The strangeness of English Schools Foundation teacher Chris Taylor's quest to visit every mainland province dawned on him as he sat down on a bench in a town square in Ningxia - an obscure northwestern chunk of China most foreigners have never heard of, let alone considered visiting.

Alone and nearly 2,000 kilometres away from his family in Hong Kong and his job as head of senior school at Sha Tin College, the 43-year-old suddenly found himself surrounded by a throng of locals. "They just sat really close to me and stared and stared," he recalls.

"As soon as I did anything like get my notebook out, everyone would be really interested and lean over and stare. I distinctly remember just wanting to be left alone and sitting there doing nothing until people finally dispersed and gave me a bit of space."

Read the full story from the South China Morning Post.

While the Russian president gets full marks for effort, his facial gymnastics as he tackles a video message in English have prompted amusement both at home and abroad.

Mr Putin, 60, speaks good German but does not know English so well and has only essayed the language publicly on a few occasions.

Past attempts include an assured presentation six years ago of Russia’s bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics (it won) and a memorable rendition of Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” at a charity event in 2010.

This week, Mr Putin seemed more challenged by the demands of a video plea to organisers of World Expo, the global fair which Russia wants to bring to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in 2020.

At times the president appeared to be chewing a toffee as he explained that Russia had a long history of taking part in the fair but had never hosted it.

Despite a heavy accent and a nervously flapping arm, Mr Putin – apparently speaking in a gilded Kremlin hall - only stumbled over his words once as he said Yekaterinburg would build a “massive state-of-the art complex” which could host 30 million visitors over the course of the fair.

The Washington Post noted that the Russian leader had spoken, “a bit awkwardly, [giving] a somewhat strange display for those of us accustomed to seeing Putin’s carefully maintained tough-guy air”.

Watch the video on the Telegraph website.]]> http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2013/06/putin_struggles_manfully.html http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2013/06/putin_struggles_manfully.html Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:35:48 +0900 Laurie Harrison at eltjam takes a very interesting look at some questions that should be on the minds of any leader in the ELT industry: is technology about to cause a major shakeup in how education is delivered? And, if so, what will be the consequences for those who dismiss it or don't see it coming?

If you listen to any EdTech entrepreneur, you’ll notice the frequent and enthusiastic use of the terms disruption or disruptive innovation. To some extent, the whole concept of EdTech is based on the possibilities for disruption engendered by online and mobile tech. The belief is that the “education space” (ugh) is ripe for disruption, and the “factory model” of education we currently impose on our youth is rightly about to be swept away by an EdTech revolution. But what does EdTech disruption mean for ELT?

...

Is EdTech an example of disruptive innovation?
Well, I would argue that technology certainly is a disruptive force in education. But in what way, and for better or worse? EdTech fits the bill for disruptive innovation in many ways. The promise is not just that tech will allow students and teachers to do what they always did but in better ways – it’s that tech will actually transform what education is.

Read the ful article on eltjam.

One of Tokyo’s top high schools will offer extracurricular classes in English from next year for students who want to study abroad, part of the rekindled interest in Japan for higher education in foreign countries.

Nezu Educational Foundation in Nerima Ward, which runs Musashi Senior and Junior High School, will offer the night classes for 120 students--twice a week for junior high school students and three times a week for senior high school students from September to next June.

The school dubbed the course the “RED Program,” with R standing for voluntary research, E for writing essays and D for debate.

“Amid the age of globalization, we want students to have options overseas. We want to nurture human resources who can play an active role as international citizens in the future,” a school official said.

Read the full story from The Asahi Shimbun.

Nguyen Hoai Chuong, deputy director of the HCMC Department of Education and Training, said that primary schools in the city have applied some programs of both local and foreign providers on a trial basis. They are still seeking most suitable programs for local pupils.

The most popular is the Cambridge’s English teaching program with monthly tuition at over VND3 million each pupil. However, this level is rather high compared to financial capability of most local households.

A survey of iSmart Education Joint Stock Company shows that only 1-4% of households in HCMC can afford to pay VND4-10 million a month for their children’s education.

These families usually send their children to high-quality international schools such as British International School, RISS and CIS with tuitions from VND20-40 million a month. Meanwhile, around 4-5% of households can spend from VND4.5 million to VND10.5 million per month and send their children to international bilingual schools with tuitions from VND3-20 million a month. Some 13% of families can spend VND2.2-4.5 million a month and the remaining pay VND2 million or less.

Given this situation, English teaching solution providers have stepped in, offering various programs such as Cambridge, i-Learn and Langmaster.

The US Embassy in Muscat honoured 24 Omani participants of its E-Teacher Scholarship Programme, at a function on Monday.

The E-Teacher Scholarship Programme offers English teaching professionals living outside the United States the opportunity to take innovative, online, graduate-level classes through the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Oregon.

The courses explore major areas of the academic speciality of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).

During the ceremony, US Ambassador Greta C. Holtz congratulated the E-Teachers for their successful completion of the 10-week online courses and presented them with certificates.

Read the full story from the Times of Oman.

We have all been told to go with our first instinct when studying for multiple-choice tests, but recent GRE® research shows that on average test takers increased their scores when using the capability to skip or change answers on multiple-choice questions in the Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning sections of the GRE® revised General Test.

"The GRE revised General Test is the only admissions test that allows MBA and graduate school applicants to mark questions within a section and go back to change answers if they had second thoughts," says David Payne, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Higher Education Division at ETS. "And now we have evidence that this ability to go back to complete or change an answer may help test takers improve their score."

Read the full press release.

While politicians proudly proclaim the achievements of our multicultural state at local community events, the NSW government is quietly dismantling a key plank of multiculturalism since its inception in the 1970s - the dedicated statewide funding and provision of English language services to migrant and refugee students in state government schools.

The English as a second language program provides specialist ESL teacher support to newly arrived and ongoing English language learners in public primary and secondary schools across the state. It now comprises 896 teaching positions staffed by about 1600 specialist ESL teachers, supporting more than 130,000 migrant and refugee students.

Under the government's Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) reform, the ESL program is about to undergo a fundamental change. The NSW Department of Education and Communities is moving to replace these state-wide arrangements for ESL teaching positions to schools.

Read the full article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

The event was co-hosted by the British Council’s Going Global conference for leaders of higher education and the Qatar Foundation's World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE). It was held at the University of Salford as part of Qatar UK 2013, and was followed by the announcement of the 2013 WISE Awards finalists. The awards will be celebrated at a special ceremony at the WISE Summit in Doha, Qatar, 29-31 October.

Chaired by Susan Douglas, senior advisor on schools to the British Council, the debate featured Dale Stephens, founder of the Uncollege movement; Professor Sugata Mitra, researcher, professor and TED talk winner; Daniel Stevens, NUS international students officer; Professor Martin Hall, vice-chancellor, Salford University; Pamela Wright OBE, executive headteacher, Wade Deacon High School; and Bilal Shakir, WISE Learners’ Voice.

Watch the recorded video of the debate.

Joshua Katz, a Ph. D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, recently published a series of maps based on responses to a survey of more than 120 questions.

Based on the Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes, a project carried out by Bert Vaux and Marius L. Jøhndal of Cambridge University that seeks to collect and analyse data on real-world English usage, the maps will tell you when it would be more appropriate to use "y'all" rather than "you guys" or whether you might could get away with using consecutive modals.

Click here to see the maps.]]> http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2013/06/us_a_country_divided_by_a.html http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2013/06/us_a_country_divided_by_a.html Linguistics North America Regional US American dialects Bert Vaux Joshua Katz Marius L. Jøhndal Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:59:40 +0900 Do you know someone whose English teaching just knocks your socks off? Or maybe you have what it takes to be internationally recognized for your teaching?

TESOL recognizes the unique challenges faced by English language teachers and the hard work and dedication it takes to overcome those challenges. The TESOL Teacher of the Year Award, presented by National Geographic Learning, was created to recognize and honor exceptional English language teachers at the elementary/secondary and postsecondary/adult education levels.

The winner will receive US$1,000, free 1-year TESOL membership, US$250 voucher for the TESOL Bookstore, and much more.

The deadline for nominations is 15 June, while that for applications is 30 June.

For more details on the award, criteria, and the submission process, see the TESOL.org website.

According to the report, "newspapers said the Gulf Kingdom would not renew the job contracts for all expatriate English language teachers in its more than 10,000 government schools from the next academic year and that they would be replaced by Saudis." The report referred to story in the Okaz Arabic language daily, "quoting education officials." ELT News was unable to find any corroborating reports.

Take the survey now.]]> http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2013/06/win_a_gift_card_from_oup.html http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2013/06/win_a_gift_card_from_oup.html Fri, 07 Jun 2013 20:26:24 +0900 Temple University Japan and Sophia University announced this week that they will hold a joint career fair in English later this month. The Tokyo English Career Fair event, which will be English-only, will be held on Wednesday June 19 at Sophia University. Students can attend free of charge but registration, through the Sophia University website, is required for non-TUJ and Sophia students.

As one of the selected universities of the internationalization project (Global 30) pursued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Sophia University offers English-based degree programs and promotes active exchange between 180 partnering universities in 40 countries world-wide. At TUJ, all classes are taught in English and 60% of the undergraduate student body is non-Japanese. Both institutions are committed to supporting job placements of foreign nationals and Japanese students with global career aspirations, and therefore started working together and held the first joint career fair in English last year.

The event is designed to attract a wide range of internationally-minded students with advanced language skills. Last year’s fair attracted 10 companies and approximately 300 students from over 40 countries studying across Japan, making it a very international fair. Most participants requested the event be held on an annual basis.

Oxford Teachers’ Academy provides short courses, endorsed by and created in collaboration with the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, with lasting benefits to teachers. Courses contain 18 hours of content delivered over 3 days (from 09:00-17:00) to groups of 20-35 teachers. Participants who successfully complete the programme and provide evidence of learning will receive a certificate issued by OUP and endorsed by the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education.

Oxford Teachers’ Academy has run courses in over 30 countries, making a difference through education and learning to thousands of teachers and students.

Read more about the course and instructors.

Register now for the course.