RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

464 APPROACHES TO QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
Box 22.2
The strengths and weaknesses of English language teaching
Q7: Strengths and weaknesses of English language teaching
1: P1 Students started learning English at a very young age and they should be good at it. However, this could also
be a disadvantage as students were too young to learn Englishandtounderstandwhattheyweretaught
2-6: P6 These respondents all commented thatindividualschoolshadgreatautonomy over syllabus design.
7-9: F3 Consequently, some syllabus contents were toorichtobecoveredwithinthe limited time span. Therefore, it
10-12: F5 was hard to make adjustments, although studentscouldnotcopewiththelearningrequirements.Thisput
pressure on both teachers and students. Worse still, some schools made students learn other foreign
languages apart from English, and that made the learning of English more difficult.
students because of the demands of the syllabus
and English had to compete with other languages
for curriculum space. Hence students did not learn
well, despite years of learning English.
Comment: apart from one primary teacher, the
other eleven teachers, drawn from both primary
and secondary schools, were unanimous in the
comments they gave.
It was clear that high class size (between 30
and 50 students, rising to 60) and tight syllabuses
exerted a significant impact on teaching methods
and restrictions of class activities, because of
control issues (Box 22.3). The nature of this
influence is to adopt largely didactic and grammartranslation
methods, with little extended recourse
to using or ‘thinking in’ English. Teaching utilized
some group activity, but this was very limited.
Teachers used Chinese to explain English.
Comment: all the teachers here were unanimous
in their comments which fell mainly into two sets
of points.
Students contributed significantly to their own
success or failure in learning English (Box 22.4).
They were shy, afraid of making mistakes and of
losing face, and had little interest in learning at all,
let alone English; they were overloaded with other
subjects, a situation exacerbated by their poor
time management; they held negative attitudes
to the bookish nature of learning English and its
unrelatedness to other curriculum subjects, had too
many other distractions and had limited abilities
in English; they had little incentive to learn fast
as they could repeat courses, gave little priority to
English, had poor foundations for learning English
and had limited motivation or positive attitudes to
learning English; they were given limited direction
Box 22.3
Teaching methods
Q9: Teaching methods
1-3: P1
4-6: P6
7-9: F3
10-12: F5
All respondents replied that teaching was mostly conducted on a didactic approach though they
utilized visual aids and group activities to arouse students’ interest, as they had a very tight syllabus to
cover within the fixed number of periods. This method also gave them morecontrolovertheclass,
which was necessary as classes were usually big, between 30 and 50 and could rise to 60.
Whenever these teachers taught grammar, they relied heavily on the grammar-translation method.
They used mostly Chinese (could be as much as 80 per cent) to explain grammar, as that would make
it easier for students to understand the explanation.