Soviet Teaching Methods Strangle Innovation

Whenever one visits a foreign country, danger always lurks in making judgments too quickly about the population. After all, there is unlimited data to understand about the culture, history, language – well, everything about the place. But one must function based on what one knows and sees to date. And so I write this entry with the caveat that I’ve spent a scant two months in Almaty and have gotten some impressions, many of which have been formed by contact with my students. So, let’s talk about them.

I teach two classes of undergraduates. Since our Academic Reading and Writing is a gateway course to the others at the university, it means we have students who are new to the university system, in other words, Freshmen. As odious as the task is in the U.S. to indoctrinate them into the culture of academic rigor and inquiry, it means they have practically zilch study skills, and need I say anything about writing ability? I have some students who have spent a year abroad in the states. They are much better at writing and critical thinking. The others have limited English and in some cases an even more restricted attention span or interest in being there. So, along with helping them learn to speak, read, write, and take notes in English, we have to answer questions such as “How many days can I miss before it affects my grade?”

KIMEP is an all-English university. (Most instructors are foreign-born and speak some version of English, many of whom are not all that intelligible to me. But that probably goes both ways.) As much as I find these students lacking in their English, they come out shining when compared to the students at the neighboring Agro University, I’m told, which attracts students from small villages who speak only Kazakh. Along with such lack of exposure to English comes their nonexistent exposure to Western teaching methods. That means they learn – and expect to be taught – by the very Soviet style methods I described in my earlier entry – arm up, stand up, recite, sit down. Repeat as necessary until all the exercises have been gone over. This is the entire class! Teachers do not dare stray from the drill-and-kill exercises in the book, nor do students expect there will be anything asked of them beyond getting the answer right. This of course flies in the face of the teaching methodologies more progressive institutions are encouraging, i.e., asking open- ended questions as well as encouraging dialog, self-discovery of answers, critical thinking about issues, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the Soviet-style system is self-perpetuating because teachers taught via the old Soviet system do not always know alternative ways of presenting material, thereby spawning another generation of students who in turn want their own children to be taught that way because “that’s how we did it.” I s’pose that way of thinking goes for any educational system in the world unless someone seeks out change.

The director of our MA TESOL program at is doing just that by offering seminars on reading, writing, and critical thinking to about 40 colleagues in the Language Center. I am particularly interested in assisting with these seminars since my training has taught me that organization and reasoning should be the targets of writing instruction, not the misplaced comma. We begin these seminars in a few weeks. I’m sure I will learn a lot too, thereby providing ample fodder for this blog. Stay tuned.

Best,
Nancy