Dear Dr. Ravikumar,

You have rightly observed a very pathologic symptom in language teaching in Asian countries. According to professor Spolsky, educational linguistics (his preferred name for applied linguistics) is an interdisciplinary field involving quite a few language related disciplines among which linguistics plays a central role. without teachers' adequate knowledge of their subject matter, language teachers fail to meet the demands which clearly define what language teaching is all about. That is why teacher professional development programs  today emphasize the importance of English teachers' development of implicit and explicit knowledge about critical pedagogy  in order to satisfy what Richards calls accountability.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Thank you for your response to my question Reza Biria.

Dear Dr Ravikumar,

My observations in Hong Kong and Singapore are that universities have now taken a very corporate model where students are customers. Phonetics is a very hard subject that straddles both the arts and the sciences, but because it is often associated with Language (normally codified as an Arts subject), the customer-students in the arts find themselves in an uncomfortable zone of trying to learn about scientific things they feel poor at. A downward spiral begins when these customer-students from the Arts pressure the curriculum to be more popular-oriented rather than educationally-oriented, to which the corporate university reacts.

I know there are good teachers, but good teachers have their jobs threatened by the customer-student dynamics.

Best,

Lian-Hee

Mr.Lian-Hee Wee

You are absolutely right.All your observations are true with reference to both teachers and students particularly in Asia. 

Dr. Ravi Kumar, I do agree with what you say have you ever taken a look at some not quite recent papers on 'social identity' and ' learner subjectivity'. Probably you may not see the idea to be so ridiculous! All the best. Dr. Haji Maibodi.

In my opinion the above statement is absolutely true. Because long back there was a high value to the functional  and traditional grammar and phonetic articulation in the curriculum. unfortunately the current curriculum and the syllabus is modified in such a way which is purely based on the communicative aspects by ignoring the fundamentals. In my opinion this process of learning is like constructing multi-storied buildings   without having the standard base. hence, at least for the upcoming generations it should be made mandatory to infuse the fundamentals and basics of traditional grammar and phonetics with proper articulation system.