For this week, I studied about the research of Bok-Myung Chang named The role of English Language Education in Asian context. This research is about the history of English Language Education in Asian countries : Singapore, Philippine, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. From studying this research it can be divided into 3 topics.
1. The history of English Language in Asia Context.
>>Focus on Singapore, Philipine, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
For the Singapore, Philipine and Malaysia are colonized by US and British so English became important in these country.
For China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea English became important because trad, science, technology etc.
2. Developmental characteristics of English language.
>>He found that in the beginning, all of these countries to be national country such as China bring new innovation from England to develop their country.
3. Important role of English education in Asian
>It took about the important role of English language education in Asian context
There are 3 important roles;
>English as a way to speed up national development.
>English as a way to understand other cultures.
- English as a tool to communicate in international
communication.
In conclusion, the number of the people who speak English as a second or foreign language in Asian countries is increasing very rapidly so Asian English plays a very important role in the globalized world.
I thought that discussion within group it made my learning was easy because I had friends who helped me when I could not speak or communicate with others. On the other hand, language which was used in this research was very difficult, so it was difficult to read. Although, it was difficult, but I will try to fight it.
For this week, before we started to learn the teacher talked about ESL and EFL, then she suggested us about searching information from the internet. After that, the teacher let us to make a group of 5 people for discussion, and presentation to the class.
In my group, we talk about the differences between ESL and EFL. English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) require two different strategies for teaching for a number of reasons. Most people don’t know the difference between the two and don’t consider the difference when they set out to teach English. It’s important to know what each one is so that the different needs of the students can be met.
EFL is where the teacher teaches English to students in a country where English isn’t the native language. For example, a Chinese student learning English in China would fall under this category. On the other hand, ESL is where English is taught to students in a country where English is the primary language. An example of this is where a Chinese student is learning English in Australia. The difference between ESL and EFL might seem little at first, but they do require very different teaching strategies to meet the aims and objectives of the students.
After we finished our presentation about the differences between ESL and EFL, the teacher explained about 21st Century Learning: Pedagogical Perspective. There are 5 parts of this presentation;
- Context of why 21st Century Learning is vital
- 21st Century Key Subjects
- 21st Century Theme
- 21st Century Skills
- Factors affecting Thai students' 21st Century Learning: pedagogical perspective
The easy thing for me in this week, It was information about the differences between ESL and EFL because it's not too hard to understand. Moreover, we already talked about some of information of ESL and EFL last week. But I worried about my teaching English language in the future because after I read the article I thought that activating students to learn English language was so difficult, so now I will try to learn hard and learn about teaching methodology and technique of teaching more and more.
