Preparing English Teachers Abroad

As a participant in 1967 at the Tenth International Congress of Linguists at Bucharest and at the Sixth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences at Prague, I was impressed by the fact that there was little concern with the problems of language teaching. However, even though the contents of a large proportion of the papers presented at these congresses reflected little direct interest in the teaching of English as a second language, the communication behavior or medium used at the congresses conveyed a message that was not lost on linguists or on people in general and should not be lost on teachers of English as a second language. Most emphatically expressed by the congresses is the familiar message that English outstrips all other language behavior from the standpoint of the extent, the diversity, and the reinforcing power of the responses it elicits. Of the 598 papers summarized in the Abstracts published by the Planning Committee of the Congres of Linguists at Bucharest 235 were presented in English. The rest were presented in French (144), in Russian (123), in German (78), in Spanish (12), and in Italian (6). Of 373 papers similarly abstracted for the Phonetics Congress in Prague, 169 were presented in English, and the rest were divided among Russian (74), German (73), French (50) and Czech (2). Furthermore, looking at the nationalities of the speakers you find that a large proportion of those using English were from non-English-speaking countries-some of them from countries like France, Germany, and Russia whose languages were in substantial use at the congresses. There was, then, indication in a few of an awareness of certain aspects of language behavior that have a bearing on language teaching and must then of course be reflected in the training of teachers of English as a second language for the era of the seventies

Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Sociology · Study abroad · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching