Making a difference

Douglas Brown teaches a Matayom 1 science lesson for Bangpakog School's Mini- English programme. His students, all screened for academic and English language proficiency, study in a specially fitted air- conditioned classroom with an LCD projector and Internet access at each desk.

English only, please! Four MEP Matayom 2 students at Taweethapisek School who resolutely refused to speak Thai with the learning post. From left to right: Surasak (Anan) Setthi, Vikrom (Vik) Kuman, Lan-Hua (Joe) Sae-Soo, Sapol (Pipe) Karunnirand.

If English language instruction in the public school system here in Thailand were evaluated strictly on business principles, the language probably wouldn’t be taught. The return on the investment in terms of money, time and effort is minimal. Despite a decade or more of instruction, few students manage to speak the language beyond the rudimentary level. Their reading and writing skills fare little better.

The problem is well known and, over the years, there have been many efforts to improve the system. None, however, has been as radical or as promising as the most recent initiatives taking place in dozens of Thai secondary schools across the country.

While the implementation may vary from school to school, the basic approach is quite similar. The idea is to dramatically boost the student’s exposure to English, not through an increase in formal English language lessons, but through the use of English as the medium of instruction in content courses. Wherever possible, courses are taught by native or near-native English language speakers.

At the Bangpakog School in Thonburi, for example, the content courses selected for English are mathematics and science. This is typical of the so-called MEP (Mini-English Programme) option adopted by many schools that feel unready or reluctant to introduce a full English programme (EP) where all subjects, apart from Thai language, are taught in English.

Pramote Rachapiboon

“Our interest in starting this programme stems from our desire to foster a international outlook in our students and to give parents another choice for their children,” Bangpakog school director Pramote Rachapiboon explains.

“At the same time, we don’t want to lose our own Thainess, our culture or our traditions. So we only use English for certain subjects.”

Like most schools with an MEP, the Bangpakog programme is essentially a pilot, involving only one Matayom 1 (M1) class of 35 students out of a total M1 enrolment of 540. Even on this limited basis, the school’s financial outlay has been substantial. The classroom is air-conditioned and each student’s desk is fitted with a computer with access to the Internet and the school’s Intranet.

“I can tell you right now,” asserts the M1 teacher Douglas Brown, “this classroom here on the outskirts of Bangkok is a lot better equipped than my classroom when I worked in a suburb of Los Angeles.”

Interestingly, Brown, an experienced teacher certified by the US state of California, is not a direct hire of the school.

Finding and retaining qualified native English speaking instructors is a daunting task for most public schools, especially since fees to parents can seldom exceed 50,000 baht a year, less than a fifth of what a mid-range international school might charge. It is not surprising, therefore, that some schools have opted to outsource this task to private companies.

This does not guarantee success, but if the school chooses wisely, it greatly increases the chances of obtaining a competent instructor — and sometimes more.

Brown’s employer, Bright Future International Training & Services (BFITS), for example, has provided him with a complete M1 teaching programme tailored to the requirements of the Thai national curriculum. It has installed an LCD projection system for the classroom and furnished him with sophisticated software for classroom lessons, exam preparation and student record-keeping. He also has a Thai assistant. In addition, the company has an arrangement with the renowned publisher McGraw Hill to provide students with highly discounted hardcover textbooks.

Recently the learning post spent much of two days in two BFITS-serviced schools to see how their programme is being implemented.

BFITS is a subsidiary of the Thai-owned company Business Information Training Services (BITS). The company now runs MEPs for four schools.

The man most responsible for BFITS's MEP services is academic director Michael Hines, a young American with a diverse background in real estate law, digital entertainment, and, most recently, education. An admitted “techie” from days spent with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Hines has been the driving force behind the company’s commitment to giving all its teachers access to educational technology.

Michael Hines

“We work as a partnership with the school,” Hines explains. “We ask the schools to invest in the facilities and we invest in the teachers.

“It’s not just getting a good teacher; it’s also getting the resources to help that teacher. So every one of our teachers is issued with a notebook computer. Everyone has the teacher edition of the textbooks and all the resource files on the computer. They have interactive grammar and language workbooks that the students can use. We have pre-made math presentations. We even have computerised virtual labs for science if schools don’t have the facilities.”

It hasn’t always been this way, Hines recalls. When BFITS took over a faltering MEP programme two years ago, teachers were essentially on their own. The approach at the time was similar to what you find in many schools today, he says. “First comes the students, then comes the book, then comes the teacher. Finally, they say to the teacher, ‘Go have at it.’”

The BFITS approach is to turn that process on its head. First comes the programme, then the teachers and then the teachers assist the school in screening the student applicants. Screening is vital, Hines says, because the demands on the students are very high.

Setting up the curriculum for science and mathematics was reasonably straightforward, Hines remarks. “Being in a government school, it wasn’t our job to reinvent the curriculum. It was to make sure that the students who are getting their education are getting the same thing as the Thai kids, so if they went back into that system, they could succeed.”

English was another matter. “We completely went away from conversational English,” Hines explains. “It wasn’t sufficient for these kids. To teach science and mathematics and then teach ‘What time is it? It’s nine o’ clock’ in English class doesn’t make sense. They have to start getting some critical and creative thinking as well.”

His solution was both innovative and controversial: English in a BFITS-run school is taught through literature.

“Typically, students are given a small amount of text that doesn’t require imagination or creative thinking,” Hines observes. “It basically states something, asks a question and states the answer.”

“But with literature, the teacher and students are talking about all the different things they saw in the story. Where’s the setting? What’s the time? Who are the characters? Who’s the main character? Who is the person telling the story? At first the students find it difficult but then they start to get it.”

Parents and administrators were a different situation altogether, however. “We had to re-educate everyone because it was not a popular thing in the schools. It didn’t go over very well. They did not like it at all because they thought it was too difficult.”

To their credit, Hines says school officials have backed the approach despite their initial reservations.

“There are schools out there who are progressive. It’s a sad thing to say, but there is a tendency to cave in to pressure from the parents and the students. They don’t keep up a standard. We [teachers] then become entertainers and appeasers. But there are schools out there who have stuck to it and it’s working.”

All this — good facilities, a wealth of resources and maintaining high standards — Hines says, are essential to teacher satisfaction and retention.

“Is the teacher an entertainer or an educator? If they are entertainers, then your teacher retention is going to do down. They know when they’re nothing but entertainers and that affects their job satisfaction.”

Brian Townsend

Walk into a BFITS-run MEP content class and the English you hear is surprisingly natural, even at the M1 level. The teachers do make concessions to their students’ proficiency level, but not nearly to the extent that you find in many public school English classes.

“You’ve got to watch your language,” observes Brian Townsend, who teaches science and English at Taweethapisek School in Thonburi. “You can’t use complicated terms and you have to break the language down. I speak slower, but the kids in the MEP here are exceptional. I can speak to them almost at the same standard I can speak to an English speaker. It think it’s because they’ve been screened,” he reflects.

Brown has had a similar experience at Bangpakog School. “I speak a little slower. I enunciate more. I might explain things in several different ways, but I don’t want to start leaving out articles. I don’t want to talk down to them. They need to hear English. It’s an immersion programme,” he says.

Nello Sestini helps a student with a maths problem.

One of the big advantages content teachers have, observes Nello Sestini, a mathematics and English teacher at Taweethapisek, is that the students have a real purpose for being in class.

“My experience is that more interesting discussions happen in my math classes than happen in the English classes — because they need it. They really have to know what this word means in order to get through the math classes. And they know it. They’re in a different mode than when they’re just learning a vocabulary word.”

Sestini, who has a mathematics degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) says that, ultimately, every maths lesson is also an English lesson. The difference is that the language content comes out naturally and often in unpredictable ways.

“Sometimes students blindside me with this,” he admits. “Sometimes I’m not anticipating that something is going to have to be vocabulary — like ‘putting things in order’. They didn’t know what that means, so I had to illustrate by putting kids in front of the class with different heights. They’re just a zillion examples of this sort of thing, not just in math, but in science,” Sestini remarks. [Note: For a transcript of a portion of one of his classes, see page 4 of today’s learning post.]

What Townsend, a qualified science teacher from England, appreciates most about his classes is the intense interest his students have in the subject. This often allows him to go beyond the curriculum, he says.

“I was teaching them the position of electrons,” he recalls of a recent class. “One student had seen a picture of an electron map somewhere. Some [electrons] were on the outside and some were on the inside and he asked me why that was. I said it had to do with the amount of space available — and they just kept tagging on the questions. In the end, I found myself doing a whole lesson on electron configurations.

“Now I can give them the atomic number of an element and they can map where the electrons are and where the protons are. So if they get interested in something, I just roll with it,” Townsend says with obvious delight.

Sukanya Phoopanthapuk

All this has not escaped the notice of Taweethapisek director, Sukanya Phoopanthapuk, who has become an avid supporter of the programme. She is particularly impressed with the emphasis on student responsibility — behaviour she feels can be a productive model for the school’s regular programme.

“They have to be on time,” she says. “The foreign teachers are very strict. Work has to be turned in on time or the students lose points.”

“With good reason,” Hines interjects. “These teachers didn’t come over here just to entertain the kids. They came here to truly make a difference.”

Bright Future International (BFITS Thailand)
Unit 401, Chao Phya Tower, Shangri La Pavilion, Bangrak, Bangkok, Thailand 10500
Tel: (02) 630-6622-24
Fax: (02) 630-6626
http://www.bfitsthailand.com
Or you can connect Michael Hines at MHG@bfitsthailand.com