The Teaching of English as a Second Language in Cuba: An Educational Triumph
The Cuban Revolution that began in the late 1950's was more than political in nature.
The U.S. blockade on Cuban trade prevented educators in Cuba from obtaining materials or resources from anywhere outside of Cuba until
the early 1980's (Delamarter-Scott, 2003). In addition, due to an increase in
the literate population, there was a need for education like never before (Menendez, 2003).
Fidel Castro put new literacy laws into effect in 1960 (MacLeod, 2003). Across the country, illiterate citizens were being paired with those
who were literate for intensive tutoring (Menendez, 2003). In one year, the two
million people who were previously illiterate dropped to 0.6% (Mendendez, 2003). Since
there were more people who could read and write, there were more to educate. Ironically,
there were also fewer teachers than before due to the nearly 800,000 who exiled Cuba in the late 1950's and early 1960's (Loney, 1998). In addition, among
those who left were the educated class (Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
It is important to keep in mind that the U.S. had been previously supplying Cuba with educational resources before the embargo (Delamarter-Scott, 2003). Due to the aforementioned circumstances, Cuban educators were pressed to develop potent
teaching methods that were more than forty-years ahead of the times. In this
paper I will focus on the manner in which TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) education has been revolutionized
in Cuba since the late 1950's. Specifically,
I will analyze the TESOL methods used in three realms of education: public schools, Universities, and the Ministry of Tourism.
Culture is the driving force behind public education in Cuba, according
to Mabel Menendez (2003). The government understands the importance of cultural
education and wants its citizens to be a well-rounded and culturally literate people (Menendez, 2003). Language is an important element of culture. It is what enables
the people and government of a country to initiate connections with that of another country on a multitude of levels. All Cubans are required to take two to three years of foreign language in elementary
education (Delamarter-Scott, 2003). Among some of the languages taught are English,
German, and French (Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
Liana de Armas Delamarter-Scott and Mabel Menendez were among two of the educators who remained in Cuba to carry out the literacy laws and reinvent public education for the Ministry of Education. The first step in order was to develop a method for teachers across the country to follow (Delamarter-Scott
& Menendez, 2003). Not only was there limited access to paper and printing
materials, but there was also a teacher shortage (Delamarter-Scott & Menendez, 2003).
The key to creating successful curricula was to be resourceful and innovative in their approach.
One way to do so was to compile the teaching of a subject area with language
teaching (Delamarter-Scott, 2003). In other words, to teach content through the
target language. For example, instead of teaching science in one class and English in another, students will learn science
in English. Learners are taught to write, speak, read, and listen in the target
language through the subject area. This method has been coined Content Based Language Teaching (CBLT), (Lightbown & Spada,
1999). In addition to cutting down on the number of teachers and materials needed,
language is usually learned more quickly than in isolated language teaching because the emphasis is on using the language
rather than talking about it (Lightbown & Spada 1999, p. 92).
According to Cohen and Lotan (1997), CBLT is gaining popularity in the United States but still is not readily used. Considerable research is being
done with CBLT and related procedures that is proving it to be a highly effective method.
Much of the research community agrees that CBLT would be enormously advantageous to the TESOL community in the U.S. because of our need to quickly integrate non-native speakers into mainstream classrooms (Cohen and Lotan, 1997). The public education system, however, has not yet been able to incorporate CBLT into
the nationwide curricula.
According to Liana de Armas Delamarter-Scott, after they had identified the teaching
method that would suit the needs of the Ministry of Education, the next step was to write books to distribute to public schools
all over Cuba. They wanted to be sure that teachers
in remote areas were applying the methods correctly. In their books, they instructed
teachers not only on what to teach and how to teach it, but also why they were to teach that way (Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
During my stay in Cuba, I talked to several Cubans on the streets whose primary exposure to English was
merely their two to three years of required language classes in Elementary School. Their
communicative ability in English was excellent. I was shocked to learn that only
two to three years of language instruction made such competence possible. Not
only do Cubans know how to teach languages, but theyve been utilizing this knowledge for over forty years (Delamarter-Scott,
2003).
In 1975 the Ministry of Higher Education was founded, according to Delamarter-Scott. Previously, only the Ministry of Education existed. In the early 1980's the blockade
loosened and Cuba was finally able to receive resources from other countries. The first books they received on language teaching were the Spectrum
series; these are books based on the communicative approach (2003).
Delamarter-Scott expanded the Spectrum
books to meet the specific needs of her students and created the first books written in Cuba for the purpose of preparing students for higher education. She worked
with other students and faculty of the Pedagogical School in the School of Foreign Languages at the University of Havana to
create Separata I in 1992 (Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
An important feature of the Separata series was video instruction. Delamarter-Scott
received videos of the Sadrina Project, which had been edited by the BBC, and transcribed them by hand. The Sadrina Project is a documentary (that) was designed to teach people in the Far East, Mainly
the Chinese, the English language (Proctor, 2003). From her transcriptions, she
created lessons. The students were made to watch the videos and talk about what they saw (Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
This method of language teaching is known as the communicative approach. The communicative approach through the use of videos was first used on economic students at the University
of Havana and is still widely used throughout Cuba today
(Delamarter-Scott, 2003). I visited an elementary school in Havana that had cabinets full of instructional videos; some in English and some in Spanish.
Currently, the University of Havana uses the Interchange series, an internationally used textbook that incorporates
videos and workbooks to teach English (Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is a method that is popular in the modern
TESOL field. According to Jack Richards, the communicative task
[is] a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or
interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form (2002). For example, students of economics at the University level might watch videos about current economic issues
or trends. After the film, the teacher would lead a classroom discussion or put
students into groups for small-group discussion to analyze the message relayed in the video (Lightbown & Spada, 1999). This is an ideal example of how CLT and CBLT can work together. Students become engaged in the meaning of the task instead of on the intricacies of the language that they
are learning (Lightbown & Spada, 1999).
These days, Delamarter-Scott is preparing curricula for the workers at Mercedes
Benz. She creates lessons from Mercedes advertisements. Since her students are currently employed at Mercedes Benz, they are familiar with the product. They are motivated to learn English because they already have an invested interest in the content area
(Delamarter-Scott, 2003).
The Ministry of Tourism uses a similar technique to teach English to those who work in the tourism industry. Nilda Ricardo Garcell is the General Coordinator of the Department of Languages of Formatur. According to Garcell, Formatur was created in 1995 as part of the Ministry of Tourism. People who work in all fields of tourism must go through extensive training before they are allowed to
work with tourists. Some of the jobs require people to be bilingual or multilingual,
depending on how closely they will work with the public. There are eighteen Formatur schools in Cuba. Over 60,000 people have graduated from the language program alone. English, German, and French are some of the most important languages to tourism in
Cuba. Gaining prevalence are Italian,
Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese (Garcell, 2003).
One of the most significant demands on LT in Formatur currently is to decrease the time it takes to teach languages
to its students (Faxas, 2003). Tourism is growing and there is a great demand
for bilingual personnel; the sooner they can get students out of training and into the workforce, the better it is for Cuba's economy.
Osvaldo
Cabrera Faxas is the Program Coordinator of National Languages for Formatur. During
an interview with him I learned that in the past, Formatur has used Interchange, Spectrum, and other international methods.
An interesting feature of Formatur is that students study and work in inter-sessions.
Students work for term and then study for a term, continually reentering the program (Faxas, 2003).
Originally, Formatur's language program lasted a year and a half (Faxas, 2003). They are working to shorten the length considerably. Formatur teaches language basics
to beginners and then structure, or grammar, through CBLT (Faxas, 2003). According
to Faxas, it is important for those who work face to face with tourists to learn to listen and speak in the target language. However, for some administrative positions, reading and writing bear greater importance
(2003).
I spoke with two of Osvaldo's students who were in upper management and director positions in the Ministry of Tourism. They were learning English to gain competency in international business meetings. Osvaldo's students were in the beginning stages of conversational fluency but knew
many technical words unique to the Tourism industry. Their final exam, for example,
was a PowerPoint presentation on how Tourism in Cuba compares to that of other
countries. While giving the presentation, they used a substantial amount of vocabulary
unique to the field. This is a fine example of CLT as well as of CBLT.
When I asked Osvaldo's students how they learned Tourism-specific vocabulary, Gonzalo Rios Andres,
the Director of the Ministry of Tourism, said that he reads business reports in English from the Internet. In the TESOL field, this method is called discourse analysis (Brown, 2000).
Discourse analysis is the analysis of the relationship between forms and functions
of language . . . which encompasses the notion that language is more than a sentence-level phenomenon . . . We use language
in stretches in discourse (Brown, 2000 p. 253). A common classroom usage of discourse
analysis is to have learners read several different pieces on the same topic. Learners
see the same vocabulary and chunks (words that often occur together such as on the other hand, for example) reoccur in different
pieces of writing (Schmitt, 2000). The next step in discourse analysis would
be to have students create their own text on their chosen topic, using some of the vocabulary and chunks gleaned from the
texts they read. One way that discourse analysis is helpful is that learners
can read the same vocabulary and word chunks repeatedly, providing a variety of contexts with which the learner can associate
the lexical information (Schmitt, 2000).
Where does one find such a wide array of field-specific texts? Corpora or corpuses (singular: corpus) are simply large collections or databases of language, incorporating
stretches of discourse ranging from a few words to entire books (Schmitt, 2000, p. 68).
The best place to find corpora are online from linguistics websites that are created specifically for teachers and
learners of languages. On such a website, a chemist or a mechanic can access
hundreds of texts pertinent to his field.
Suppose that a student of economics is reading an article in a corpus and comes
across a word that is new to her. Instead of looking up the word in a translation
dictionary, she can type the word into a concordancer. A concordancer is a tool
available on most corpora websites that will pull up all of the collocations that are associated with a word (Schmitt, 2000,
p. 78). Collocation refers to the tendency of two or more words to co-occur in
discourse . . . (Schmitt, 2000, p. 76).
The findings of corpora research are useful for learners who need to acquire academic
or field-specific vocabulary (Brown, 2000). Osvaldo could use discourse analysis
to familiarize his students with terms specific to the tourism industry. Liana
might do the same with her students at Mercedes-Benz. The School
of Modern Languages at the University of Havana could
use it for purposes of discourse analysis with their economic students, as could the Ministry of Education to teach history
or science.
Unfortunately, however, technology in Cuba does not allow the use of online resources to be commonplace. Power lines
and telephone lines are not reliable, and modern computers are far too expensive to stock in every classroom, home, and office. It is not likely that Internet access will become widespread in Cuba any time in the near future. There is simply not much that can be done
about the technological barrier today, but I believe that there is something to be done.
In order to help Cuba reach
its TESOL education goals, the first step is to increase the circulation of printed materials on new techniques and research. Some textbooks that make use of corpora findings have already been written. As readily available as Internet resources are in the U.S., I
would like to see the creation of more textbooks that incorporate lexical information about the way that language is actually
used, as is found in corpora linguistics. Another textbook idea is to publish
collections of field-specific texts to be used for discourse analysis. There
are plenty of such texts available to us online. Why don't we print them and
use them for course curricula? This would also help the spread of CBLT as a commonly
used method in American classrooms.
If the first step is to create more printed materials, then the next step is to
get them to Cuba. There are grant programs available
that support educational and research-oriented interactions with Cuba. Perhaps more people, particularly those writing textbooks and those who are in research,
could apply for such grants with the intent to donate new materials that meet the needs of Cuban educators. Education begins with the acquiescence that we can learn from others.
I hope that we can initiate an educational relationship with Cuba in
the near future by sharing what resources we have.
