I don’t believe that it is just bias on my part which makes me believe that the most hard-driven teachers in our schools are our language teachers.  From one point of view, they are better off because they have always had a huge marking load and were therefore not fazed, as other teachers were, by having to do Continuous Assessment (CASS); but the demands of the new curriculum have taken this to new heights.

To illustrate this, let’s look at the requirements for the Further Education and Training (FET – Grades 10 – 11) band:

• In Grades 10 and 11, a language teacher has to mark, as a minimum, 16 pieces of work for each pupil per year, whereas the teachers of other subjects are required to mark between 5 and 8 pieces only, depending on the subject.
• In Grade 12, the respective figures are 14 and between 5 and 7.
• This means that, if a language teacher has five FET classes (averaging, let’s say, 35 – but could be much higher in poorer schools), he/she has to mark about 2600 – 2800 pieces in a year, whereas another subject teacher with five FET classes would have to mark about 1010 – 1225 pieces – less than half.  Add to this the fact that language pieces are more demanding in terms of assessment, as marking them involves more than merely ticking right and wrong but rather weighing up opinions and speculations with fine nuances.

Language teachers should take stand on this:  Either persuade the authorities to reduce the number of pieces, or impress upon school management to give language teachers fewer / smaller classes and/or take into account this heavy load when allocating extra-curricular activities, examination invigilation, etc.

On top of this, language teachers – like all others – are burdened with a huge amount of paperwork which the new curriculum demands.  But here they should avoid falling into the trap of accepting some of the myths that surround these demands.  Here are two of them that need to be knocked:

• Teachers must have a Lesson Plan for every period that they teach.

NONSENSE! Teachers must have Lesson Plans, but these could cover two weeks, four weeks, or even a term.  The NCS ‘Learning Programme Guidelines’ actually states that ’Lesson Plans are not equivalent to periods on the school timetable’ but are rather ‘units of deliverable learning experiences’ (p5). The original RCNS ’Teachers’ Guide’ puts it thus: ’It can consist of a single activity or several activities spread over a few days or a number of weeks (p5).’

• Lesson Plans (and other planning documents) must have the Learning Outcomes (LOs) and Assessment Standards (Ass) written out in full.

NONSENSE! The RCNS document cited above makes the following sensible point: ‘Teachers need to find ways of making the planning process [in general] a more manageable one, so that the process of planning is facilitative rather than being a tedious task. For example, there is not much point in rewriting Learning Outcomes and Assessment Standards each time an activity is developed. Numbering the Assessment Standards and then referring to the numbered Assessment Standards may be easier’ (p5).

Another problem for language teachers is that they need to do much more research in order to teach effectively than their colleagues.  Most other subjects have textbooks which cover almost all that needs to be handled with the pupils, but if you are teaching literature, there is no book which tells you everything – and there are many different views about the literary works that need to be explored.  In this connection, the English Academy is planning to launch a journal for English teachers next year – depending on their obtaining funding for the project.  As the editor for the planned publication, I would welcome feedback from English teachers indicating whether they think this would be of use to them and what they would like to see in such a publication.  Add your comments below.

Stertke! to all you language teachers out there!

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