Ethiopia: In the shadow of Addis Ababa’s biggest Orthodox church, notes Reuters, more than 100 street children cluster around gazing as Amharic script flashes on computer screens before them. Ethiopia, one of Africa’s biggest and poorest countries, has more than 80 languages. Experts say a quarter of those are on the verge of extinction, and [...]
Israel: Months after the government imposed a ban on private funding for advanced English classes in public schools, parents and teachers say money is still changing hands. “The ministry failed to offer an alternative solution,” one paying parent said. The ban was imposed in September, after the Education Ministry threatened to shelve altogether advanced English [...]
Japan: Apart from steering US economy through difficult times, finetuning strategy on two wars and resetting geopolitical equations, US President Barack Obama is also helping many Japanese students learn English. Makoto Ishiwata, who heads an English language school called Kaplan Japan, draws almost 200 students a week to his “Obama workshops.” Pupils recite Obama’s speeches [...]
Established in Alberta, Canada, Buy MMO Accounts is an online business that puts World of Warcraft accounts up for sale. A big part of the appeal of the online game WoW is that players invest both time and money in the game as it requires a world of warcraft account before you can even get [...]
India: It is like an annual pilgrimage for them. They come every year in August from Ireland and England to teach English to teachers of primary schools located in rugged hilly areas of Uttarakhand. From the road head, one has to trek for hours to reach these schools. For the past four years, the group [...]
China: The Malaysian Insider reports that the long-running and often bitter row over Hong Kong’s mother-tongue policy has taken a new turn, with the government set to ease restrictions on the use of English in the classroom. Currently, only 114 of more than 400 secondary schools in Hong Kong are allowed to conduct classes in [...]
For any parent, learning that a convicted sex offender is living on the same block can be a frightening discovery. Many parents can’t imagine that someone, who could be so potentially dangerous, may be living somewhere on their block or along the path their children take to school. However, it is highly likely that there [...]
Nigeria: allAfrica reports that, in an effort to stem the declining standard of education in Nigeria, leading GSM provider, MTN, has introduced an interschool quiz competition, tagged MTN Smarter Brains Competition. The competition which will draw participants from junior secondary schools in Lagos and other parts of the country will focus primarily on their fluency [...]
New Zealand: The Kingsland school now offers bilingual Samoan classes to pupils from bilingual primary schools such as Richmond Road School in Ponsonby, and Rosebank Primary in Avondale. John McCaffery, senior lecturer at Auckland University’s faculty of education, is among the team conducting the research, and says, “It helps deliver quality English, quality Samoan and [...]
I love golf and always try to find time to play the game whenever possible. The rules of the game of golf are really simple if you already know them, even for TEFL teachers, however explaining them could take me quite a while. If you’re not familiar with the basics, the first thing you would [...]
