Recibido: 20/noviembre/2024 Aceptado: 23/marzo/2025
A reflexive view on the
contents for the teaching of English in Cuba (Review)
Una visión reflexiva acerca
de los contenidos para la enseñanza del inglés en Cuba (Revision)
Buenaventura Rafael Antúnez Sánchez. Licenciado en Educación en la especialidad
de Lengua Inglesa. Máster en Ciencias de la Educación Superior. Profesor
Auxiliar. Universidad de Granma. Bayamo. Cuba. [ bantunezs@udg.co.cu ] [ https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2855-7596 ]
Rubén Consuegra Molina. Licenciado en Educación en la especialidad de Lengua Inglesa. Máster en
Ciencias en Docencia Universitaria. Profesor Auxiliar.
Universidad de Granma. Bayamo. Cuba. [ rconsuegram@udg.co.cu ] [ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6870-0984 ]
Yurisander Matos Ramírez. Licenciado en
Educación en la especialidad de Lengua Inglesa. Profesor Asistente. Universidad
de Granma. Bayamo. Cuba. [ ymatosr@udg.co.cu ]
[ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-0313 ]
Abstract
The article presents the results of a bibliographical revision carried
out by the teaching staff of the discipline Didactics of Foreign Languages of
the Foreign Languages major of the University of Granma. The revision includes
the gathering of theoretical information needed to improve the quality of the
choice of the system of contents to teach in the different educational levels. This
information is required by the students of the major Foreign Languages to plan
their graduate examination and to carry out their future career as teachers of
English as a foreign language. To make its comprehension easier, it makes a
theoretical analysis of the system of contents with the support of theoretical
grounds of recognized acceptance and from the perspective of the Cuban
pedagogy. The authors offer some guidelines that the students should consider
when planning their graduate examinations.
Keywords: Contents; teaching;
English; graduate examination
Resumen
El
artículo presenta los resultados de la revisión bibliográfica realizada por el
equipo de docentes de la disciplina Didáctica de las Lenguas Extranjeras de la
carrera Lenguas Extranjeras de la Universidad de Granma. La revisión incluye la
recolección de información teórica necesaria para perfeccionar la calidad de la
determinación del sistema de contenidos a impartir en los diferentes niveles
educacionales. Esta información es requerida por los estudiantes de la carrera
Lenguas Extranjeras para planificar su ejercicio de culminación de estudios y
para desempeñar su futura carrera como profesores de inglés como idioma
extranjero. Para facilitar su comprensión, este ofrece un análisis teórico del
sistema de contenidos con el apoyo de fundamentos teóricos de reconocida
aceptación y desde la perspectiva de la pedagogía cubana. Los autores ofrecen
algunas orientaciones que deben ser consideradas por los estudiantes al
planificar sus ejercicios de culminación de estudios.
Palabras clave: Contenidos; enseñanza;
inglés; ejercicio de culminación de estudios
Introduction
Most of the Cuban universities
embrace among their pedagogical majors that of the foreign languages. In many
universities, the major includes the study of two foreign languages, English
and French. In the University of Granma, the foreign language major includes
the study of only one foreign language: English. Among the main modalities for
graduation adopted by the mentioned major once the students reach their fourth
year, the diploma paper and the graduate examination are included. As an
alternative for their graduate examination, the students are suppossed to present a methodological lesson through which
they show both their acquired communicative competence in English and their
professional competence.
To develop that methodological
lesson, they are given instructions in cards, which include the tasks to carry
out taking into consideration the educational level and grade in which they
have developed their teaching practice. The cards comprise the commonest types
of lessons taught at the Cuban educational levels, namely presentation,
controlled practice, semi-controlled practice, free practice, reading, and
writing lessons.
The students are randomly
assigned one of the types of lessons from a specific unit of a grade. They are
required to present a written and oral methodological analysis of the unit and
the lesson assigned. The major staff designs guidelines for the students to
accomplish the task. In order to make the presentation, the students should
refer, among other aspects, to the system of didactic components of the unit
and the lessons that make it up.
The authors of this article
are members of the teaching staff of the discipline Didactics of Foreign
Languages. They could corroborate the existence of a problem related to the
students' limitations in the analysis of the system of contents as the primary
component of the system of didactic components. The students show handicaps at
the time of choosing the aspects that make up the system of contents.
Therefore, the objective of the article is to offer those students some
theoretical grounds to make a better analysis of such a system, so that they
can acquire adequate ways of acting in their future professional career.
The work departs from an action
research carried out by the teaching staff of the discipline Didactics of
Foreign Languages. A theoretical study
was the basis for the solution given to the problem under analysis. The
theoretical methods of analysis-synthesis and induction-deduction were used to
compile updated theoretical information on the teaching contents that Cuban
teachers of English should teach at schools.
As a solution to the problem,
the information treated in this article was included in the further preparation
of the undergraduates of the courses 2023 and 2024. It was written in English
to have the addressees get in contact with the English terms to use in their
further profesional life.
Development
The authors of this work
assume the system of didactic components proposed by the outstanding Cuban
pedagogues Ana María González Soca, Silvia Recarey Hernández and Fátima Addine Fernández in their book Didáctica: teoría y práctica, namely objectives, contents,
methods, teaching aids, evaluation, and teaching organizational forms (González
et al., 2007). When asked about the contents they teach in their lessons, it is
customary to listen to teachers of English referring to the communicative
functions and the linguistic components these functions demand. This way, they
match the concept of contents with that of linguistic knowledge.
Addine (1998) defines the contents as that part of culture and social experience
that should be assimilated by the students and is dependent on the proposed
objectives. This component responds to the questions: What should I teach? What
should I learn?
González (2009) in his book La clase de lengua extranjera: teoría y
práctica, presents the teaching contents of the foreign language lesson as made
up of four systems which are closely related between each other. These systems
are:
-
The system
of linguistic knowledge.
This system comprises some
important elements that teachers should not disregard.
The first element is the communicative functions teachers are
supposed to present in the units of the syllabus they teach. These are in
harmony with the communicative objectives designed for each syllabus.
The second element is the
linguistic components to attend in each communicative function presented. These include pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
These linguistic components
are usually offered in the syllabi of English of the different educational
levels. Grammar and vocabulary are adjusted to the speech acts needed to
perform a given communicative function.
From the linguistic components
mentioned above, the most troublesome for the students to determine is
pronunciation. One usual problem they show has to do with the aspects related
to pronunciation. They usually limit this component to the attention to some
troublesome sounds in words and phrases used to accomplish a given
communicative function. The attention to
vowel and consonant sounds is the aspect generally included in the syllabi of
English in Cuba.
From the theoretical viewpoint,
many specialists have approached pronunciation.
Having accurate pronunciation
when communicating in a foreign language is fundamental in order to transmit
the intended message with clarity and avoid misunderstandings. Some language
instructors tend to ignore this micro skill because they prefer to focus on
other areas of the language such as grammar or vocabulary. In the case of the
English language, since it is not an official language in our country, both
teachers and students are not in contact with native speakers of English on a
daily basis when they interact with others. Hence, EFL (English as a Foreign
Language) students should be trained adequately to improve their pronunciation
in English because they are not immersed in a context where they could easily
pick the correct pronunciation. Indeed, it is imperative that university
students who intend to become English teachers work on improving their
pronunciation because they will be models for their future students. Sánchez et
al. (2019)
Brown (s.f) states that rather than attempting only to build a learner's articulatory competence
from the bottom-up approach, and simply as the mastery of a list of phonemes
and allophones, a top-down approach is taken in which the most relevant features
of pronunciation (stress, rhythm, and intonation) are given high priority.
Instead of teaching only the role of articulation within words, or at best,
phrases, we teach its role in a whole stream of discourse.
Wong (1987) reminds us that
contemporary views of language hold that the sounds of language are less
crucial for understanding than the way they are organized. The rhythm and
intonation of English are two major organizing structures that native speakers
rely on to process speech. Because of their major roles in communication,
rhythm and intonation merit greater priority in the teaching program than
attention to individual sounds.
Our goal as teachers of
English pronunciation should therefore be more realistically focused on clear,
comprehensible pronunciation. At the beginning levels, we want learners to
surpass that threshold beneath which pronunciation detracts from their ability
to communicate. At the advanced levels, pronunciation goals can focus on
elements that enhance communication: intonation features that go beyond basic
patterns, voice quality, phonetic distinctions between registers, and other
refinements that are far more important in the overall stream of clear
communication than rolling the English /r/ or getting a vowel to perfectly imitate
a "native speaker."
For Finocchiaro
and Brumfit (1983), pronunciation is considered to
be made up of the following elements: individual sounds (or
phonemes), liaison (or elision) between these sounds, and stress, intonation
and rhythm (including pause) all of which are closely interrelated.
Acosta et al.
(1997) affirm that changes have occurred in the teaching of pronunciation. The
clearest evidence of these changes has been the shift in emphasis from the
primacy of the teaching of segmental aspects (individual vowel and consonant
sounds) to the importance of the teaching of suprasegmental
aspects (stress, rhythm, and intonation) which are so closely linked to meaning
in English. This change reflects the shift of emphasis given by the
functional-notional approach, which has continued to grow over the last few
years.
Tench (1990) suggests two fundamental principles in the
general strategy of teaching pronunciation; on the one hand, pronunciation has
to be isolated for practice of specific items and problems; on the other,
pronunciation has to be integrated with the other aspects of language (grammar,
vocabulary, style, function and discourse), and the language skills (listening,
speaking, reading and writing).
Newman (1992)
adds that pronunciation can and should always be integrated into all aspects of
language teaching and reinforced in all classes. As a conclusion, at the time
of approaching pronunciation, the students should be aware of the individual
vowel and consonant sounds, stress, rhythm, and intonation. This is backed up
by the fact that pronunciation is phonemic, so a single change in one of those
aspects may bring about a change in meaning.
Another
important linguistic component to teach is vocabulary.
As for principles of teaching English vocabulary, an account for what vocabulary forms teachers need to teach and the principles of
how they are taught is vital. It is certain to consider the vocabulary aspects
to teach, for it should be done in line with the objectives to reach and the
students’ needs.
To realize
it, Nation (2001, cited by Hago Elmahdi
& Mahyoub Hezam,
2020) proposed these aspects, namely
spoken form, written form, parts of word, concept
a word has and items it may associate, association of the word, grammar of the word, collocation of the
word, register and frequency of the word.
Recent research indicates that teaching vocabulary may be problematic
because many teachers are not confident
about the best practice in vocabulary
teaching and at times do not know where to
begin to form an instructional
emphasis on word learning (Berne & Blachowicz, 2008,
cited by Hago Elmahdi &
Mahyoub Hezam, 2020).
Teaching
words is a crucial aspect in learning a language as languages are based on words (Thornbury,
2002, cited by Hago Elmahdi
& Mahyoub Hezam,
2020). It is almost impossible to learn
a language without words; even communication between human beings is based on
words. Both teachers and students agree that acquisition of the vocabulary is a
central factor in teaching a language (Walters, 2004, cited by Hago Elmahdi & Mahyoub Hezam, 2020). Teaching vocabulary is one of the most discussed parts of teaching English as a foreign language.
When the teaching and learning process
takes place, problems would appear to the teachers. They have problems of how
to teach students in order to gain satisfying results. The teacher should
prepare and find out the appropriate techniques, which will be implemented to
the students. A good teacher should prepare himself or herself with various and
up-to-date techniques. Teachers need to be able to master the material in order
to be understood by students, and make
them interested and happy in the teaching and learning
process in the classroom (Hago Elmahdi
& Mahyoub Hezam, 2020).
The
teachers should be concerned that teaching vocabulary is something new and
different from student’s native language. They also have to take into account that teaching English for young learners is
different from adults. The teachers have to know the
characteristics of his\her learners. They moreover need to prepare good
techniques and suitable material
in order to gain the target of language teaching (Hago
Elmahdi & Mahyoub Hezam, 2020).
The other important linguistic component is grammar.
Brown (s.f), a professor from San Francisco State University, in
his book Teaching by Principles: An Interactive
Approach to Language Pedagogy states that in Communicative Language Teaching
classes now, the use of grammatical explanation and terminology must be approached
with care. Teachers are sometimes so eager to display their hard-earned
metalinguistic knowledge that they forget that the students are busy enough
just getting the language itself that the added load of complex rules and terms
is too much to bear. However, clearly, adults can benefit from a bit of
explaining from time to time.
He also
affirms that in the days when grammar was the major center of attention in
language classes, vocabulary was also the focus of drills, exercises, and
memorization efforts. Then, as grammar fell into some disfavor a few decades
ago, vocabulary instruction tended to go with it. Currently, in our attention
to communicative classrooms that are directed toward content, tasks, or
interaction, we are once again giving vocabulary the attention it deserves. But
this attention now comes from quite a different perspective: rather than
viewing vocabulary items as a long and boring list of words, vocabulary is seen
in its central role in contextualized, meaningful language (Brown, s.f).
The
efficacy of an inductive or a deductive method to teach English grammar has
been
extensively discussed and compared by various authors throughout
time. This comparison has been made by analyzing the impact of providing
students with the rule or letting them
identify the grammatical structure on their own. According to
Shaffer (1989, cited by Salazar Miranda et al., 2018), in the inductive
method, it is necessary for learners to codify their own
learning and to articulate the target
feature, whereas in the deductive method students are
provided with the explicit rule.
According
to Widodo (2006, cited by Salazar Miranda et al.,
2018), the assumption that learning a language is related to knowing the rules
is encouraged by the deductive method. However, the deductive method prevents
that learners internalize the wrong rules. In the deductive method, the
students are
given the rules; therefore, there is no risk of coming to
the wrong hypothesis about it, as it
could occur in the inductive method.
Thornbury (1999, cited by Salazar Miranda et al., 2018) has
stated three principles for the
deductive presentation. First of all, the teacher begins the
lesson by providing the rules.
Afterwards, the teacher
highlights the grammar structure in illustrative examples. Finally,
learners practice the rule in exercises given by the teacher
and produce their own examples
at the end of the practice.
Erlam (2003,
cited by Salazar Miranda et al., 2018) developed a study where she compared the
effects of teaching with the
inductive and the deductive methods. She concluded that the
learners who used the
syntactical construction of the structure did worse than the
learners who used the inductive
method. With the inductive method, the learners improved
much more the procedures of
construction of the language that evaluated morphology. In the
deductive method, the
learners were given a list of grammatical rules, and then,
they practiced the rules through
exercises. This author found that through the deductive method,
the learners obtained higher
scores in the delayed post-test than the learners who
received classes with the inductive
method.
Throughout
time, researchers in the field of foreign language education have studied the
efficiency of the inductive and deductive methods for the teaching of grammar.
Both methods have strengths and weaknesses that benefit or hinder the learning
of grammar. Some authors such as Adi Ana & Ratminingsih (2012, cited by Salazar Miranda et al., 2018)
and Widodo (2006, cited by Salazar Miranda et al.,
2018) have suggested the implementation of both methods to maximize their
strengths. The inductive method has been favored by some researchers because
their studies have shown that when learners discover the rules by themselves,
these are acquired more meaningfully. The inductive method promotes noticing,
which is part of learning by discovery. However, the deductive method helps
learners learn features of grammar that cannot be acquired inductively such as
the irregular verbs in English. Therefore, the combination of both methods
should be promoted for better grammar learning.
-
The system
of formation of habits and development of skills departing from the
communicative functions.
This system cannot exist
without the system of knowledge. Knowledge is the basis for the further
formation of habits and development of skills while the skills represent the
successful conscious mastery of the activity in close relation to the habits
that also guarantee the mastery of the action, but in a more automatized
way.
Leontiev
(1975) asserts that the mechanism
of a foreign language includes three types of habits:
- The habits already existing in the mother tongue, which with slight
adaptations can be transferred to the foreign language. For example, some
sounds like /f/ /s/; some types of word formation with Latin or Greek prefixes,
the international vocabulary (words like radio,
cosmos, and television). This
type of habits reflects the phenomenon of transference of similar elements in
both languages from one language into the other.
- The habits existing in the mother tongue and need to be corrected and
changed into the foreign language. These are the most difficult and in turn the ones that need more
attention. They are the result of the interference of the mother tongue; for
example, the pronunciation of some sounds like /r/ /l/; the spelling of some
words that resemble in both languages, but have different letters like inmediatamente
and immediately, the
intonation and rhythmic patterns, grammatical structures very similar with
slight differences.
- The new habits, which should be formed for elements that do not exist in
the mother tongue as for example, for the articulation of new sounds like /æ/,
/ʃ/, /ə/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/, /ʲ/, /ө/, and /ᶻ/, new
grammatical structures, new vocabulary. This group of habits may be considered
as a variant of the previous group since the students tend to substitute what
is new in a language by something already known from their mother tongue. It
may be thought that the repetition drills is the most effective way of fixing
habits; nevertheless, experience has proved that habits formed this way are
easily forgotten. They should be formed by using a form of real communication
in the foreign language.
Naturally, when starting
learning the foreign language, the students should assimilate the linguistic
material and form the required habits, but teachers should bear in mind that
the final goal of the activity they carry out is not the formation of habits,
but the formation of communicative skills, which are formed under the basis of
habits. A student has some skills when he is able to take advantage of his knowledge
and operate with them to solve successfully theoretical and practical tasks.
Therefore, a linguistic skill may be defined as the capacity to build and use
correctly a given statement to express a given content (Antich de León, 1986).
The linguistic habits are
considered as components of the linguistic communicative skills and constitute
automatized linguistic operations of aspectual character (phonetic, lexical,
and grammatical).
Skills are formed in a
long-term period within the repetition of activities that require the
communication on the part of the students. This is achieved; for example, by
transferring the linguistic content of a learned situation in class into
another situation slightly different: from the grocery to the library, from a
train trip into a plane trip (Antich de León, 1986).
The linguistic skills are
defined as the capacity to manage the verbal activity when solving
communicative tasks. In close correspondence with the different aspects of the
verbal activity, there are listening skills (understanding speech in its sound
composition), speaking skills (expressing ideas orally), reading skills
(understanding discourse in its graphic expression), and writing skills
(transmitting ideas in written form) (González, 2009).
In the courses of the
different educational levels, the four skills are included within the system of
contents, except for the elementary level in which the emphasis is laid on the
oral skills listening and speaking.
It is also discussable whether
the learning strategies should be included as part of this system of contents.
It has been sustained by many pedagogues that learning strategies like skills
can be taught to the students.
One approach you can take to
teaching strategies in the language classroom is the impromptu teacher-initiated
advice. Learners can benefit greatly from your daily attention to the many
little tricks of the trade that you can pass on to them (Wong & Nunan, 2011).
Think back to your own
language learning experiences and note what it was that you now attribute your
success (or failure!) to, and pass these insights on.
Did you use cards?
Did you practice a lot?
Did you see subtitled movies?
Read books?
Pin rules and words up on your
wall?
When those appropriate moments
present themselves in your class, seize the opportunity to teach your students
how to learn. By doing so, you will increase their opportunities for strategic
investment in their learning process.
-
The system
of relations with the surrounding world.
This system includes the
system of values, interests, convictions, feelings, and attitudes to be
achieved in close interrelation with the contents of the other subjects that
the curriculum includes (interdisciplinary relations) and the rest of the
components of the teaching contents that the curricular studies propose.
-
The system
of experiences of the creative activity.
It is a content of higher
quality from the intellectual viewpoint; however, it demands the rest of the
contents to be manifested in the cognitive activity closely interrelated to the
affective motivational sphere. There are many aspects that show the way the
students learn this type of content; for example, in problem solving, with the
cognitive independence, with the development of a reflexive and divergent
thought, and the creative imagination among others. It may also include the
cross-curricular studies established for each educational level and the
interdisciplinary relations of English with other subjects of the school
curriculum.
The students´ harmonic
acquisition of the types of contents listed above, will allow for the
fulfillment of the four pillars proposed by the United Nations for Education,
Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO) to face the
challenges of the XXI century.
To learn how to know.
To learn how to do.
To learn how to live along
with others.
To learn how to be.
Summing up, in order to make a
proper didactic analysis of the system of contents of the unit and the lessons
that make it up, the following contents should be chosen:
-
The system
of linguistic knowledge.
This system
includes the communicative functions and accordingly the linguistic components:
pronunciation (including the attention to vowel and consonant sounds,
intonation, rhythm, and stress), grammar, and vocabulary.
-
The system
of formation of habits and development of skills departing from the
communicative functions.
This system includes all the
habits needed to achieve proper pronunciation, and proper use of grammatical
aspects and vocabulary in relation to the communicative functions presented. In
addition, the attention to the four major skills (listening, speaking, reading,
and writing) should be declared.
-
The system
of relations with the surrounding world.
This system includes the
system of values, interests, convictions, feelings, and attitudes to be
achieved departing from the learning of the English contents, the contents of
the cross-curricular studies established for each educational level, and the
interdisciplinary relations of English with other subjects of the school
curriculum.
-
The system
of experiences of the creative activity.
This system includes all the
experiences the students share through their creative activity when dealing
with the English contents, the contents of the cross-curricular studies
established for each educational level, and the interdisciplinary relations of
English with other subjects of the school curriculum.
Conclusions
The types of contents
presented in the article are adjusted to the Cuban context under the basis of Cuban
pedagogy. The contents to teach English in Cuban context should involve four
main systems which are dialectically united: the system of linguistic
knowledge, the system of formation of habits and skills, the system of
relations with the surrounding world, and the system of experiences of the
creative activity.
When determining the system of
linguistic contents, the following aspects should be regarded: the
communicative functions, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation which in turn
include the articulation of sounds, intonation, stress, and rhythm. The aspects
related in the article serve as didactic guidelines to the Cuban students of
the Foreign Languages Major and in service teachers of English for the
determination of the system of contents of the lessons they plan. The adequate
choice of the system of contents as the primary didactic component is vital to
guarantee the quality of the teaching learning process of English.
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