Company goal: to improve the EFL syllabus

EFL Magic is dedicated to the idea that English is being learned as a foreign language by billions of people, young and old, to facilitate better international communication.

The ability to learn a language for communication is what makes us human. It is a natural process and should be enjoyable and rewarding on its own terms. Consequently, EFL learning materials and syllabuses should strive to be engaging, especially when meant for young learners.

EFL Magic believes students around the world can efficiently and happily learn English communicative skills with the aid of well-designed teaching materials.

The EFL private sector is growing

Part-time and supplemental English study programs are now commonplace in developing countries worlwide. They typically include classroom instruction and are often taught by native-speaking, or near-native-speaking level, teachers.

A growing number of people, especially children, will learn English through such part-time study, either in public school systems or in private schools. However, if the EFL curriculum, teaching, and support materials are not optimized for successful English acquisition, progress can be slow or discouraging. This is not surprising, as English is an enormous and complicated language.

In recently developed countries, such as Taiwan, families budget significant time and money for after-school English lessons for young learners. The public school curriculum may cover English to an impressively high level, but unfortunately the curriculum usually emphasizes grammar analysis and rote memorization over communication and composition. This problem is especially acute in Asia, where most high school graduates cannot hold a basic conversation even after several years of study.

EFL Magic believes the consumer-driven private school market will support the use quality materials and methods that raise EFL effectiveness. There is certainly room for improvement in most facets of this young industry.

Quality is questionable; acquisition is slow

A short examination of the debate among ESL/EFL theoreticians would lead most people to conclude that even the experts know very little about second language acquisition and the effectiveness of various teaching methods. The strongest predictor of student progress is neither curriculum nor method, but simply time spent by the student.

Likewise, a survey of EFL and ESL teachers around the world would lead most to believe that the English education industry hobbles along on the shoulders of teachers, who simply do their best using the materials that have been provided to them.

These materials, including the texts, are often dull and ineffective. Yet, efficient language acquisition requires stimulation and motivation, especially with young learners. Thus, it is not surprising that many EFL and ESL teachers jealously guard their personal collections of teaching aids, as if they were valuable treasures. Few experienced teachers are totally satisfied with the textbooks, workbooks, readers, audiovisual aids or syllabus which they are required to use.

It is fair to say that in many cases English acquisition is actually inhibited by the use of poorly designed materials. This inhibition is not only transmitted to the students directly from the tedious materials, it is also amplified through the teacher, who becomes more and more tedious by trying to use the materials that have been given to him.

The high enrollment at private extra-study schools reflects an attempt by consumers to compensate for the backwardness of public school English instruction. In the private schools, at least the students speak, communicate, and interact with each other and with true speakers of English. They usually even play games. This is an improvement, but whether consumers are actually getting their money's worth is doubtful, because the materials used in the private schools are only slightly more stimulating than those in the public schools.

Many of the products currently dominating the EFL/ESL educational market are criticized by students and teachers as boring, unengaging and condescending.

The syllabus needs updating

A great deal of EFL/ESL young learners materials suffer from lack of appeal because they are based on hand-me-down thinking in the first place. In the post Harry Potter world, Tom and Sally Go on a Picnic just doesn't cut it with kids anymore.

The syllabuses embedding within most children's ESL/EFL textbook series, including the top sellers, were derived from a de-facto standard syllabus that has been handed down from the days when grammar-translation was the only way to teach. It didn't work well with adults, and it hardly ever works with children.

Furthermore, very little allowance has ever been made for divergance between the students' native tongues and the target language, English. The Eurocentric syllabuses that dominate the EFL/ESL market must be updated to reflect different acquisition problems faced by students speaking the tongues of other language families altogether. For example, a German student studying English will immediately grasp the notion of past tense, whereas a Chinese student won't see the need for tense or verb conjugation at all. So why are Chinese students studying from the same texts that Germans are studying from?

EFL Magic believes the the teaching of English as a foreign language can be improved and internationalized in both private classroom settings and public school settings. It is a matter of respecting fundamentals of natural learning and planning an intelligent syllabus that pays attention to constraints and the age level of the students. This represents a market opportunity and a chance to improve the level of global communication for the next generation. Considering the damage past generations have already done to the earth, the least we can do is give our children the chance to make internationalism work.