English Opens Doors in the news: full text

Normally I would never reprint the entire text of an article, but the original Guardian link is gone for some reason and the piece is highly relevant to me. I found the text here. My original post, with some comments, is here.

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Chile's Drive for English Faces First Test

2010 marks the first formal assessment of Chile's six-year campaign to raise English language skills: English Opens Doors. At the end of October 240,000 students in their third year of high school (aged 16-17) will take the TOEIC(r) Bridge test to demonstrate that their comprehension of English is equivalent to B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) scale.

An informal test in 2004 revealed that only 5% of Chilean students reached this level, but the ambitious target set by Opens Doors is that all students going into their final year of high school in 2013 will have achieved the equivalent of B1.

The programme, created in 2004, promotes English learning through teacher training programmes and scholarships abroad, inviting native English speakers into Chilean classrooms and giving students the opportunity to participate in public speaking, debates, and English camps.

"I had a great year while perfecting my English. I think study-abroad grants have helped improve teaching levels a lot," said Victoria Cuadra, who returned last year from the UK after spending 12 months as a teaching assistant in Hull, on a grant from the Chilean government. "There are still problems like teachers' salaries being too low and some schools not having enough resources to teach English."

The Chilean government awards scholarships to university students on track to become teachers. These students spend either a term studying English abroad, or a year working as assistants in English-speaking countries. In return the students must work for two years in state-funded school after they qualify as teachers. Many though, like Cuadra, are not planning to stay in the state system. "I think two years is enough. The money is much better in private schools, not to mention the better teaching environment," she said.

Currently 8,200 English teachers work in establishments that receive state funding and 5,400 of these teachers have participated in courses designed to develop and update their language skills. The courses are offered on Saturday mornings, sometimes with an additional weeknight, and teachers contribute about $ 160 towards course fees with the government covering the remaining 85% of costs.

The government is hoping that the first formal assessment of teachers' English skills, which is scheduled to take place in 2011, will show that the training has delivered results. Next year all teachers in government funded schools will be expected to have reached B2 on the CEFR framework. The fate of teachers who do not achieve the level has still to be revealed.

Isabel González, director of the Opens Doors programme, says its rationale is simple. "English is imperative to Chile in terms of business investment. Raising the level of English in schools will ultimately lead to a higher-quality workforce which will in turn attract foreign investment and increase economic development."

But she acknowledges that Chile's relative isolation has been a major challenge in the drive to improve skills. "Chile's geographical, economic and cultural characteristics have limited communication between the majority of our population and English-speaking communities. This isolation makes the quality of English learning and student motivation quite difficult."

In an attempt to connect students and teachers, English speaking volunteers have been invited into Chilean classrooms, in an exchange project supported by the UN Development Programme. Since 2004 almost 1,400 volunteers have been placed in schools.

"The students benefitted from having the presence of a native speaker in the classroom," said Emily Edwards from the UK, who worked as a British Council language assistant in the southern Chilean city of Concepción in 2008. "Many of them just needed the push of believing they were dealing with a non-Spanish speaker to spur them into talking in English in the class."

However not everyone is happy with the way in which native-speaker assistants are used. Katty Kaufmann, a leading English interpreter and former director of a major US study and volunteer-abroad programme in Chile, is critical of the lack of training. "Neither the volunteers nor the teachers receive sufficient instruction on how the assistants should be used in the classroom. Most teachers simply don't know the capacity in which they should use the volunteers. The assistants could be helpful, but an effective policy needs to be implemented."

Kauffman, who works with high-level government personnel across the southern hemisphere says Chile is far behind its stated goals. "English in Chile at international standards? We're not even in the neighbourhood of international standards," she said.

That view is shared by Jorge Cuevas, who supervises English language teaching at Bolivariana University in Los Angeles, near Santiago. "The government feels pressure to conform to international standards because of Chile's new political standing in the world, for example as a recent OECD member, but the reality is we are very far from achieving these standards," he said.

"Although it is possible all teachers may reach level B2 in the national testing, I think it is highly unlikely students will reach the goals that have been set. Even if they did, the TOEIC(r) Bridge test the government is planning to use only tests passive skills, so speaking levels will still be substandard."

Government expenditure on Opens Doors is approximately $ 10m annually, but while the investment is welcomed questions remain about how the programme is being implemented. Kauffman cites bureaucracy as the "greatest shortcoming of the programme".

"You have tremendously valuable ideas buried in paperwork. The programme could succeed if they get rid of the red tape, start to analyse and come up with quantifiable means to ascertain the programme goals."