What challenges do teachers face when teaching English and how is MOE helping them?

Mdm Low: Apart from feedback to their classes as a whole, teachers often have to provide specific feedback to individual students. This is a necessary task as students learn and improve best when they are given such personalised feedback. At the same time, teachers find this a challenge as they have up to 40 students in each class and they teach 2 to 3 classes.

We have addressed this by creating an English Oracy Portal which will be available in schools by 2012. This will allow students to receive more individualised feedback on their progress. The portal uses text-to-speech technology that will read texts aloud to students so that they can learn the proper pronunciation and diction. In turn, students will be able to read to the computer and receive feedback on their oral skills.

MOE is giving teachers new tools and technologies for more effective teaching of English.

Teachers also have to maintain an adequate balance in their lesson plans so that they teach all six language skill sets, while making sure that basics like grammar and vocabulary are not neglected. As a resource for both teachers and students, MOE and the National Institute of Education (NIE) are jointly producing About Grammar - Basic, Intermediate and Advanced, a series of three grammar books. About Grammar - Basic is now available for Pri 3 to 4 pupils, while About Grammar - Intermediate, for Pri 5 to 6, and About Grammar - Advanced, for secondary school students, will be available in June 2011 and June 2012 respectively.

How could teachers serve as effective role models for good English?

Mdm Low: A good English-speaking environment will influence a student's learning progress. Not all students come from families where English is spoken, so for some, teachers are their only role models of good English. This is why all English-medium teachers, not just English teachers, must be involved in creating a strong English culture. We want all English-medium teachers to be careful and conscious of their pronunciation
and use standard English even when they teach subjects like Maths, PE, or Art.

How is MOE helping teachers and schools boost their own English proficiency?

Mdm Low: MOE has a set of criteria for recruiting English Language teachers. Existing English teachers can attend courses on pedagogy, while English-medium teachers receive help to improve their classroom instructional language.

To date, forty schools have adopted a whole school approach to forge a strong English Language culture and environment. These schools have also received between $15,000 and $25,000 of funding from MOE to develop programmes for improving their English standards such as workshops where common grammatical errors and mispronounced words are addressed.

What other avenues will teachers have from MOE to improve their English?

Schools are getting support to build a strong English language environment.

Mdm Low: To further support schools in building a conductive and strong language environment, MOE is setting up an English Language Institute of Singapore (ELIS) in 2011. At ELIS, English Master Teachers will train English Language teachers to build deep expertise in the teaching of English. ELIS will also engage English Specialist Trainers to hold courses for English-medium teachers on Classroom English, in which they will learn to communicate more effectively.

MOE also provide other on-going support in workshops on specific areas such as pedagogy and assessment. We also work with external organisations such as the Speak Good English Movement to recognise the efforts of English teachers - the "Inspiring Teacher of English Award" is a result of this co-operation. Other partners include the National Library Board for reading programmes and Singapore Press Holdings, which publishes The Straits Times' supplements such as 'IN' and 'Little Red Dot' that can be used for teaching and learning English.