Teacher training for Sri Lanka:

PRINSETT
Charles Parish and
Raymond W. Brown

The firstpart of this article presents an outline of the organization

of a new
in-service teacher-training
programme
in Sri Lanka, one designed to cope
with the serious problem of preparing untrained teachers of English for the
school system.
This programme
(PRINSETT:
Professional
In-Service
English-Teacher
Training) parallels the teachers college certificate programme. Because of its carefully planned integration
of components,
however, it is seen as an important
improvement
over the traditional
teachertraining programme.
An outline of the background, organization,
syllabus,
and monitoring
is given.
The second part discusses the rationale for and the make-up of the core
component
of the programme,
which is designed to do three important
things: (1) provide language-development
materials for the trainees, (2)
provide background in methodological
theory for both trainees and tutors,
and (3) provide teacher-training
focus for the tutors of the course. The
attempt has been to develop a totally integrated programme,
combining
both theory and practice, and to demonstrate
important
concepts of the
unitary nature of language learning and teaching. The article concludes
with parts of a sample lesson based on a non-technical
methodology
text
(James J. Ashers Learning Another Language Through Actions), in the
attempt to show how the three goals mentioned
above are met.

Background

The demand for English language teaching has been growing steadily in Sri
Lanka. To meet this need, the Ministry
of Education
has been regularly
recruiting
new teachers since 1982. These teachers are usually given a few
weeks pre-service
crash training,
when they are posted to schools where
the need for teachers
is greatest,
generally
in less-privileged
areas of the
Island. Normally,
these teachers would expect to follow a two-year residential teacher-training
course after a period of two to three years of teaching
service.
In addition
to this recruitment,
the Ministry,
in 1984, opened a number
of District English Language
Improvement
Centres
(DELICs),
the purpose of which was to provide
one year of intensive
English-language
training to prospective
teachers. These centres (originally
19, reduced to 15
because of the current ethnic troubles)
are staffed by Peace Corps Volunteers, American
Friends
Service
Volunteers,
and selected
Sri Lankan
counterparts.
Those who successfully
complete
that course are channelled
like the first group.
But by 1985 it became apparent
that this twin recruitment
system was
ELT Journal Volume42/1 January 1988 Oxford University Press 1988

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21

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generating
a much greater number of untrained
teachers than could possibly be handled
by the English teachers colleges: there are approximately
400 places per year and approximately
6,000 teachers
awaiting
training,
with more to come from the DELICs.
It became obvious that this backlog
could not be cleared for a large number of years. To respond to this problem
PRINSETT
was instituted.
PRINSETT
(Professional
In-Service
English-Teacher
Training)
serves
about
1,000 teachers
who meet at six centres
on weekends
for twenty
months;
they work at their normal teaching
posts from Tuesday
through
Friday. At the end of that period, these teachers will sit the same examination as the trainees in the teachers colleges, and the successful candidates
will receive the same trained-teacher
certificate.
The six centres are located
according
to the number
of untrained
teacher applicants
in various eduBandarawela,
Colombo,
Galle,
cational
districts
(Anuradhapura,
Kurunegala,
and Ratnapura).
There are 70 to 250 trainees at the Centres,
and four to ten staff members
(tutors).
The trainees
participation
is
voluntary,
and although
they lose the freedom
of their weekends,
their
motivation
is strong. First, they qualify to sit the examination;
second, their
personal
and professional
lives are not disrupted;
third, they are the four
out of five who did not qualify for admission
to the training
colleges.
The PRINSETT
syllabus

Structure of the overall

programme

22

In principle,
the syllabus
for this Programme
is the same as that of the
teachers
colleges
because
of the common
examination
requirement.
Besides studies in general education
and psychology,
the colleges offer four
specialist
areas: language development,
language-teaching
methodology,
introduction
to ELT and traditional
literature,
and linguistics
for language
teaching.
These are usually taught by different
lecturers,
each heading
toward his or her own destination,
with the depressing
result that trainees
usually
go through
their course and emerge
from it with little or no
conception
of how those areas relate to each other or to the practical
problems
of the classroom.
There are two radical differences
between
that programme
and PRINSETT. First, there is a determined
coherence
among the academic
staff,
which consists
of two British
Council
consultants
and one American
Fulbright
consultant,
who have agreed to establish
and maintain
as meaningful a relationship
among the component
areas as possible.
Secondly,
a
most valuable consequence
of the in-service nature of the Programme
is the
regular linking of course-content
to the daily teaching
experiences
of the
trainees;
they return to their classes every Tuesday
with new ideas and
techniques
to try out -unlike
the students
in the training
colleges,
who
have to wait two years before they can put into practice in any real way the
things they are learning.
The Core Component is the constant feature of every session of the course in its
early phrase.
It is the exclusive
basis of the 14-hour weekend
session, an
integrated
component
embracing
the same four specialist
areas of the

Charles Parish and Raymond W. Brown

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training
colleges. A text of varying length, one to six single-spaced
pages,
provides
the material for the component
(see below under Texts). As much
varied activity as possible is derived from the text, most of it directed
to
small-group
work, and after each participatory
task, as much discussion
as
feasible is centred on principles,
rationale,
and classroom
application
of the
specific activity. Thus, language-development
tasks, discussion
of underlying methodology
and participant
reaction,
application
to the participants
texts and classes, and preparation
for teaching
constitute
the focus of the
core.
Given fifty tutors of widely divergent
backgrounds,
skills, experience,
and training
as teacher trainers,
however, a teachers guide consisting
of
specific guidelines
for conducting
the lessons is indispensable.
Rigorous
instructions,
cautions,
suggestions
for management
of the activities,
background information
both technical
and literary are provided
for the tutors.
As much justification
and analysis
as possible
is given of the skills and
subskills,
so that the tutors will understand,
rather than perform blindly.
The education
of the tutors is as important
in the total Programme
as that
of the participants,
for obvious reasons. The Guidelines
allow significant
control of quality, timing, and emphasis,
as well as the actual information
to be passed on to the participants.
The Focus Component comprises
additional
and extended
materials,
the
principal
areas of which are classroom
management,
teaching the language
skills, introduction
to the Sri Lankan primary and secondary
materials,
the
set literary
texts, linguistics
for language
teaching,
and introduction
to
practical
phonology.
Each is treated to the appropriate
extent in a short,
locally produced
book, which is used during periods of concentrated
focus,
together
with core-component
materials
or alone.
The Practical Teaching Component has three elements:
(1) Pre-microteaching, which utilizes
a collection
of locally produced
lesson transcripts;
(2) microteaching,
which emphasizes
16 component
skills; and (3) teaching
practice.
Here is the list of skills dealt with in the first two of these elements.
Pre-Microteaching Phase
General
Teaching
Skills:
1 Rephrasing
2 Witholding
feedback
3 Rephrasing
a pupils error
4 Extending
a pupils response
5 Responding
by giving turns to
others
6 Repairing
breakdowns
7 Varying
the input
8 Setting the challenge
9 Establishing
rapport
10 Maintaining
rapport
11 Encouraging
12 Teacher
movement
and use of
classroom
space
13 Getting
attention
14 The teachers
voice

Microteaching Phase
General Teaching
Skills:
1 Set induction
2 Organization
and instructions
3 Questioning:
whole-class
involvement
4 Questioning:
redirection/
extension
5 Questioning:
using different
structures
6 Questioning:
using different
semantic
types
7 Use of visual aids
8 Elicitation
9 Correction
10 Use of the blackboard
11 Reading:
establishing
general
understanding
before details
12 Reading:
eliciting vocabulary
meaning
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13 Writing:
blackboard
development
of a composition
14 Oral: exploiting
a dialogue
15 Listening:
focussing
attention
on the task to be done
16 Listening:
reading of a passage
from notes
From Microteaching:
Lecturers
Guidelines,
Teacher
Education
Unit,
Division of English Education.
Colombo,
Sri Lanka: Curriculum
Development Centre,
May 1986.

Monitoring and staff

development

The core

component

and the sample

lesson-plan

The PRINSETT
Centres
are monitored
frequently
by someone from the
Unit, for the purpose of spotting
actual and incipient problems,
for example
poor attendance,
difficulties
with text and activities,
and logistical factors
such as the condition
of the facilities.
Orientation
courses for the tutors
were held twice before the onset of the Programme.
One-day
workshops
to
discuss
materials
and their effectiveness,
as well as to share teaching
experiences,
are convened
periodically.
Monitoring
focuses especially
on
the inter-relationship
between
tutors and participants:
we remain keenly
aware that the training
in the overall Programme
is multilevel
and multidirectional,
with its contents
and principles
in constant
dynamic
interaction. The tutors are being trained as teacher trainers,
and the participants
both as students
and as teachers.
The participants
interaction
with the
tutors is shaped by their dual role as learners in relation to the tutors and as
teachers in relation to their own students.
Only by constant
examination
of
themselves
in their multiple
roles can everyone
benefit
fully, and the
function
of the PRINSETT
Programme
is to facilitate
and sustain
this
complex
process.
The permanent
objectives
of the Programme,
thus, are the improvement
of
the language
skills of the participants
(and of the tutors),
the majority
of
whom have a simple pass in their O-Level
examination;
the teaching
of
methodology
and teaching
techniques,
both to help pass the exam and to
create effective classroom
teachers;
and the training of the tutors as teacher
trainers.
Given the limited
strength
of all the links in this pedagogical
chain, it would be an exercise in futility to indulge in methodological
or
theoretical
abstractions.
Generalizations
about procedures
would communicate little, and any hope that theory would eventually
find its way into
practice
is at best unrealistic.
The soundest
approach
to all the above
objectives
seems to be what D. S. Taylor calls the theory of practice.
Taylor poses this question:
How can language
teachers
and teacher trainees be brought
to see this
overall
theoretical
framework
and to develop
this integrated
way of
looking at things, which they need to make sense of their activities
...?
The answer lies in the suggestion
offered earlier, that theory comes out of
practice,
and must be seen to do so
Theory is to be found in practice,
therefore,
and there must be no separation
of the two. We should perhaps
not talk about theory AND practice
but theory OF practice.
(Taylor
1985)
Taylor cites Desforges
and McNamara
(1979), who speak of a process of
making explicit the theories which in fact inform practice
and permits the

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Charles Parish and Raymond W. Brown

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critical examination
of these theories.
The PRINSETT
core component
presents just those activities
that Taylor espouses:
participation
in and
observation
of lessons,
discussion
and analysis
of these lessons and of
The lessons avoid any formal separamicro- and peer-teaching
sessions.
tion
into
theoretical
and
practical
components;
no comment
on
methodological
theory occurs without a specific reference
to the practical
activity of the language
tasks themselves.
The PRINSETT
lessons are entirely and exclusively
text-based,
and the
selection
of texts, while an impressionistic
one, conforms
with the overall
syllabus of the teachers colleges, in spirit if not in letter. A micro focus on
the text requires short texts, and that focus leads easily, almost inevitably,
to a full integration
of language
skills, as will be seen from the Sample
Lesson.
Further,
exploiting
a text for all its potential
allows the course
designer
to use everything.
The earlier discussion
of the Guidelines
pointed
out the rationale
for
rigorous
(occasionally
admonitory
and even nagging)
directions
to the
teaching personnel.
The saving grace of such an approach
is this: tutors are
intended
to discuss
their approach
and procedures
with the teachers
in
training.
If they are warned to be careful with a given activity or a specific
subskill, it is assumed
that as trainers,
they will share with the participants
both the warning
and the reason for it. Constant
analysis is the prevailing
wind in the classroom;
both tutors and trainees must sail before it. Both are
responsible
to each other, and both must literally respond
to each other.
Texts

The texts used thus far are these; some,

double lessons (18 texts, 26 lessons):

because

of their richness,

provided

Travelling
Cheaply
(essay: 1 page)
Shes Leaving Home (Beatles song: 1 page)
Standard
English and Second language
varieties
(Peter Strevens,
Orientations in the Teaching of English: 2 pages)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel, George Orwell,
selections
from Chapter

New
1: 2

pages)
The Postmaster
(short story, Rabindranath
Tagore: 4 pages; 2 parts)
Mending
Wall (poem, Robert Frost: 1 page)
Pour soul, the centre of my sinful earth (sonnet,
Shakespeare:
1 page)
Principles of Language Study (selections,
Harold Palmer:
12 pages)
Learning Another Language Through Actions (Introduction,
James
Asher: 1
page)
A Way and Ways (Unspoken
messages,
Earl Stevick: 2 pages)
Pygmalion (play, G. B. Shaw, summarizing
selections:
5 pages; 2 parts)
Language
testing today (Interview,
John Oller: 4 pages; 2 parts)
The High Chair (short story, S. Kulatunge:
3 pages)
Animal Fan (novel, George Orwell, Chapter
1: 4 pages; 2 parts)
Teaching
Composition
to Large Classes (Duncan Dixon: 6 pages; 3 parts)
Ten Language
Learning
Strategies
(H. H. Stern: 4 pages; 2 parts)
Introduction
to fluency and speaking activities
(C. Parish and E. Porter,
An Integrated Course in English for the A-Level in Sri Lanka: 4 pages; 2 parts)
Introduction
to listening
comprehension
(Parish and Porter: 3 pages; 2
parts).
Our conclusion
is that almost any essay, short story, poem with a narrative
content,
novel, or play will provide
ample material
for the apparently
random language
tasks in the lessons. Randomness
is not a negative factor,
Teacher trainingfor Sri Lanka: PRINSETT

25

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given the potential

of the average text, If you want to concentrate
on a single
language skill, however, this approach
will not work; a Shakespeare
sonnet
will offer little in a concerted
drive to produce
listening-comprehension
tasks, and the extract from Ashers text on Total Physical
Response
will
resist adaptation
to fluency activities, dialogue construction,
and role plays.
The package of assorted
language
activities,
with their attendant
discussions of methodological
principles,
carries an important
fringe benefit for
both trainers
and teacher-trainees:
they come to see that any text can be
mined, and there is always profitable
ore to be extracted.
They may learn to
be imaginative
in adapting
and optimizing
their own or any other text.
Tasks

and activities

in the PRINSETT
lessons

The following catalogue

of applied tasks summarizes
that accompany
each of the texts in the programme:

the kinds

of activity

Listening Comprehension: L-C scanning

questions,
content questions,
passages
(concentration -memory),
dictation,
note-taking.

cloze

(of content,
values, culture, methodology,
etc.),
Speaking/fluency: D iscussion
dialogue-reading,
debate (roles specified),
role play, functions
(questioning, answering,
getting information,
caution, frustration,
emotions,
probability -certainty),
dialogues
with specified functions,
information
transfer,
appropriate
intonation,
dialect pronunciation.
Reading: scanning,
skimming,
full comprehension
and critical questions,
idiom study, synonym definition,
antonyms,
paragraph
analysis (explanatory, descriptive,
argument),
reading cloze, function-word
cloze, reading
aloud,
vocabulary
study, metaphor,
poetic imagery,
theme,
structural
unity, literary language,
dialect, setting,
irony, point of view, analysis of
character.
Writing: introductory
paragraphs,
topic sentences,
types of paragraphs,
types of composition,
paragraph
organization,
paragraph
unity, coherence
and transition,
conclusions,
outlining,
paraphrasing,
summaries,
rephrasing in modern
idiom, tense-changing,
direct to indirect
speech (and vice
versa), first drafts and revision,
correction,
expansion,
dialogues.
Linguistic analysis: phonology
(plurals,
third singular,
possessives,
contracted is), prepositional
phrases,
present tense, noun modifiers,
notional
(Time).
Lesson plans based on this catalogue
accompany
each of the texts, and are
detailed
and specific. The one based on James Asher and Total Physical
Response
(TPR), for example,
includes the text for the tutors introduction
to the subject; extracts from Ashers book for trainees to listen to (they can
listen either to their tutors reading the text aloud or to a recording
of it); a
series of twenty-five
carefully worded questions;
Guidance
notes for tutors;
and a checklist
of the student
sheets for all the activities.
Here is a brief
summary
of the lesson, a full transcript
of which is available
on request.
Introduction:

Preliminary

Question
nos.
1234
5678
9 10
11 12
13 14 15
26

information

about

James

Asher

and TPR

Tasks and activities

A Listening
and notetaking
B Dictation
C Reading
D Listening-cloze
test
E Scanning
activities

Charles Parish and Raymond W. Brown

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F Word study: synonyms

and definitions
G Cohesive
devices and structures
H Staged discussion
of Ashers theory
I Applying
TPR in elementary
classes
J TPR as supplementary
activity

16
17
18-23
24
25

Lessons of this kind present the tutors and trainees with task-based
work in
both language
and methodology.
The response
is that both tasks and
analyses of methodology
are re-entered
again and again into the lessons; if
they
are treated
lightly,
that
is appropriate
to their
novelty
and
unfamiliarity
to the participants.
The aim is to make them increasingly
familiar
activities
and concepts
and to segment the principles,
choosing
simple components
first and reserving depth and complexity
for later. Our
lesson structure
allows such phasing;
it also demands
such variety. The
constant shift of activity
under these conditions
is perceived
as both refreshing and necessary.
All in all, the results after a full year have been gratifying.
Participants
are engaged in language
tasks and methodological
analysis that they have
never before been exposed to. The active-participatory
approach
is nontraditional
and completely
novel in their experience.
The work is demanding, but the response
is extremely
positive. The dreaded
Theory is never
treated as a separate
topic; it appears only in a clearly relevant relationship
to the text and its language-teaching
function.
The trainees learn practice
and they learn theory, and it is certain that sometimes
they dont know
exactly which is which!
Received April 1987

References

The authors

Desforges, C. and D. McNamara. 1979. Theory and

practice: methodological
procedures for the objectification
of craft knowledge.
British Journal of Teacher
Education 5/2:142-52.
(Cited in Taylor
1985.)
Taylor, D. S. 1985. The place of methodology in the

Raymond
Brown
worked
in the PRINSETT
programme
for four years,
and is now Postgraduate
Development
Consultant
at the Centre
for English
Language
Teaching,
Ain Shams
University,
Cairo.
Charles
Parish is a Fulbright
consultant,
working
in
Sri Lanka for two years before his return
to the Linguistics Department,
Southern
Illinois University.

training
of language
theory and practice.

teachers

and

the integration

System13/1:37-41.

of

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