Teaching is speaking

Abstract

In his opening plenary at the 2015 IATEFL Conference, Donald Freeman examined a series of central ideas that are often taken for granted in the field of ELT. These ideas, he said, act as the foundation for a raft of common prescriptions informing teachers’ work. They are rarely questioned but are instead allowed to shape our thoughts about how teaching and learning work, our role in the classroom, and the main objective of English teaching. Unchallenged, these ideas take on the semblance of common sense, becoming what he called myths that govern what teachers do, and while not necessarily right or wrong they have both useful and misleading aspects. Freeman (2015) argued that unless these myths are examined in terms of these two aspects, ELT would remain ‘frozen in thought’. He reinforced this point by quoting Caleb Gattegno: ‘You can be lived by your preconceptions, which will make you a bad teacher.’ I would like to discuss Freeman’s thoughts on proficiency and how these relate to the practice of testing teachers’ spoken English.