Volunteer Program

I am starting a volunteer program in Salta. There will be two main options.

One is to help teach English. Here is more about that.

Another is help with a teen suicide prevention program.

Up to two volunteers can have a free place to sleep in Salta. Other volunteers can get a discount rate at some of the the hostals who are participating in the program.

Write to Steve: englishsalta@hotmail.com for more details

I have been in Argentina over a year and have learned about how they teach or fail to teach English. Basically, if you don't have money in Argentina, you won't learn English. To me this is totally unjust, and it offends me. In Salta in particular, knowing English is a huge advantage since there are so many tourists here. But only the privileged will get a chance to go to the private English institutes.

Also, English opens up minds. Denying someone to learn English hurts not only their employment chances but their chance to learn new ideas. South America has been isolated from the rest of the world for too long, dominated by the Catholic church in particular. With English, young people can get new ideas from all around the world -- ideas which will lead to much needed changes.

My basic goal, therefore, is to improve how English is taught in the public schools.

Specifically I want to set up some exchange programs between hostels, backpackers, poor schools, highschool students, and future English teachers.

Right now students are being forced to learn grammar rules which they don't understand instead of simple, practical conversation. Even though highsschool students have passed two years of required English courses, most of them can not say basic things like: Where are you from? How long will you stay in Salta. Do you have a boyfriend? Are you married? When is your birthday? What kind of music do you like? How old are you?

In English classes in the public schools here most of the students only study to pass the tests so they can move on to the next year of school - not to learn English.

Worse still is that if a student doesn't pass the test they will typically have to pay for what are called classes de apoyo, or in other words private tutoring so they can take the test again and pass the course before they can move to the next year of highschool.

The schools also teach British English and only British English. This doesn't make much sense to me. First, American English is much more widely used in movies, on the television and in songs. Second, students are not even taught simple things in American English. For example, I went to an English institute and the director of the institute, who was also a teacher, could not tell me what the word for "trash bin" was in American English. I pointed to the wastebasket in the room and asked the class "How do you say that in American English?" No one knew. Not even the director. To me this is a disservice to the students. This particular director didn't care if his students learned American English because he has some agreement with a school in England who tests his students and gives them a cerfificate if they pass. So he wants his students to learn British English so they can get a certificate and he can say something like 95 percent of our students pass the Cambridge English exam. In other words he wants to use the test results to market his business. In other words, he cares more about making money than whether he is teaching doing the best thing for his students.

In other countries around the world they are teaching American English, But for some reason Argentina is stuck in the colonial days and is still teaching British English. One hostel owner told me that he would rather learn American English because he hears more of it on TV so he understands the accent better. But the school authorities, specifically the Ministry of Education in Argentina doesnt think like that.

In Argentina, to be an English teacher you have to go to what is called a "Profesorado de Ingles". This is a school you go to after highschool where you supposedly learn to be an English teacher. But I have known enough of the students and graduates to know that the system doesn't work very well, and in fact to me is a huge waste of time and money. Here are some reasons why I say that.

- You have to study Spanish grammar to be an English teacher, in Spanish. So even though you have been speaking and writing Spanish all your life, you have to take a course in Spanish grammar, in Spanish, to get your titulo. This because someone, long ago, decided to teach English with grammar rules. If you want to see how well this system works, try to have a simple conversation with an 18 year old who has only studied English in a public highschool. I invite you to write to me with your results.

- You have to study things like the history of the second world war, in English, and then take a test about history, not English, to become an English teacher. I know someone who failed this test not because she didn't know English. She speaks Englkish quite well, in fact, but because she didn't remember enough of the history of the second world war. If you think perhaps I am making this up, please talk to any English teacher in Argentina and let me know what they say.

- You don't get a chance to even be in front of a class untill the third or fourth year of your program. So in other words, you don't really even know if you would like to actually be an English teacher until you have spent a lot of time in the program. This is not because they students don't know enough English to teach anything. On the contrary. They all have to pass two basic tests to even be accepted into the program, a written test and an oral test.

What this means is that most of these young people could immediately start teaching basic English to young children.

In most public schools in Argentina, English is not taught until the student is around 13 years old, even though nearly everyone knows it is easier to learn a foreign language as a child.

By the way, children don't need to learn grammar rules to speak English. They learn by listening and repeating in real life situations. But this is the farthest thing from the way they teach English in Argentina. Instead of listening and repeating they do things like this.

One day I looked a 16 year old's English notebook. The homework was to change sentences as folows.

I asked the student if she knew what the first sentences in the pairs meant. She did not know what a car was. Nor did she know what "pretty" meant. This is after she has passed two years of English.

Most students I have talked to like music in English, but they don't like their English classes. That is because the teachers, thru following the Ministry of Education system, make the courses confusing and difficult by focussing on grammar and not conversation.

I don't really blame the English teachers. Many of they try to do their best. The problem seems to be with the Ministry of Education. So one of my goals is to get the parents, teachers and students together to change the system.

Sometimes someone is stuck in the teacher training college for years and years because they cannot pass one test. They have to keep taking it over and over again. And if they don't pass, they don't get their "titulo", and here in Argentina having a titulo seems to be much more important than actually being a good teacher.

In one English teacher training school when the students do their practice teaching, they are watched by someone who uses a form to critique them. On the form there is a question about the clothes the future teacher is wearing. It says "Appropriate or Needs Help". In other words someone thinks a person who is around 21 years old has not yet figured out how to dress and they might "need help." I will try to scan this form in later. It has some other interesting things on it, but that is one I remember.

In Salta there are wonderful opportunities to have cultural initerchange programs between the backpackers and the schools. The schools could invite backpackers into the schools to practice Englsh, to talk about their countries, to meet local people and practice some Spanish. But almost no schools do this. The majorithy of the students I have met in Salta would like to talk to us, but they don't even know how to start the conversation. This is why one of my goals is to set up exhchange programs between the schools and hostels.

I also want to set up a program where the young people who are in the profesorados of English can start getting some practical teaching experience in the first year of their program. They can help a lot of poor students.

Also, I believe that many of the people entering the teacher training schools would actually make better teachers when they start the progam then when they leave. I say this because they are younger than they will be when they get their titulo. Some times they are many years younger, in fact. (see fact 8). Generally speaking, younger teachers make better teachers because a) they can relate to the students better and b) they are more creating, more enthousistic and more open to new ideas. Unfortunately the English teaching schools train them to teach in the same dysfunctional way year after year.

Salta has one of the highest rates of teen suicide in Argentina. I have worked with suicidal English speaking teens for several years and I want to do what I can to help here. Write me for more info.