La idea de territorio de las comunidades

The ELT unit for the Ministry of National Security (formerly the Ministry of Interior) is part of a training college on the outskirts of Vientiane city at Sanama (Horse Fields) so named because this was where the French military once stabled their horses. The unit is staffed by a Director, Deputy Director, a part-time foreign volunteer with no teaching qualifications, and seven teachers who have graduated in the last three years from the National University of Laos. The Deputy Director holds an Australian Graduate Diploma in ELT. He admits that the quality of graduates his ministry is able to attract is not high.

Officials from this ministry come here from all over the country to study a range of languages. They study full-time for two years (or two and a half years if they need to learn the Latin script) and live within the college grounds. New students are given a pre- course assessment for placement in Beginners (or pre-course as it is known) to learn the script, a Post-Beginners or a Pre-Intermediate level class. Classes have a maximum of 20 students. The core texts are the ‘English for Lao Secondary Schools’ books developed under AusAID’s previous English language project. The Deputy Director is aware that these are not really suitable for the English language needs of the officials, but comments that they are preferred to commercial books because of their Lao content and there are no other Lao-based English course books around.

I am taken to watch a class of second-year students who are reading a passage from the set text. Each student has his own photocopied text book. The teacher asks a student to read the passage. He stands up and reads aloud. I have difficulty understanding some of what he reads although I understand the text is about an animal in the snow. The teacher does not correct his pronunciation. One by one, students around the room stand up and read. Without a book, certain parts of the text remain beyond my comprehension. I amuse myself for a while listening for particularly confusing parts and hoping someone will eventually say them in such a way that the mystery will be solved. A bell rings for the end of the lesson. The mystery was never solved.

I am aware that reading prepared texts aloud is a common pedagogical practice in the region, but when I talk to the teacher later, it is clear she is struggling with the level of texts she is teaching. It is probable that, rather than a pedagogical decision, it is because of this that pronunciation was not corrected. (November 1999)

Only two ministries had courses designed to address the specific language needs of their field of work, having received extensive support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The SIDA-assisted units were also the only ones to express satisfaction with their programs. Three units were supplementing their commercial text book with specific purpose materials at intermediate level but cited the non-Lao content of this material as presenting difficulties. Problems with learning language contextualised in foreign countries was a common complaint across all ministries and all class levels.

Provinces

In between visiting ministries, and after obtaining the Minister of Education’s permission, we travelled to provinces to investigate the provision for government officials in the five designated teacher training colleges. A strong network already existed between the Ministry of Education (and hence our counterparts) and these teacher training colleges. Nevertheless, the counterparts were vague on detail about English provision though they knew that only two of the five provinces were already conducting courses, while one had attempted to conduct a course for nine months but had abandoned it. Administrators in that province later told us this was because of an inadequate budget for both teacher salaries and trainee per diems, and an inappropriate course book (an American-produced commercial text).

Our investigations soon revealed that, in general, the teaching skills of provincial teachers contrasted starkly with the teaching skills of most ministry teachers. This was not solely due to some provincial teachers having benefited under the previous AusAID project, as skills had also been developed in the colleges amongst all English language teachers by the support and assistance of well-qualified volunteers from the British organisation, Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO). These volunteers were placed in each of these regional colleges for two year periods in order to assist the Lao teachers to upgrade their methodology. Thus, the provincial provision for government officials was able to draw from a pool of teachers who had had opportunities to upgrade their teaching qualifications and their skills through day- to-day mentoring, and specific training. The following journal entry highlights the contrast (in general) between the skills of teachers of English classes for government officials in the provincial teacher training colleges and (in general) the skills of teachers in the central ministries as depicted in the previous journal entry (page 76).