ELT World » united kingdom

The ‘ELTons’ Award making its debut in the Middle East

david — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:10:55 +0000

Middle East & United Kingdom: Aspiring creative writers in the Middle East are being given the opportunity to make their first break into the English language publishing industry (the poor Buggers don’t know what they’re getting in to) through a new award: the British Council’s ‘prestigious’ ELTons Awards.

The ELTons, inconceivably now in their eighth year, are a celebration of excellence in English Language Teaching, apparently recognising significant and innovative advances in the theory of ELT learning, teaching and research. This new ELTons award category joins the long-established group of British Council Innovation Awards. You can tell how excited I am, can’t you?

United Kingdom: Hounslow Council language service struck ‘dumb’ by job threat

david — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:08:22 +0000

United Kingdom: The jobs of up to 80 staff at Hounslow Language Service are under threat after councillors agreed they should withdraw almost 20% of its funding.

YourLocalGuardian notes that the service – which provides specialist support for over 7,000 schoolchildren from ethnic minorities in developing their English – has 105 teaching and management staff, of which 86 are qualified teachers and 19 are language assistants employed by the council.

Read on…

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United Kingdom: English teaching ‘outstanding’ at Challney Boys

david — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:46:46 +0000

A school where more than 40 different languages are spoken by pupils has just been commended by the ever reliable Ofsted for its ‘outstanding’ English teaching. At Challney Boys School nearly all of the pupils are from ethnic minorities and 86 percent don’t have English as their first language.

Read on…

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England: Teaching overcoming the language barrier

david — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:47:34 +0000

Today’s schoolchildren are growing up surrounded by examples of people making their way in another country and speaking another language, namely English, exclaims the Independent.

A recent report from the CBI, the employers’ organisation, has shown that around three-quarters of companies look for recruits with some foreign language skills, and are likely to demand more such expertise in the future.

United Kingdom: First ‘social media’ GCSE lessons in schools

david — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:57:13 +0000

GCSE pupils are being taught how to use social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, as part of their English Language qualification, with the launch of a new ‘social media’ course.

The programme, notes the Daily Telegraph, entitled Social Media Fundamentals, teaches students how to best use social media websites in promoting their skills to potential employers and improving their communication capabilities. The first school to incorporate the course into the English Language curriculum is the boys division of Bishop Challoner Catholic School, based in East London.

Read on…

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‘One-answer’ IELTS comes under scrutiny

david — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:46:55 +0000

United Kingdom: Academia’s leading language exam has won favour among immigration authorities, but that could be about to change if calls for more diversity in assessment gain a hearing, reports Max de Lotbinière at the Guardian. With international student mobility has booming in recent years, so has the number of candidates taking the Ielts test of English. According to i-graduate, an international higher education research group, more than half of the 40,000 students it surveyed last year used an Ielts test certificate to display their English language proficiency when they were applying to English-medium universities.

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Pearson purchases English teaching business in China

david — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:44:41 +0000

United Kingdom & China: UK publishing group Pearson is buying Wall Street English, one of China’s top English language-training companies, for $145 million (in cash) to cement its position in a critical growth market, according to Reuters. Pearson, the world’s biggest educational publisher, will combine Wall Street English’s training centres for adults in seven Chinese cities with its Longman Schools business, which it said would give it a leading position in China’s ELT market.

Read the full story…

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British Council launches portfolio of newservices at TESOL Arabia 2009 – Dubai

david — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:57:24 +0000

United Kingdom and UAE: Those loveable rogues the British Council, the world’s infamously largest English language teaching organisation, has launched a range of new global English teaching and learning services, debuting the new services in the UAE, at the TESOL Arabia 15th annual International Conference which concluded on 14 March.

These new services, most of which are free to users, aim to create very broad access to high quality teaching and learning materials through highly interactive Web 2.0 style online services for teachers, learners and parents.

Read the TESOLtastic story…

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Talking the ‘right language’ to beat the recession

david — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:46:42 +0000

Scotland and Japan: Trainee architect Michael Gilchrist had one year to go before qualifying in his chosen profession… then recession struck and the former Charleston Academy pupil found himself redundant from the Glasgow firm for which he was working. With prospects running out he decided to cast around for something different to fill the gap until the recession eased.

Subsequently he signed up to a TEFL course and is now waiting for his visa to be processed before heading off to Japan at the end of this month. Joe Hallwood — managing director of TEFL Scotland — says growing numbers of people are heading all over the world to teach English as a means of escaping the recession. While jobs may be in decline here, the demand for English teachers overseas isn’t.

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Bilingual schools thrive in the provinces

david — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:35:32 +0000

United Kingdom: At lunchtime in a small classroom on the edge of Belfast, a small group of five and six year olds are listening to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears – nothing unusual about that, except that they’re being read to in Irish. It is, admittedly on a very small scale – a handful of temporary classrooms, high on a hill, next to a Gaelic football pitch. The school is already recruiting next year’s intake and its acting principal Mairead Ni Chonghaile has high hopes for its future. She is enthusiastic about the benefits of immersing children in another language.

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