A JALT colleague and I recently had the opportunity to attend an international conference in Cuba, held to celibrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of La Habana. While there we attended presentations, visited an EFL class at the university, chatted with English majors from the faculty, and interviewed the Assistant Dean and professors working with the Cuban Ministry of Education. The following include some observations from our stay.
The conference was very well organized. Participants mainly came from Cuba, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Brazil. Although there were presentations dealing with (and presented in) a number of foreign languages, English was the major foreign language discussed at the conference. Regardless of second language taught, the majority of the participants were fluent English speakers. The presentations themselves were for the most part very professional. Compared to JALT, the sources cited by the presenters were older (by about ten years). This reflects the lack of primary source material in Cuba, a fact reenforced when visiting faculty administrative offices. Current reference works and scholarly journals, especially those from the US, are conspicuously absent. The Assistant Dean, Emma Lopez, especially lamented the lack of access to contemporary works in Applied Linguistics in Cuba. I was therefore very impressed by the presenters knowledge of theory and practice in TEFL, although said knowledge might be a bit outdated.
Observing a required English class in the science faculty was especially rewarding. The class size was small (under twenty), the instructor both well prepared and creative, and class itself communicative and fast paced. As in Japan, few students had done their homework, but in contrast to Japan, the class was conducted in English. Nearly all students participated eagerly and fluently, and the ninety-minute class was fun, enthusiastic, and very successful. Granted, the instructor did not have access to a tape recorder, handouts were on recycled paper that was collected at the end of class for reuse, and the electricity was not working that morning, but material issues aside, I have rarely seen such a communicatively oriented class in Japanese colleges, and never (unfortunately) by a nonnative English instructor here.
We were equally impressed by the two English majors we chanced to meet on campus. Both were juniors, studying to become interpreters/translators. Although neither student had ever been abroad, both were fluent English speakers, rivaled in Japan in my experience only by selected returnee students. Both learned their English in school (especially at the university) through listening to the radio, watching videos, and working through the university and one of the protestant churches as interpreters and translators. Finally, unlike their usual Japanese counterparts, they not only answered questions, but they freely asked them.
The formal English major program at the university is interesting in its own right, if only to compare it to parallel programs in Japan. At the University of La Habana there are 400 English majors (and 200 additional language majors). They take twenty-four hours of four skills English per week in the first year, fifteen in the second year, and ten in the third year of their five-year course. Fourth and fifth year students specialize in either education, interpreting/translating, or literature. Promotion is based on a localized version of Oral Proficiency Interview. Textbooks for the first three years of basic English study are freely pirated from international sources. This year Spectrum is the basal course; composition, advanced grammar and reading texts are also borrowed from abroad. Authentic texts are used in the upper grades. Instructors teach twelve hours per week. All classes are conducted in English by local staff. The main office does not have computers, copy machines, scissors, staples, paper, or any of the other supplies we have come take for granted in Japan, but they do seem to be doing a lot more with a lot less.
The conference itself appeared a great success. Sessions were full, presenters punctual, and cultural events well organized and attended. The conference ran for four days, from nine to one. The conference arranged decent hotel accommodations across from the university which cost US$290 for seven nights, eight days of double occupancy, with breakfast, dinner, and transportation included. The Faculty of Foreign Languages will be holding another conference next December, immediately following the Cuban Association of English Teachers Annual Conference (GELI), also in Habana.