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.

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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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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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The world is marching in the “World English(es)” direction, and Korea can’t afford to be a late-comer. The Korean educational authorities and immigration officials are starting to realize the need to include teachers from other English communities.

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As most of you know, I have a strong opinion on the subject of Dave Sperling and his ESL Café mafia, so I was particularly pleased that the onus placed on topics relating to professional development on the ELT World forums have been contrasted to what goes on over at the café. I never get tired of bigging up the fabulous contributions of forum members, so it’s nice again to see the comments made by the likes of Emma and Spiral78 making it into the ‘mainstream’. I want you to head over to the blog and read the article, so I’m not going to post any extracts here.

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China: Crazy English

India: How Good Are We in English?

Sri Lanka: Arming the People With a Weapon of Choice

Malaysia: English Language Project a Success

Perspective on Bilingual Educational System in Brunei

Guam English Language Proficiency Standards Developed

Malaysians Urged to Master English or Lose Out to World

South Korea: Taps Into Global Talent Pool For English Teachers

Philippines: English, Tagalog or Both?

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Korea: Academic Standards Easing for Foreign English Teachers

Wonderful news; the South Korean government is considering loosening academic requirements for native-English speaking teachers as a means to meet growing demand in rural areas that are shunned by foreign teachers, the Korea Times reports.

Currently, the jobs are only open to those with bachelor degrees at four-year universities. As education authorities in rural areas have had difficulty hiring native-English speaking teachers, they are now calling on the central government to ease the qualifications for English-teaching or E-2 visas to those who have completed 2-year courses at universities or colleges. That’s just the solution… bring in more under-qualified hacks and drag our profession in further into the dirt. Nice one.

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In India, Dreams Unfold in English

India has something of a reputation as a nation of fluent English speakers, but according to many estimates this is a right load of garbage: only 5 percent of the population merits that description suggests the Washington Post. Now, a five-year-long economic boom has triggered a rush to bring the reality into line with the lore. Once the preserve of big-city elites, English is spreading to the hinterlands.

Pankaj Srivastava exemplifies the situation. Pankaj, a successful business manager, finds that the faster he rises, the more anxious he gets. “I am in the big league now, but everybody at this level speaks English, and I don’t,” he bemoans, in a mix of Hindi and broken English. “I stay in hotels where even the waiters speak English. At the conferences, I stay quiet because I don’t want them to laugh at my English.” Sounds like an opportunity for a private lesson if ever I heard one.

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Do a little dance, make a little love…

Vietnamese Kids Left Tongue-Tied by English

Vietnam Net website notes that the demand for English speaking graduates in the workplace is higher than ever in Vietnam, but the current education system is, shock horror, outdated and need of a major overhaul.

According to Nguyen Loc, the vice head of the National Institute for Education Strategy and Curriculum Development under the Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnamese pupils and students would find it difficult to master English studying at schools, typically, just three times a week for 45 minute periods. At universities English courses are taught on the side as students focus on their majors. This means students get the basics but fail to speak English “confidently or fluently” according to Loc. Strange, you’d think that three times a week at 45 minutes a time would be more than enough to master a language so drastically different from Vietnamese. No, hang on, wait a minute…

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California: Encinitas parents seek to expand innovative language program

Parent Jill Levan says that when she volunteers in her daughter’s bilingual, third-grade classroom at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, she learns as much as the children do. “This has been the most amazing experience not only for our daughter, but for our whole family,” said Levan, who is gradually becoming fluent in Spanish as she helps her daughter and other children learn math and reading skills. There’s a tear forming in the corner of my eye. No, really.

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Science: The New ELL Testing Frontier

Testing ‘experts’ in the U.S are creating a pool of test items they hope that some states will eventually use to assess English-language learners in science to comply with the No Child Allowed to Progress (AKA No Child Left Behind) Act. I’m starting to hate the acronym ELL, I really am.

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The United States: Make English The National Language

Senator Lamar Alexander has cosponsored the National Language Act of 2008 that would establish English as the national language of the United States. I’m not making this up. “One of America’s greatest accomplishments is the manner in which we unite our magnificent diversity, and one way we have done that is by speaking a common language, English,” said Alexander, who in March led a successful effort to pass legislation in the Senate aimed at increasing funding to a grant program that supports English language teaching. Now, am I missing something or is it a bit bloody stupid to be trying to establish English as national language? What language do these buggers speak? OK, I suppose it could have helped the president to improve his English, but come on…

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Keeping immigrant kids in school: Canada Style

Canada: like the U.S but good.

Never mind special programs for struggling students of different cultures, declares The Star, Canadian schools can do more to help troubled immigrant children by how they teach in regular classrooms, by providing almost twice as much help in English and by requiring all teachers be trained in how to work with these complex learners, say two leading researchers. Yeah, it’s THAT easy, folks. How much did they get paid for that research, I wonder?

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Ridiculous Indian ‘Caring about Students’ Fantasy TV Show Shocker

In an exclusive tete a tete with Vidhya Krishnan, Shernaz Patel talks about her journey from ‘Buniyaad’ to ‘Black’. She is one of the best-known faces of Indo-English theatre and has been a part of the English theatre movement in India for the past 20 years. Shernaz plays a teacher in her new show, who is – wait for it – a warm and understanding mentor (!). She not only motivates (!) her students with the correct use of the language but also explains situations to them (!) from their point of view, so that they can truly absorb the lesson (!). Don’t you just hate it when there’s not even the slightest attempt at realism?

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Lee Urges Teachers to Compete With Each Other

President Lee Myung-bak on Thursday said students were engaging in fierce competition and so should teachers. “No schools have ever competed with each other, and teachers have had no need to participate in competition, either,” he said. He made the remarks in a policy briefing by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Daejeon. “We can’t boost quality of education if we go on like this.” He emphasized that education will develop under competition principles if Korea allows schools and teachers autonomy, while simultaneously letting them engage in appropriate competition.

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Second up… anyone who sees total immersion as a surefire way to get fluent quickly should go and sit in a dark room for a while. Of course, that’s just my opinion and no reflection on the undoubted excellence of the Korean system.

No English Immersion: President Lee Scraps English-Only Class Plan

The recent flop over English education only shows how difficult it is to initiate language immersion in classrooms here in South Korea. Considering the stark reality of English teaching, most teachers, parents and students are relieved after the government virtually gave up its plan to teach English only in English.

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If this hasn’t put you off for life, learn more about ELT in South Korea here.

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Koreans studying here find the conditions ideal for them to learn English as a second language, said a top official of the Bureau of Immigration. “The country’s cost of quality education and its foreigner-friendly immigration policies are attracting more Koreans to visit and enroll in Philippine schools,” Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said yesterday, amid the furor involving a beauty pageant winner caught on television recently over a slip of the tongue.

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Taiwan: MOE denies endorsing any English certification system

The Ministry of Education (MOE) denied yesterday that it has endorsed any particular language learning and certification programs in Taiwan. The officials made the statements in response to advertisements placed in local newspapers by an institution claiming its “global English certification program” has the recognition and endorsement of the MOE.

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India: Agra moving to English via Hinglish

People are queuing up to enrol their children in English medium schools and Hinglish tabloids are flying off the newsstands in the city of the Taj as society here – like in much of India’s cities – undergoes a transition from having a minority of English speakers to a large number of those keen on learning the world’s most spoken language.

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Japan: Making English Work:Study a ‘Hobby’ for Shin-Idemitsu Boss

This column features interviews with professionals who use English in their jobs, experts and others interested in the language in the hope of offering insights into learning the language. Company Chairman Yutaka Idemitsu starts his day by studying English for an hour after rising at 5 a.m.–a practice that he has maintained for nearly two decades.

Read the full story…

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UAE college teacher wins innovation award for English course

A “ground breaking” vocabulary course for female students in the United Arab Emirates was named the winner of the new international category of this year’s British Council English language teaching innovation awards.

Language school run by Italian fascist leader

A popular language college in London is controlled by the leader of an Italian neo-fascist party who has links to the British National party, the Guardian has learned.

Read on…

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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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