Proud to be tvmbo - Kortlopend Onderwijsonderzoek

5.5 Challenges
The teachers and coordinators also expressed the challenges they face in teaching
tvmbo.
Diversity
The biggest challenge that teachers working in tvmbo face is that of dealing with the
different levels of English, to differentiate: some students have had vroeg vreemdetalenonderwijs
(VVTO) at primary school and some have a native speaker parent; others
have had very little English at primary school, so the first year students are very
diverse in terms of English proficiency.
Affective factors
Another main challenge seems to be teachers’ fear of using English; teachers find it
hard to believe that students can understand them in English and it takes time to get
over that. Coordinators are also concerned about their teachers’ level of English and
realize that the teachers need to work hard to improve their language skills. Some
teachers are unsure about their own level and accuracy when using English and they
feel that this prevents them from being humorous or ‘themselves’ in their lessons.
They sometimes get embarrassed themselves when searching for words and therefore
find it hard, too, to get students to speak English.
Using English
A further major challenge is that students do not always speak English to the teacher
or to each other. A few teachers even have the opinion that tvmbo does not work in the
subjects where students become more emotional, such as drama or PE: “It’s too emotional,
too difficult.” When asked about this, some teachers mention some strategies
which do help. For example, teachers pretend that they do not understand, or they use
pair and group work. These teachers also use English themselves (nearly) 100% of the
time. Some schools start off allowing students to speak Dutch from the summer until
Christmas, tolerating less and less Dutch as time goes on and insisting on English in
the New Year.
Materials
A further challenge is that of starting to learn English: students struggle with texts in
English, since the level is not appropriate. Moreover, they have to deal with many hard
new words at the start of year 1. So another major challenge is finding or making materials
at an appropriate level. Coordinators are concerned that materials are not avail-
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