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Scholarly Articles May

Page history last edited by Shyam Sharma 15 years, 6 months ago

 Scholarly articles (David Block and David Carless)

 

With the global flow of people from various language groups, nationalities and ethnicity we have to choose one or more language(s) which bridge the gap between us. And this role at present is played by the English language. Thus we are learning, teaching, and using English. We have different underlying aims behind this. We want to communicate with people around the world, we want to access archived information and new research findings, and we also want to be part of global community. However, many scholars have also critiqued that such commodification of the English language may hurt people’s long term educational development. As we read in previous issues, imposing of a language also most involves most ignoring local realities. This tension between global and local implies that we need to be critical about the globalization of the English language that is often taken for granted. In particular we need to explore how we can use English for promoting long term educational goals. Do we need to accept global methods of teaching English and textbooks even though they are not appropriate in our context? How can we integrate global with local and make ELT more contextual? Such are the issues that are coming into fore regarding globalization and language teaching. To get ideas about the issue of ELT in relation to globalization please read David Block's paper which was originally published in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education (2008). To read full PDF version of the paper please Here is the article by Block in a .pdf file format.

 

If you would like to go deeper into the issue of globalization and its relationship with ELT, please read another article on how global methods may not be appropriate in various local contexts. For example, task-based language teaching (TBLT) which is useful in native English context does not seem appropriate in other cultures and societies. Even the best methods, which we often see people taking for granted, need to be adapted to local contexts by teachers to make them more learners friendly. In this regard, David Carless (2003) critically analyses the suitability of TBLT at primary schools of Hong Kong and argues that TBLT does not seem suitable in that culture. If students prefer to learn grammar, making noise in the classroom is considered lack of discipline. He strongly contends that a new situated version of TBLT should be developed for the context of Hong Kong. The issues raised in the study in many ways reflect the issues of Nepal. Please click here to read the article.

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