Introduction

Throughout his successful career in the area of TEFL, Dr. José Luis Ortega Martín has obtained numerous achievements. He is a principal lecturer at the University of Granada in the Department of Didactics of Language and Literature in Spain. He holds a PhD in English Philology from the University of Granada and in 2003 he received an honorary doctoral recognition in Teaching of Language and Literature (cum laude) also from the University of Granada. He is a member of different scientific committees of several international journals. In addition,he has given conferences and taught at more than ten European and American universities, and has authored and contributed to more than ten books and chapters, as well as published papers in the areas of TEFL, teacher training, classroom management, motivation, and bilingualism, amongst others.

In the frame of his visit to the “V Seminar of Applied Linguistics” at University of Guanajuato, where he gave a presentation titled “Identifying good practices in bilingual education: The case of Spain”, he granted us an interview to talk about his work. Ortega started by describing how he began in the ELT profession and later moved on to become a teacher trainer in Spain. He continued remarking on the importance of motivation for teachers’ professional development, as well as suggesting some ways in which the profession can be improved in Spain. He also contrasted the status of the profession both in Mexico and Spain, discussed the importance of English as a lingua franca, and shared his perspective for the future of ELT.

Ortega as an English Teacher

The way in which Dr. Ortega discovered his calling for the ELT profession is a curious story. As a young man, Ortega did not plan to study linguistics. He initially decided to become a lawyer. Nevertheless, after his first day in law school, Ortega realized that he did not like it, and remembered how much he enjoyed his English classes that he had taken from a young age. Therefore, he decided to study English Linguistics at the University of Granada. At 24, Ortega became an English teacher at Escolapios School in Granada, Spain. As a novice teacher, he started teaching at primary, later moving to secondary education, and finally teaching at university level, the experience that gave him the most satisfaction as a teacher. He mentions this change to university teaching in the following:

I decided to work in University, because I thought that I didn’t want to be teaching the same things for the rest of my teaching life. I wanted to start working and training teachers and give my support to any other teachers that came to the school where I worked. Sometimes they knew English, but they didn’t know how to teach it.

As Ortega shared, although he enjoyed his work, he wanted “to go beyond teaching a language, and started training other teachers to try to be better”. To be able to do this, Ortega points out that:

…[English teachers] have to work as a team and see how we can improve our teaching skills. We need to work with the general idea of going all of us for, more or less, the same procedures and have general ideas that could be applied depending on the context where you teach.

Ortega decided to train other teachers to be able to help them, because, as he points out, “Sometimes they knew English, but they didn’t know how to teach it”. Therefore, one crucial moment in a language teacher's life, including Ortega’s own, is when he/she, has the opportunity to travel abroad, as he shares in the following excerpt:

When I left Spain for the first time, it gave me the idea that a teacher or anyone that is going to be working with English cannot stay at home. You have to go abroad, meet people, and talk to them. You learn the language when you know the culture in its own context, you need to get close to the culture.

In effect, Ortega’s international experience was determinant for forging his vision about the importance of transforming languages education in his country and had an influence on his job as a teacher training.

Teacher Training in Spain

Ortega’s experience as a teacher encouraged him to work along with other educators towards a change in language policies in Andalusia, Spain. In 2005, Ortega started working on The Plurilingual Project of Andalusia. This project is based on the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which is an approach to education based on the use of the students’ mother tongue and a foreign language as vehicular languages for the study of the curriculum. In Spain, CLIL has been developed principally during the last decades as “the result of a commitment with the European policies aimed at fostering multilingualism and growing awareness of the need to learn foreign languages” (Lasagabaster & Zarobe, 2010, p.9). CLIL programs are funded by educational and political authorities and they are taught mainly, although not exclusively, in state schools. At present, only two or three subjects of the whole curriculum of an academic year in each level are taught in the foreign language (Pérez-Crespo, 2015). Ortega decided to take on this project because he “saw that what they [the English teachers] were doing was not bilingual education”. Besides, Andalusia is classified as having a “low level of English” in comparison with the other communities in Spain” (Espinar & Ortega, 2015, p. 126). According to Ortega’s own experience as teacher and trainer in Andalusia, the prevailing teaching methodology in Andalusia consisted of having the students translating from English to Spanish. According to Ortega’s observations, bilingual education teachers were not able to apply their knowledge to bilingual contexts. Although the teachers knew the language, they needed training to be able to teach content classes in English. One of Ortega’s main challenges was:

…to make the authorities and colleagues become aware on the importance of training teachers on CLIL [Content and language integrated learning]. […]We need teachers who are confident when they come into the classroom.

Ortega states that even for teachers who have a good mastery of the language, it is important that they be taught and trained properly, so they can deal with the challenges of teaching content subjects in a foreign language, such as English. However, the education that a teacher receives should vary depending on the context, the official/national language, and the target language(s). He mentions that “There is no recipe for all bilingual teachers from all around the world”.

According to José Luis, it was challenging to train English teachers in Spain, since many of them did not have an adequate language level to be able to teach this subject. Some of these teachers had already taught the language for many years, even 20 or 25 years. One of the reasons the problem prevailed is that “when they [teachers] were in university […] English was not taught. They were not trained to be English teachers in oral situations or oral interaction”. Nonetheless, new graduate teachers in Spain now have the opportunity to travel abroad, and their level of English has improved significantly. This started in 2007, when the Ministry of Education and Culture in Spain launched a program “which was designed for students and teachers who wanted to improve their foreign language skills by living abroad for a short period of time” (Espinar & Ortega, 2015, p.126). Being able to travel and experience the language in its own context has increased the confidence of teachers. Ortega firmly believes that if teachers achieve a higher level of English, it “is good for the kids, the families, and the system”. He considers that the teachers’ performance has effects both upon education and society.

As English teachers in Mexico, we wanted to know about the status of the English teacher around the world and specifically in Spain. José Luis points out that:

English teachers in Spain are respected. They have to work hard to get a position as a civil servant, as a teacher for the government. They have to go through competitive exams. If they work at a private school, they have to be very good. If they don’t, they will be out of the school quickly. In general, people respect teachers, and now we have more teachers that are really happy doing their jobs, and that is something that society appreciates.

As mentioned before, Ortega decided to become a teacher trainer after working at the primary and secondary levels, where he observed the need to develop the skills of the teachers. Many of the teachers Ortega has trained want to become part of the public education system in Spain and they say they want to work for the government. He mentions that one of his achievements is to know that these teachers are already working, and that:

They are doing well now. They are happy to be teaching in English or in bilingual contexts. Besides, we have been writing papers and articles about this issue. I also participated as an advisor for the government with a colleague, Trinidad de Haro, and we worked with another colleague from Galicia. Now I’m leading a project for the British Council and the Ministry of Education on bilingualism.

As Ortega sustains, he feels proud of his humble contributions to the ELT profession, which has motivated the diffusion of his work in different articles. Furthermore, it has influenced the education system in the area of languages.

Teacher Motivation

In 2015, Rocío Espinar Redondo and José Luis Ortega published “Motivation: The road to successful learning”. In this article, they highlighted “the importance of motivation in the process of learning English as a foreign language” (p. 125). Both authors mention that “motivation is an individual’s disposition to learning a task that can be modified both by him- or herself and by the surrounding circumstances” (Espinar & Ortega, 2015, p. 127).

For this reason we became interested in asking him about the impact that demotivated teachers have on the students’ learning process.He affirms that this “depends on where you teach, where these teachers work”. If they work in the public education system, it is difficult to make them change their attitudes. Teachers need a leader to make them “see that they need to change their attitude”. Confidence is the key to success. Sometimes teachers “do not feel confident enough to start working on new things. So they live in this area of comfort in which they are happy doing what they do”. Luckily, only a few of them still follow a pattern every day: “Open the book. Close the book. This is the homework and that's it!” Ortega believes that this would not happen in private schools, because a teacher who did this, would be out of the school in a couple of days.

The school administrators would tell you [as a teacher] that have to change this. You have to start working on these other things. You have to motivate the students. You have to feel motivated, and bring new attitudes into the classroom. And if you do not do it, you might get fired. How can we fight these things? What we need to do is bring these teachers back and think in a positive way. We need to talk to them, train them, and see their needs, and when we see those needs, I’m positive that we will recover those teachers.

What he means by recovering the teachers is that, when they have the proper training, they are able to see that motivation and self-confidence are some of the most important aspects of EFL teaching. One cannot follow the same patterns every day. If this happens, students might also feel demotivated, and unwilling to learn.

Ortega has written about student motivation (Espinar & Ortega, 2015; Ortega, 2003), but he is also interested in motivating teachers, by inviting them “to see that they can do things”. He not only considers teacher trainees, but also experienced teachers, those who have taught for more than fifteen years. He mentions that “They have teaching experiences, and they can share them”. Sharing knowledge and experience is essential to teacher development, because it enables teachers to position themselves within a professional community, and it motivates them to improve their teaching practices.

Suggestions for Improving EFL Teaching in Spain

Along with providing an overview of EFL teaching and teacher training in Spain, Ortega also described areas where the profession of English teaching, as well as the learning process, still needs improvement in Spain. During the interview, he proposed the following actions that could be done in order to improve English teaching, and bilingual education:

a.   More hours of English in a week
b.   Proper in-service and pre-service training on CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning)
c.    Work on classroom management
d.   [Give] more importance to practice periods: Especially practice periods abroad in which you are going to see how other schools work; how other people name things, behave, and deal with difficult situations; and how schools are organized.

He has worked towards achieving these goals in Andalusia, training teachers and student teachers that do or will participate in The Plurilingual Project of Andalusia. But he also finds it necessary for teachers to become aware of the challenges that they face, and get involved to improve their professional practices.

Perceptions of EFL and Bilingual Education between Mexico and Spain

We also wanted to ask José Luis about his perceptions of bilingual education in Mexico. He points out that:

The relationship and great connection that Mexico has with the United States is an important factor to consider when examining, and contrasting bilingual education, and research on this topic […] In Mexico, you have more opportunities to practice the [English] language.

According to this statement, Ortega believes that there are fewer opportunities to practice English in Spain than in Mexico. He mentions that most TV shows in Spain are dubbed, and the country does not border any English-speaking countries. Nonetheless, Spanish students have the opportunity to travel around Europe, which enables them to interact with people from all over the world whose means of communications is English. Continuing with the comparison that he makes between both countries and based on his interactions with student-teachers in Mexico, Ortega mentioned that he is “impressed with the lack of confidence from some student teachers who have a high level of English. Some have mentioned that they do not feel confident to use their English in the classroom”. In the view of this lack of self-confidence that he observes in teachers, he suggests that:

Teacher trainers […] work hard on giving the teachers the confidence, so they will understand that they know more than they have to teach, that their level of English is absolutely good. There is not a native English speaker that they have to admire or that they have to follow.

He questions the usual belief that learners should achieve native-like fluency and pronunciation:

Who speaks native English nowadays in a global world? Native English is from New York, from Oregon, from Manchester, or from Liverpool. Native Spanish is from Granada, from Burgos, from Guanajuato, or from Xalapa.

 According to this view, he believes that “Teacher training programs need to include activities that enhance teachers’ confidence, so they consider […] that they have a good level of English, and that they can be good teachers”. In the case of Mexico, the educational policies have failed on showing concern about importance of developing an appropriate teacher training program that can strengthen the teachers’ self-confidence. However, the Nuevo Modelo Educativo para la Educación Obligatoria 2017 states that:

Teaching English is one of the priorities of the new curriculum because it is an indispensable tool to facilitate interlocution in an increasingly interconnected world, both for teachers and students. The objective is that all children and young people in Mexico learn to read and communicate in English to be fully inserted in a globalized world and in the knowledge society. To achieve this objective, it is critical that all teachers - not only those who teach this subject - master the language. At the same time, this demands a high level of English among the teaching staff in teacher schools. (pp. 142-143)

This is relevant because not everyone in Mexico has access to bilingual education in English. In this sense, we asked José Luis Ortega his opinion about the relation between the socio-economic level of a person and the way students learn an additional language:

This is hard but it happens. If your family has the money, you can go abroad. You can go to private academies and you can have a teacher at home. They will make an effort to allow you to achieve a higher level in English. Schools in Spain, and in Mexico, are open to anyone, and education is free; it is compulsory. You will find more opportunities in those communities that have a higher economic level because of the opportunities that they will grant for the kids. Nevertheless, I have to say that now [in Spain] we have many plans for these students, for these people, who cannot pay their own stay abroad. It is hard to find someone who doesn’t go abroad because of money. So I think that now the government is fighting to have equal opportunities for all of them.

According to Ortega, socioeconomic status has had an impact on the access that families have to bilingual education. In Mexico and in Spain, people who have sufficient economic resources usually provide their children with opportunities to study abroad or go to private schools. Unfortunately, not all students are able to travel or go to bilingual schools that are for the elite. However, Ortega claims that the Spanish government is providing students with the means to have access to a bilingual education.

English as a Lingua Franca

Thus far this interview has focused on José Luis Ortega’s opinions about teacher training and his perceptions of bilingual education in Mexico and Spain. English as a foreign language continues being a topic of interest for researchers, since this language is indisputably the lingua franca that millions of people all over the world are trying to learn. Samarin (1987) defines lingua franca as “any lingual medium of communication between people of different mother tongues, for whom it is a second language” (p. 371). Consequently, we asked Ortega to describe the current situation of English as a lingua franca worldwide:

In most countries, such as Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Portugal, English is taught as the main foreign language. English has the best future for foreign language teachers and researchers; for people who are involved in how to work on the elements of language learning. […] Now we have to include the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), this is going to open up other scenarios. We are going to have the opportunity to get in touch with students from Mexico who are studying English, through video-conference, for example. It’s a positive change, because we need to have something in common. When you travel around the world the worst situation you can face is when you do not understand people, and when you are not understood. It is necessary to make people see the importance of having a lingua franca. People would be able to communicate anywhere!

As Ortega points out, the learning of English has proven to be extremely helpful to communicate among other cultures, which could be the road to mutual understanding. English teaching is relevant throughout the world, because the language has become a medium to share information of different knowledge areas. The English teacher should be seen as a facilitator that the students go to in order to improve their skills. Furthermore, in a technologically interconnected and globalized world English continues gaining preponderance among other languages, and therefore countries who seek to be competitive in their economies, as in the case of Mexico, must invest resources to the improvement of the level of English for their citizens.

The Future of EFL

To conclude the interview, we decided to ask José Luis Ortega what he thought the future of English as a foreign language was:

The future is in student-teachers’ hands. The future is positive because we will always need languages. We need to have a language in common, a lingua franca. I think that English as a foreign language should be changed in some terms, and we could start working on English as an additional language; that could be a possibility. […] being positive is necessary in this job, in these tasks that we have. We have the commitment of doing things that our society is expecting from us. We have to make sure that we work with every single student, that we do not devote time only to good students, because that is something easy to do. We have students with learning difficulties that we have to cope with. We have to train teachers to know how to teach English to these kids, because they deserve an opportunity as any other. We have to know how to evaluate them regardless the age. Teachers should evaluate not only the final product but also the learning process. We have to consider that we are working with people, with human beings, and they want to see that what they are doing is going to be useful, and it is going to be meaningful.

In his last statement, Dr. Ortega invites us to reflect on the importance of the impact that language teachers have not only in the classroom, but also as part of a society and of a developing country. Indeed language teachers embrace a commitment that should encourage them to continue acquiring professionalization and professional development in order to improve their role as agents of change. Ortega believes that future EFL teachers can improve the profession and encourage the students to learn and use the language. Language teaching has been given several names such as EFL or ESL. Ortega states that English as an additional language is a more appropriate term that encompasses all types of learners, regardless of their learning environment. On the other hand, the current terms, e.g., EFL and ESL, also take into consideration the context of the students, and the way that they learn the language. It is necessary to take into consideration the context of the learners to understand and evaluate their learning process. The consideration of the students’ interests and needs will have a positive effect on the teaching and learning processes.

Conclusion

The experiences that Dr. José Luis Ortega have had in the area of linguistics and bilingualism in Spain, and other parts of the world allow him to provide insightful information on a variety of topics. One of his main concerns is that student-teachers do not feel confident enough about their language and their teaching skills. Therefore, it is important for teacher trainers to encourage student-teachers to feel confident about their skills and knowledge. This leads to another of his areas of expertise which is student motivation. Teachers from all areas should motivate their students and boost their students’ self-confidence. According to Ortega, feedback is an important factor to encourage students, despite the fact that it is often underestimated. As Ortega mentions, it is important to help the students to learn during the process, evaluating and analyzing their errors and doubts. In other words, what the students have done to complete a task should also be evaluated, not only the final product, which does not necessarily have a clear reflection of what they have learned. The outcomes do not represent a learners’ level of proficiency, but a small part of it. He points out that there are different linguistic backgrounds for English learners:

I think that this of English as a foreign language should be changed in some terms and we could start working on English as an additional language. It is not always English as a foreign language, we have people who live in contexts where they have three languages and then English is simply an additional language. It is a language that they have only at school maybe and when they go home they speak any other language.

 In effect, there is a broad diversity of contexts in which English teaching takes place, and it is necessary to take an attitude of inclusion when it comes to investigating this and designing resources, and curricula devoted to this area. Therefore, this should be considered by teachers and researchers. In conclusion, José Luis Ortega considers that the future for EFL teachers is positive, since English has become a lingua franca. English is used to execute different linguistic transactions around the world. Consequently, teachers are able to teach what they know about the language through a variety of activities and also through the use of technology, which is also changing the way humans communicate.

From this conversation with José Luis Ortega, we could say that the future is in the improvement of the pre-service and in-service training. Motivation in both students and teachers is a key element in this process and that contextualizing our teaching to the roots of our students or their needs will increase the possibilities of success. From Dr. Ortega we have seen that our Mexican trainees have to feel proud of their level of English and they should not compare themselves or accept being compared with natives. For Dr. Ortega, to teach is to touch the future and he is positive that our students will be in the best hands as far as teachers are socially recognized and properly motivated.  

References

Espinar Redondo, R., & Ortega Martín, J. L. (2015). Motivation: The road to successful learning. Profile Issues in Teachers Professional Development, 17(2), 125-136. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v17n2.50563

Lasagabaster, D. and Ruiz de Zarobe, Y. (2010). The emergence of CLIL in Spain: An educational challenge. In D. Lasagabaster & Ruiz de Zarobe, Y. (Eds.) CLIL in Spain: Implementation, results and teacher (pp. IX - XVII). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/58234

Ortega Martín, J. L. (2003). Opinión de los alumnos sobre el poder motivador del profesor. Revista de Ciencias de la Educación, (193), 63-77.

Pérez-Crespo, M. D. M. (2015). CLIL in Andalusia: Study on teachers’ view (BA thesis). Trabajos Académicos Universidad de Jaén Repositorio. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10953.1/2190

Samarin, W. (1987). Lingua franca. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, & K.J. Mattheier (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society. (pp. 371–374). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.