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Dry Facts Can Perform Juicy Acts

In the EFL community
all around the world
it’s an undeniable 
and unpleasant reality that
no matter how well-motivated
you and your students are
no matter how real and acute 
the need for learning
a language may be
no matter how well-equipped
the language center is
no matter how well-trained
your instructors might be
still, teaching a language
as a foreign tongue
in a foreign country
in a classroom environment
within four walls
is an artificial endeavor,
pure and simple.

Moreover, the minute the students 
step out of the classroom
the little language environment
created in the room
is left behind,
lost and forgotten
until the next class.

Minds boggle at how lively, 
how attractive, 
how delightful and entertaining, 
how effective and powerful
languages can be
at the hands of skillful comedians,
orators, actors, poets and authors
while they all become
utter bores, dry and irrelevant,
with chalk-and-talk-addicted
unimaginative, ordinary instructors
in the language classrooms.

Though language itself is dry
and teaching it mostly boring
the way you introduce it
may engage even the cynical students 
if only you yourself believe
that teaching is acting.

Instructors must act 
to attract and impact
never mind if students 
react without tact
each act will surely get 
a few shells cracked
“teaching is the art of changing the brain”
that’s a well-known 
neurological fact.

Acting will deliver 
student participation
a recipe for motivation
a remedy for alienation.

The target is communication 
and retention, not full accuracy
nor perfection, and, please,
leave aside incessant correction,
which definitely leads to
disenchantment and rejection.

Value student participation 
and production 
encourage interaction
feed vocabulary in collocation
grammar, like medicine, 
in the right dosage and proportion
and for God’s sake, 
keep your chalk-and-talk 
at a minimum fraction.

Remember, an ELT instructor is 
a confidence booster
not an error-seeker 
or hand-pecking rooster.

Who said ELT was  
an educational roller coaster?
Nope. It’s more like a bread toaster,
which takes care of all on the  roster.

Idris Esen, February, 2016, Istanbul
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