I've moved

Hi all, thanks for dropping by. To make things easier, I've decided to merge some of my blogs, which, including this one, can now be found at ELT World. I've been getting off my backsides and writing recently, so come over to the new URL and leave lots of lovely comments.

TEFL News Headlines

India and China: Great wall of opportunity

More than 1,000 Indians have moved to China to teach English. A one-month crash course on the internet is all it takes. Read the full story…


United Kingdom: Museum for English

English is the first language of 350-400 million people, and an effective second language for maybe 500 million more. By some counts, a grand total of 2 billion people do or can use it. That requires some heroic use of the word can. But the first-ever global language it certainly is, and rapidly spreading. And now —by 2012, if all goes well — it is to have its own museum. Read the full story…


Australia: Teach English as a Foreign Language in Indigenous Schools: Education Union

Professor Helen Hughes from the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney says 10,000 Indigenous students across the Territory can't read or write. But the Territory's Education Minister Marion Scrymgour says the professor is mistaken. Read the full story…

Korea: Parents Support English-Only Classes

More than half of parents surveyed said they supported English classes being conducted only in English, but believe that a public education too focused on English is unnecessary. Read the full story…


Sri Lanka: The Importance of English

A few days ago the CIMA Leaders Forum had a guest speaker who made a valuable presentation on Human Resource Management. In the panel discussion which followed, thanks to a rather impassioned speech given by Presidential Adviser, Sunimal Fernando, on the need for English education and the need for the business community to lend a hand; by and large, the whole discussion centred around the issue of English. Read the full story…


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TEFL News Headlines

South Korea: The Korea Times - English Education Needs to Start at Earlier Ages

The English frenzy in Korea has produced many popular teachers who are good at helping students get higher scores in English tests. A famous former English instructor says some of these ``star teachers'' are misleading English learners. Read the full story…


China: Livemint - Beijing Games: English on a winning streak

Come August, and all eyes will turn towards Beijing, the venue of the 2008 Olympics. The question we ask ourselves will be whether the US will retain its supremacy in the medal tally, or make way for China, which is competing on home ground. Whoever wins the most laurels, there will be one champion who will come out victorious: the English language. Read the full story…


New Zealand: The New Zealand Times - Teachers in a tizz: is texting destroying the English language?

EAST Auckland teachers are divided over whether texting is changing the younger generation’s approach to English. Read the full story…


South Korea: The Dong-a - Native English Teachers Speak Out on Education Plan

What do native English speakers who teach their language in Korea think about the incoming government’s plan to bolster English education, including the proposed introduction of English immersion classes? Read the full story…

The ELT World Free Journal

Here are highlights of what you'll find in the new, action packed edition of Horizons:

What Would Motivate you to Take a New Job?

What do we want from our jobs? There must surely be a reason for us to move on to bigger and better things at one time or another. So, what are our motivations? What are those bigger and better things? Why do we make the decision to up and move to a new school? The poll that ran on the blog and the forum during December shed some light on to why we move from one job to the next… read on

Interview: Teacher Reflections, Global Connections
Last month on the ELT World Blog I highlighted the excellent Teaching without Borders blog: Teacher Reflections, Global Connections, explaining what a great idea I thought it was to reflect on the different teaching experiences of the different countries of the contributors. I’m delighted that Jennifer Uhler and Jeff Mattison have taken the time and considerable effort to tell Horizons about their blog… read on

Teaching Collocations
Whilst learners often focus on the acquisition of new grammatical structures as a guideline to their progress in learning English, the same cannot always be said of an English learner’s regard for the importance of progressive vocabulary acquisition. Whilst it is true that language structures form the basic skeleton of a language , vocabulary provides the flesh to these bones. Without words, what do we have?… read on

Was your Initial Training Course Worth it?
The four-week TEFL course, a starting point for so many of us in our careers as English teachers. But is it really worth it? What do we really gain from these short, intensive courses that can’t possibly hope to adequately prepare us for a career in teaching? A great deal, it would seem, according to the poll that ran on the blog and the forum… read on

The EnglishUK Teachers Conference
Anyone who’s ever attended a TEFL conference will tell you it can be something of a mixed experience in terms of what you gain from it. It’s not unlike gold mining: you have to sift through a lot of stuff to get to anything even remotely of use to you. Presenting at a conference is, on the other hand, a whole different experience. Anyone thinking of venturing into the conference circuit would be well advised to read the following article… read on

Academicus Electronicus
For this edition of the journal, I offer you, my dear friends, two websites dedicated to the development of TEFL professionals… read on

Teaching English in New Zealand
The situation regarding English language teaching in New Zealand is pretty similar to Australia and not so different from the UK in many respects. As in those countries, there is a private language school sector in addition to state provision through various ESOL programmes… read on

My Favourite Waste of Time
At a certain point, we all get fed up with certain aspects of living in another country. The little things suddenly become big problems in your life. Some of these things, however, bug everyone, and not just us poor expat teachers. Facebook, for all its sins, seems to be becoming a way in which we are able to find kindred sufferers, as M. le Prof d’Anglais explains… read on

Politically Correct Revisited
Last issue’s article on political correctness was well received by many of you, who were able to relate to the ideas being explored. Luckily for Horizons, Istanbul’s Stranger has decided to follow up on the previous article, exploring further the linguistic barriers to the cross-culturalization of the notion of political correctness… read on

The Ideal English Teacher through the Eyes of ELT Trainees

Do you remember what you thought about teachers when you started out as a trainee? How much have your perceptions changed? This article explores the way that trainee teachers in Argentina perceive those already in the profession… read on

Interview: The Latin America Job list and TEFL Tips

Sharon de Hinojosa, whom members of the ELT World forums know better as Naturegirl321, has been kind enough to answer a few of my questions about her internet projects. After years of gathering information about teaching on the South American continent, she has decided to make this knowledge available to others via her excellent websites… read on

Maori language teaching to go online

This story, by Paul Easton in the Dominion Post (Wednesday, 25 July 2007), notes an innovative way in which languages can be promoted through the use of software and internet based applications


Internet-based teaching software is being developed to try to address a shortage of Maori language teachers in schools nationwide.

Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia said he had asked the Education Ministry to investigate ways of dealing with the shortage, with a focus on early childhood and primary education. 

He wanted more children to learn te reo at a young age and online teaching software was one way to make sure this happened, given the shortage of Maori language teachers. "We all know that the younger children learn another language the better it is for them." Mr Horomia said he believed teachers should be given more training in te reo when they entered the profession.

Maori language commissioner Erima Henare said the online project would be rolled out within the next year. "It will enable people, wherever they are in the world, to have instruction in te reo." The software is still under development.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4140343a8153.html

Any methods that can enhance the survival of threatened languages is worth pursuing, and using the obvious benefits of online instructions seems to be the way that language instruction will go in the 21st century.

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Visit my forums at David’s English Teaching Forums.

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Galápagos Islands: a volunteer's view

This article by Sally Walsh can be found in full at the One Stop English online Magazine:
 

When I told people I was going to work as an English teacher in the Galápagos Islands for 3 months I had varying reactions. To some it was a dream destination, but others had no idea where the islands were, or even that people actually lived there. To set the record straight, the Galápagos Islands belong to Ecuador and are located 600 miles from its coast. Of the 19 islands, only four are inhabited and for most tourists the spectacular wildlife is much more of a draw than the human population. Visitors usually dine and sleep on cruise boats, rarely coming into contact with the locals. However on Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal, the two most populated islands, there are large communities largely dependent on tourism or fishing. And typically for a place where tourism makes money, the ability to speak English is a desirable skill.

The Galápagos are a popular destination for 'volun-tourism', and although most of this revolves around the wildlife, there is also a need for English teachers. A word of warning though, it is extremely uncommon to find paid teaching work here and, unfortunately, very common to find volunteers paying unreasonable sums of money for the privilege of working here. I came across more than a couple of unscrupulous-sounding companies who extracted lots of cash from potential volunteers with the promise of wonderful opportunities. On arriving, these volunteers had the frustrating discovery that there was actually nothing for them to do, the school they were supposed to be working in was closed for the summer, or the position simply didn't exist. That said, there are some excellent organisations that look after their volunteers very well and clearly value their skills. Some larger organisations may even pay for the flight from the mainland and provide accommodation and/or food. I was working for a smaller charity which couldn't afford to do this, but helped me to find excellent inexpensive accommodation and organised for the $100 National Park Entrance fee to be waived.

My position on San Cristóbal island was with a charity called New Era Galápagos which aims to empower the residents through education. They provide English classes so that locals can benefit from tourism and educate children about conservation to encourage them to protect their unique, and fragile, environment. I worked on a month-long summer camp for children of all ages (4-15!), and also taught adult evening classes. The kids were wildly undisciplined, in classrooms too small to accommodate them and in age groups too disparate to keep them all entertained – but these are common challenges of summer camps! Ultimately, the kids had great fun, learnt some English and gained confidence in using what they already knew.

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The evening classes were more obviously rewarding. I was teaching fishermen, taxi drivers, full time mothers; busy people with busy lives who made the effort to attend an English class every day. Some inevitably dropped out, but of those who completed the course it was hugely satisfying to watch their progress. The final lesson was very memorable – the students transformed the classroom into a candlelit dining room and served up a meal caught by the fishermen in the class and cooked by the women.

Aside from the teaching, daily life in the Galápagos is something special. You walk out of school and the streets are covered with sea lions lolling about on the road and the benches. There are exotic birds swooping around the bay. At the local beach, you can snorkel with turtles a few feet from the shore. You can dive with hammerhead sharks at nearby sites. And apparently, it's a surfer's paradise, but I never sampled this, as the waves looked terrifyingly big to a novice.

There are frustrations to island life too. There is a distinct difference in pace of life that often makes it seem impossible to get anything done. Fresh food is hard to come by and you find yourself longing for a large, well-stocked supermarket as opposed to dusty tins in a corner shop. Some of the locals were deeply suspicious of ‘gringos’; others were just so used to the stream of volunteers passing through that they didn't see the point in temporary friendships. But I'm glad to say there were many exceptions to this and some 'Galapagueans' welcomed us into their homes and their hearts with great warmth. I feel lucky to have spent three months in such a beautiful place and the connection I have with the place will last a lifetime.


This article by Sally Walsh can be found in full at the One Stop English online Magazine.
(http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?theme=mag&catid=58256&docid=145859)