Are you surprised by English SIMCE results?

I’m not. These results just showed our reality and if someone is surprised is because is completely out of business.

Here you have some data of SIMCE 2010.

• The test was taken by 240.000 students.
• The score average was 99 out of 180.
• The minimum to get the certification is 134 (64 in Listening Comprehension and 70 in Reading Comprehension).
• In Japan students get an average of 119.
• 65% of high income students got the certificate v/s 0.3% of the vulnerable students.

Another data gathered by the results have to be with the age the students start and the methodology used by teachers. In this sense the best results are getting by:

• Students that start learning in an early age.
• Students that have more English hours.
• Students which teachers speak English during their classes.
• Students that attend to additional English classes.

Here you can get the Ministry’s report (Spanish).

And what does TOEIC Bridge measure?

This test identifies the students that have reached a basic level of English language, based on international standards.

Students to get the certification have to be able of:

Listening comprehension

• Understanding sentences and expressions related to daily routines.
• For example, understanding the main idea of short messages, ads and instructions.

Reading comprehension

• Understanding short and simple texts containing frequent words.
• For example, understanding information from ads, menus, schedules, public signs, letters, catalogs and short articles from a newspaper.

My point of view from my experience in public and private system

When English SIMCE was announced last year I received several calls asking for help. Teachers, students and parents were all panic because of this test. Everybody wanted to do something to prepare for the test… at the last minute.

I tried to explain them that learning a language is a process that takes time and there was nothing they could do to improve their students’ performance.

But there was an Educational Corporation that asked to help them to reduce students and teacher’s anxiety. They had a very smart English Coordinator by the way. We* prepared a workshop for teachers to explain them the components and methodology of the test. Then we designed a practice test for students which we applied about a month before the SIMCE test. The objective: to expose students to the “experience” of the test. The test included time management and format familiarization.

Although I do not agree with test preparation I thought this was a very good idea to let students face this test with another attitude.

At the same time we started working on a long term project, to improve English teaching from the first levels (they started in 5^th. grade).

Why do I tell you this? Because thinking in long term is the key.

About the results

We couldn’t expect better results if we don’t have enough teachers of English to cover all the demand.

We couldn’t expect better results if there’s a very high percentage of primary teachers teaching English without enough training.

We couldn’t expect a narrow gap between private and public schools if there’s a difference of about 900 hours of English classes (considering just 4 hours a week from PK).

And this is just the obvious part. Because there are several other factors that nobody think about.

I’ll tell you another story. Some years ago I was working for two municipalities in Santiago. One of them the richest one and the other a middle class one but with very vulnerable students. I taught K students. The first class I asked the high income students, why do you think learning English is important? All of them raised their hands and gave me several reasons such as: to travel, to know people of different countries, to study in another country, to go to Disneyworld, to talk to my cousins that live in the States when they come over. I asked the same question to the low income students. Nobody raised a hand. They looked at me like I was speaking in Chinese and actually I asked the question in Spanish.

What I mean is that the need of communicating in another language is an issue. The awareness of the purpose of learning a new language is the starting point. But if students don’t understand this, if they don’t have an environment that push them to learn even the most trained teacher won’t make it.

Solutions?

Create the need of communicate in English. I did a focus group with students from 7^th and 10^th grade in municipal schools. Most of the students said that they didn’t need to learn English because they were not going to be Engineers or Doctors. But when we received English-speakers volunteers, they were the first trying to communicate with them. They had the need of speaking English to know about them, their traditions, their hobbies, their lifes.

Create opportunities of exposure to the language. If you don’t listen to English, if you don’t have anything to read in English, if you don’t have anybody to practice with, how are you supposed to learn?  Or even more… how are you going to keep the level of English you already reached? This happens even to English teachers. Once I worked for a wonderful project called ”English Town” that was going to be a place where people could learn and practice their English. There wasn’t money enough to make it real… (I think there wasn’t enough willingness to do it).

Involve the whole community. How are parents supposed to help their children with their homework if they don’t know English? Actually, in vulnerable schools most of the students’ tutors are their grandparents. What about the other subjects’ teachers? And the school staff? If the only person interested in improving English performance of their students is the English teacher we won’t get anywhere. I’ve met English teachers very frustrated for the lack of support, because they felt alone, isolated.

I think initiatives like English SIMCE are going to put some pressure to achieve all of this, but there have to be policies to support it, political willingness, and private investment.

What are the Ministry’s proposals?

The only actions I’ve heard so far in the news are:

• The launching of a “Plan Nacional de Inglés” in about two more weeks.
• Students will have the chance to participate in extracurricular classes to complement the hours of the subject.
• Mineduc will bring foreign teachers and will create a bilingual TV program for pre-schoolers.

And… what do you propose?

 

* This workshop was prepared by my dear coleague Erasmo Veloso and the Test by Eric Hamilton, Academic Coordinators of the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano.

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