BLOCKS......

BLOCKS AGAINST FOREIGN LANGUAGES ACQUISITION

In the time that the different media have "invaded" our homes and dominated our daily life , people mainly in the South, are still unaware of how to cope with the valuable information we usually extract from them . On the part of learners , however , parents felt that the widespread of the mass media came as a relief, in that long ago , finding a good supplement to their children was a pipe dream mainly in foreign languages . Unfortunately, our children still complain that learning languages is one of the stumbling blocks against their better achievement in school.
The intent of this attempt is to discuss my perception of the major problems that are plaguing better foreign languages acquisition . For sure , change needs to occur at all levels . In other words , it needs to occur at all levels of teacher education , school , family and the society as a whole.

The results of my findings with regard to the blocks are :
1- Most students keep to that "xenophobia" usually amplified by their mates that to learn English is not easy to do.
2- Others regard that English ranks in a secondary position after the main subjects owing to its coefficient which , according to them , doesn't affect the general average.
3- All students study for exams , i.e , for them the single effort they devote is compounded to testing, as they haven't been sensitized or taught the objectives set behind teaching languages in their learning process.
4- The great majority claim that in class they understand well but they are unable to do well in exams , though they can get along with the instructions .
5- They are not exposed to the language outside the class . For them , learning ends in that mechanical process that needs a stimulus on the part of the teacher who creates situations to the them and sustains conditioning to get a rudimentary outcome by the end.
6- For some others their failure is linked to their inability to memorize a set of grammar rules and vocabularies usually related to the themes taught all the year through.
7- Very often when instructed to write , they claim that they are frustrated by the great number of mistakes owing to the lack of inconsistency that exists between spelling and pronunciation as in this phase of learning, students tend to generalize rules ( grammar / spelling ). They unconsciously cod switch to French and when corrected , they are desperate.


8- Parents / their immediate environment contribute sometimes to the feeling of hatred to grow as for some, English is the language of the enemy and; thus it will influence on their children's behavior and way of thinking . Much worse , the student who dares to use the language outside the school is usually laughed at and regarded as an exception.
9- Some antipedagogical practices . For example the appointment of untrained teachers cause students to hate the language.

REMEDIES

In order to help promote the effectiveness of learning and teaching English we must :
1. Devise long term teacher education programs through seminars and in- service training .
2. Teach the objectives from learning this language , i.e , enabling students to go beyond the classroom atmosphere
3. Finding a way to test students in speaking . In here , they will be urged to reuse / use the language for the sake of communication and bit by bit they will use it spontaneously .
4. Devise action plans to find out how far textbooks meet the needs of learners ( norms of an "ideal" textbook must be respected ) . Later , there must be an exploitation of good and appropriate samples of teaching materials.
5. From start to end , consider chain of the textbooks in terms of length and readability of texts , degree of difficulty and in terms of socio-cultural needs of our students.



Written by : Mr. SOUILHI Ahmed
Teacher of English ( Lycee Mixte Of In Salah , Tamanrasset)