The quality systems that are applied and used in large companies with great success can also be applied from one language class to the entire school in general, this article talks about some of the characteristics that a language class must have and some of the continuous improvement systems that can be applied school wide. This article talks about a brief description of the methods that existed and are still used today in many of the language schools in our country, below it talks about the role that the curriculum plays within a class, the steps that must be taken to ensure that There is successful learning and a continuous improvement system that can be implemented to achieve a higher quality school.
Through the years there have been various methods of teaching a language, The Grammar Translation Method that survives to our times and which originated for the study of dead languages, as its name implies is translation, nor does it include oral communication or comprehension auditory, does not create a communicative competence. There is also the Direct Method, it is based on the way we acquire our mother tongue, it focuses on oral communication, the spontaneous use of the language, and most importantly it helps you develop the ability to think in a second language, in this method does not occur translation at any time. At the beginning of the Second World War, the Army Method appeared, through this method, the military quickly learned languages (communicative competence) focusing on oral skills,in memorization, and there was an overlearning, because of the fast way in which they needed to learn. Then comes Community Language Learning, which was the first method in which the students were considered as clients, where the first thing that should be worked on were the interpersonal relationships of the students, they analyzed their fears, their expectations, their anxieties, etc..
In The Silent Way Method the teacher plays a very important role because he is a facilitator and a stimulator, he provokes the students to participate in class and be responsible for their learning.
Suggestopedia talks about how to create a level of concentration to facilitate learning, that is, create the ideal conditions for learning to be more effective, this is through music, etc.
Total Physical Response also talks about how to stimulate memory and how we can increase it through physical activity, that is, combining the two hemispheres of our brain. The Natural Approach that talks about bringing real-life situations to the classroom, through role playing, group work, etc., and finally the Communicative Method, which its main function is to communicate, no matter if we have errors, or what be it in written or oral form.
These are just some of the most common methods that are still used today. Each school or institute is focused on increasing or developing all or only some of the 4 skills that exist in teaching a language, which are: speaking, listening, writing and reading, the method used will depend on which skill is the who wants to work. To begin with, each Institute or language school must have this well established, since that is the service offered to clients, the more defined it is, the better, to avoid confusion and nonconformities.
The curriculum plays a very important role within an institute, many times it is confused with the study program, since it is not the same, the study program includes the topics that will be seen during the class period, and the curriculum is this same program but based and appropriate to the group or groups that we have at that time, according to their needs and expectations, the curriculum describes the activities that will be done with the current group, therefore the curriculum is dynamic, not static.
An ideal language class regardless of age, objectives, and skills to be met must have a sequence of activities: WARM UP, PRESENTATION, PRACTICE, PRODUCTION and EVALUATION, if any of these are missing it is likely that they are not being carrying out successful learning.
In all language teaching there must be a quality cycle and this includes:
Plan-act-evaluate-improve (plan-act-evaluate-improve)
Planning occurs at all educational levels and consists of planning units, courses, periods. It can be daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Acting, this includes the intentional activities that are carried out to meet the objectives, implement the plans and produce results. Evaluation includes monitoring and review. Monitoring generates data and the review analyzes it. The improvement completes this cycle, once the data is available, it is used as feedback and to generate improvements.
As I said before, any of the principles used in successful businesses can be internalized and applied to education, for example what is sought in those big businesses is that their products or services satisfy their clients, schools and language institutes provide services too.
The first step will be analysis, knowing if our services are really meeting the needs of our students, if they are happy, if they are really learning, if the money they are paying is proportional to the service they are receiving, how can we know this through evaluations: evaluation of teachers, service, efficiency, etc., to obtain more true results, not only one evaluation can be applied, but also several, in a given time.
Once the results are obtained, the next step is to document them, that is to say that once the results of these surveys have been analyzed, prepare documents where these are reflected, it must be taken into account that the preparation of these documents is not wasteful. Time, if not the contrary, once the continuous improvement systems have been applied, it will be easier to compare the results with those that already exist, and to know if an improvement is really taking place. It will also be important to document the objective of our institute or language school, the study programs, the curricula of each teacher, the results of the evaluations of the students' learning, this can be by means of graphs where their development is observed.
Now it is time to implement a continuous improvement system, in this case I will speak of quality circles, quality circles are small groups of people belonging to the same work area, who meet in order to identify, analyze, and solve quality problems, the goals of quality circles is that the company in this case the school develops and improves, that the workers are satisfied and that each worker discovers and improves their capabilities. In bilingual schools for example there is a coordination of English and Spanish, there may be a quality circle in the English department and another in the Spanish department, the members of these quality circles must be people who know or who are in contact with your work area, the selection of these can be by voting,meetings to analyze where improvement is required must also be to provide solutions, it is useless to detect problems if measures are not being taken to solve them, management plays a very important role in carrying out this system of Quality, without their support, simply, no quality system can be carried out, since these require time, effort and many times money.
This is just one example of how any quality system that large companies use to schools can be implemented and just as I exemplified only one of them, there are many that can help us improve our educational services, it is only a matter of availability and Being ready for change, always keeping in mind that the implementation of a quality system in our workplace brings many advantages, and among them is that our institution is more competitive and that income is higher.
