ELT World » Asia Your local friendly TEFL blog Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:32:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Brunei: Poor Malay not due to the bilingual education policy /2010/05/brunei-poor-malay-not-due-to-the-bilingual-education-policy/ /2010/05/brunei-poor-malay-not-due-to-the-bilingual-education-policy/#comments Sat, 22 May 2010 13:58:39 +0000 david /?p=1082 The Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs yesterday defended Brunei’s bilingual education system which uses English language in majority of school subjects, saying that it has been operating well and past generations have succeeded due to their good command of English.

According to Brudirect, Pehin Udana Khatib Dato Paduka Seri Setia Ustaz Hj Badaruddin Pengarah Dato Paduka Hj Othman said that the bilingual education system should not be blamed for poor Malay proficiency, but authorities should take proper steps to improve students’ Malay language instead.

Read the full story here.

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]]> /2010/05/brunei-poor-malay-not-due-to-the-bilingual-education-policy/feed/ 1 South Asia: English in Action Across Bangladesh /2010/04/south-asia-english-in-action-across-bangladesh/ /2010/04/south-asia-english-in-action-across-bangladesh/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:01:05 +0000 david /?p=1073 English in Action is a nine-year-old programme that helps 25 million people in Bangladesh improve their ability to use English language for social and economic purposes. This project creates resources for the classroom and for teacher professional development using mobile technologies, which are then deployed by primary and secondary school teachers.

Currently, however, there is a critical shortage of English language skills, both throughout Bangladeshi society and within the teaching profession.

Read more about the programme here.

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]]> /2010/04/south-asia-english-in-action-across-bangladesh/feed/ 2 Japan: Why do English teachers have to be native speakers? /2010/04/japan-why-do-english-teachers-have-to-be-native-speakers/ /2010/04/japan-why-do-english-teachers-have-to-be-native-speakers/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:09:42 +0000 david /?p=1067 In Japan, non-native English-language instructors from South Asian countries are challenging cultural stereotypes and putting a new face on the industry, exclaims the Japan Times. It hasn’t been any easy task, but is this a good thing?

Read the full story if you dare…

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]]> /2010/04/japan-why-do-english-teachers-have-to-be-native-speakers/feed/ 2 The big Australasia TEFL news roundup /2010/02/the-big-australasia-tefl-news-roundup/ /2010/02/the-big-australasia-tefl-news-roundup/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:17:28 +0000 david /?p=1032 Here are some recent TEFL headlines from around the region.

South Korea: Language education ’starts in the womb’

Bilingual education starts from womb, a research team led by Krista Byers-Heinlein and Janet Werker from the University of British Columbia claims to have found. The researchers compared the reactions of newborn babies whose mothers are monolingual in English with those of mothers who are bilingual in English and Tagalog.

Read the full story here.

India: English radio lessons… Exit UNICEF, enter government

After the UNICEF decided to discontinue the implementation of “Interactive Learning Through Radio” programme in Uttar Pradesh from next academic year, the state government has decided to implement the unique scheme on its own.

Read more here.

Nepal: Unique school aims to be the ticket to equality

Beginning with 850 students in the 2001 and teaching up to Grade 3, the first Satama (“equality”) school now has over 3,500 students. The founder, Uttam Sanjel, said “I had no idea that it would be so popular.” The medium of instruction is English – considered a passport to success – because parents and guardians in Nepal prefer private English- medium schools over Nepali or other vernacular language schools. Satama schools have entrance fees that are much less than other private schools, allowing Nepalis–however poor they are–to send their children to private school.

Read on.

India: The road to English to begin with mother tongue

What is common between ‘pencil’, ‘railway station’, ‘programme’ and ‘machine’? These are English words used in Hindi, Punjabi and other languages. And a professor has found a novel way to use these words in teaching of the English language. Professor Anil Sarwal, linguistics expert and faculty member at DAV College, Sector 10, has identified 12,000 such words. The aim behind compiling these words, according to Professor Sarwal, was to use one’s mother tongue to teach the English language. “If encouraged to learn English by beginning with words that are known to them, the ice between learners and the English language will start thawing,” Professor Sarwal says.

Read the full story here.

India: Lend an ear, mind your languages

A recent report by the NGO Pratham shows that less that 50 per cent of children in Class I could even identify capital letters in English. Parents, especially from rural and semi-urban families, see English as a gateway to better opportunities for their children. They send their children to English-medium schools. In most of these schools, children learn Maths, Sciences and other subjects in English, without knowing English. This situation has led to an increasing number of educators advocating that schooling should be in the mother tongue only.

Read more here.

Vietnam and United Kingdom: British Council helps improve English teaching in Vietnam

The British Council and the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MoET) will inaugurate a bilingual website (www.teachingenglish.edu.vn) in early February. The website is part of the Access English project, which has been launched by the British Council in across South East Asia to support changes in English language teaching.

Read the story here…

Australia: 8 English schools won’t reopen

Voluntary administrators in eight English language schools say that the schools will not reopen because of the financial situation. They say they are working with the federal department of education and state government departments to find arrangements for the 2300 international students.

Read on…

Cambodia: Cambodia’s minority languages facing a bleak future

More than 20 languages are spoken in Cambodia, lathough most are minority languages and face extinction in the coming decades. For Jean-Michel Filippi, recording the language is one way to preserve a cultural view of the world.

Read more now.

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]]> /2010/02/the-big-australasia-tefl-news-roundup/feed/ 0 South Korea: Animosity against English teachers in Seoul /2010/02/south-korea-animosity-against-english-teachers-in-seoul/ /2010/02/south-korea-animosity-against-english-teachers-in-seoul/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:48:02 +0000 david /?p=1019 Picture this scene, if you will:

‘It all started with a Halloween party at a bar in 2004. Most everyone was wearing a risque costume; the women were showing a lot of skin.

Many foreign English teachers attended. When the photographs made their way to the internet, the English teachers were blamed. Critics objected to the revealing costumes, worn by both foreigners and locals, saying they undermined Korean women.

At around the same time, news reports were circulating in Korea about foreign English teachers getting involved in drugs and sexual crimes, stirring up concern among parents and the public.’

Jiyeon Lee reports thus in the Global Post on an apparent upswing in animosity toward foreign English teachers, which has led to the formation of the Citizens of Right Education, a group (now of 17,000 members) that has apparently taken it upon itself to rid the country of foreign, unqualified English teachers.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Read more here.

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]]> /2010/02/south-korea-animosity-against-english-teachers-in-seoul/feed/ 6 Malaysia: The English language is ‘not’ being neglected /2010/02/malaysia-the-english-language-is-%e2%80%98not%e2%80%99-being-neglected/ /2010/02/malaysia-the-english-language-is-%e2%80%98not%e2%80%99-being-neglected/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:52:05 +0000 david /?p=1024 The Malaysian Government’s decision not to continue teaching Science and Mathematics in English does not mean the language is being neglected, at least that’s what the Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin claims.

A number of new initiatives are being planned to upgrade the teaching of English in schools and to strengthen the command of English among students, reports the Star Online.

Read more about these ‘initiatives’ here.

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]]> /2010/02/malaysia-the-english-language-is-%e2%80%98not%e2%80%99-being-neglected/feed/ 0 Nepal: U.S. Embassy Sponsors ‘English by Radio’ Program /2009/12/nepal-u-s-embassy-sponsors-english-by-radio-program/ /2009/12/nepal-u-s-embassy-sponsors-english-by-radio-program/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:58:47 +0000 david /?p=981 Good news for all mountain lovers. The U.S. Embassy-sponsored ‘English by Radio program’ went on air as of December 25th, on Radio Sagarmatha. The 52-segment (whatever that may be) English language program is produced by this community FM radio station, in collaboration with Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA), you’ll be delighted to know.

Read more here.

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]]> /2009/12/nepal-u-s-embassy-sponsors-english-by-radio-program/feed/ 1 Expats asked to teach English in China /2009/12/expats-asked-to-teach-english-in-china/ /2009/12/expats-asked-to-teach-english-in-china/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:17:23 +0000 david /?p=991 A non-profit social club in downtown Jing’an District is calling for expats to join them and provide free English lessons for poor children in the community because the English school they planned to work with has been closed. Bless.

The social club, named Sunday Youth but known bizarrely as the Good Man Club among young people in Jing’an, has attracted more than 3,000 local residents and expats since it was started on July 19. “We are now facing a problem in teaching those kids coming from poor families, because of the lack of teachers and educational resources,” said Qian Changhao, the chairman of the club.

Read the full story here.

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]]> /2009/12/expats-asked-to-teach-english-in-china/feed/ 0 Native English teachers establish a labour union in Incheon /2009/12/native-english-teachers-establish-a-labor-union-in-incheon/ /2009/12/native-english-teachers-establish-a-labor-union-in-incheon/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:01:52 +0000 david /?p=975 South Korea: In an intriguing news item from the Korea Times, a labour union, comprised of native English teachers working for a hagwon (Korean language institute), has been established in Incheon, with representation from a legal expert on labour.

Amazingly, well, for me anyway, this is the second teachers’ union in the country, the first one was established in 2005 in Gangam in southern Seoul.

Read more about this here.

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]]> /2009/12/native-english-teachers-establish-a-labor-union-in-incheon/feed/ 0 Philippines: Teachers blamed as English standards fall /2009/11/philippines-teachers-blamed-as-english-standards-fall-in-the-philippines/ /2009/11/philippines-teachers-blamed-as-english-standards-fall-in-the-philippines/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:22:51 +0000 david /?p=959 English standards in the Philippines are slipping, according to the results of a ‘major international testing system’. This can only mean one thing, the teachers are to blame, of course.

This ‘major international testing system’ also showed Malaysians have taken the top spot in English proficiency among South-East Asian countries, although whether this refers to any countries other than the Philippines and Malaysia is unclear.

According to the results of the ‘much-better-than-TOEFL’ International English Language Testing System (IELTS to those of us in the know) for 2008, Filipinos who were seeking overseas jobs in professions including nursing and engineering scored an average of 6.69 for listening, writing, reading and speaking English, while Malaysians massively outscored their fierce rivals on 6.71.

Although the figure is a slight improvement on the figure of 6.58 from 2007, it is still a worry for a country that has prided itself on its English-language ability.

Click here to read more…

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