expend a month of one’s time and a few weeks’ salary
achieving some sort of qualified teaching status. This naïve assumption is, of course,
assiduously cultivated by many training organisations. It is in their interests to do so.
c. The demonstrably false assumption that native speakers already ‘know’ the language they
hope to teach continues to be widespread especially among participants and trainers on
initial courses.

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Outcomes
Three phenomena have been identified so far:
a. The two major shifts in the theoretical underpinnings of language teaching which have led
some to believe that they need understand neither their own language nor that / those of
their learners.
b. The unearned and undeserved reverence for native-speaker teachers whose training is
desultory at best and often entirely absent in any meaningful respect.
c. Poor training practice combined with unambitious training syllabuses even for ‘recognised’
qualifications. Many other unrecognised courses exist, of course, and they are often even
worse.
Each of these factors alone would be serious; in combination, their effects are truly grim.
The main issues are:
a. That many (especially native-speaking) teachers of English are unable to identify, analyse,
explain or teach fundamental areas of English structure, including, but not confined to its
grammatical structures, phonological features and discourse characteristics.
b. That too much ‘teaching’ goes on at the level of phrase-book language and game playing
masquerading as a communicative approach of some kind.
c. That learners of English are being short changed by ignorant (often wilfully so) teachers who
believe, conveniently for them, that learners of the language do not need or want to
understand the formal features of the language they aspire to master or to notice, and be
able to exploit a knowledge of, the differences between their languages and the targets.
This is by no means a new development, of course. These three wholly displeasing phenomena have
been noticeable for decades. As long ago as 1992, Maley (op cit) summed up the situation of English
Language Teaching as follows:
We are not ‘professionals’ in quite the same sense as medics or lawyers. To take a military
analogy: we are not an army of career soldiers, all equally well-trained, battle-hardened, well-
equipped and committed. We are more like one of those marauding armies in 17th Century
Europe with a core of highly trained and motivated cavalry, surrounded by footsoldiers of
sometimes dubious reliability and a host of camp-followers bringing up the rear.
Nothing has changed in any significant way and it will not until the study of language itself becomes
central to the study of teaching language. That will require a fundamental re-think of initial teacher
training by precisely those organisations and trainers in whose interests it is to avoid anything of the
sort.

Do not hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

1
Howatt, A.P.R, 1984, A History of English Language Teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press
2
Maley, A, 1992, An Open Letter to the Profession, English Language Teaching Journal, Volume 46/1, Oxford:
Oxford University Press
3 th
Cambridge English CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines, 4 Edition, (2015), Cambridge: Cambridge
English Language Assessment

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