*** British Council’s first English language teaching centre soon ***
Chennai , Apr 24 The British Council will soon open its first English language teaching Centre in Chennai , offering language courses for professional and personal development, specially tailored to needs of Indian learners.
The centre would initially open in three classrooms in the Regus Citi Centre, while existing premises on Anna Salai would be renovated, a British Council press release said here today.
The Council is equipped to offer courses to more than 750 adult students and would have 12 teachers from India and three academic managers from the UK.”All of them are specially trained to deliver courses using an interactive,&aposlearning through doing&aposapproach,”it said.
http://www.indopia.in/India-usa-uk-news/latest-news/557437/National/1/20/1
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*** Children With ‘Word Poverty’ Will Be Taught How to Speak Proper English ***
British children will have lessons on how to speak proper English in formal settings, under an overhaul of the curriculum for 7 to 11-year-olds.
The proposals, from Sir Jim Rose, a former head of Ofsted, place a strong emphasis on teaching children to “recognize when to use formal language, including standard spoken English.” They include how to moderate tone of voice and use appropriate hand gestures and eye contact.
The reforms come in response to concern that an increasing number of children suffer from ‘word poverty” and are unable to string together a coherent sentence by the time that they start school.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518092,00.html
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*** On language schools and weirdo ads ***
Recently I mentioned “weirdo language school ads” with an apparent bondage theme, and quoted a reader who had taught English in Japan and offered some psycho-sexual interpretation of the ads. Two updates:
First, the latest entry in this category, from a billboard in Beijing yesterday. Speaking personally, nothing could give me greater confidence in the quality of English language instruction than the slogan, “Talenty English, Talenty Education.”
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/04/on_language_schools_and_weirdo.php
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*** ILLINOIS STYLE: Man teaches English in Japan ***
MOUNT VERNON, Ill. – While helping college-aged students in Japan better understand the English language, Tom Williams of Mt. Vernon has discovered that living overseas and speaking their language on a daily basis has also helped him as he continues learning Japanese.
“I learned more in one year in Japan than three years in the classroom,” Williams said. “Classrooms can teach you grammar, but you have to be in a situation where you can use it every day to improve.”
A little more than one year ago, Williams left for Japan to serve as lecturer at the Ashikaga Institute of Technology. The institute is a sister school to the University of Illinois-Springfield, where his cousin attended graduate school and learned about the position.
After applying for and receiving the job, Williams spent one year in Japan, and then renewed another yearlong contract to begin this month. William’s brother, John, is also finishing serving as an assistant language teacher in Ota.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-teachinginjapan,0,5728255.story
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*** The World’s Leading English Test Celebrates Twenty Years of Growth ***
New Delhi, Delhi, India, Saturday, April 25, 2009 — (Business Wire India
The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is proud to celebrate its twentieth anniversary in 2009, marking its unprecedented international growth and success in setting the standard of English language proficiency for Higher Education and migration. Since IELTS was introduced in 1989, it has developed into a global leader, with annual candidate numbers rising to well over one million in 2008, and accepted by over 6,000 organisations worldwide. In India in 2008, over 200,000 people took IELTS.
Speaking of IELTS’ phenomenal growth, Kevin McLaven, First Secretary (Educational Services) British Council India observes, “Over the last two decades IELTS has become the leading and most widely accepted international English language test in the world. Whether for work or study, millions of ambitious candidates have benefited from the life-changing opportunities that IELTS enables.
http://www.businesswireindia.com/PressRelease.asp?b2mid=18780
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*** Forget Math. Women Lag in Becoming English Profs! ***
So much for the theory that maternity leave and childrearing are responsible for slowing women’s climb up the employment ladder. Despite increasing efforts to mint more female professors in recent years, a new report from the Modern Language Association of America shows that women take longer than men to get promoted from associate professor to full professor — regardless of whether they are married or have children.
The report, based on a March 2006 survey of 401 English and foreign-language professors, finds that women take between 1 and 3.5 years longer than men to attain the rank of professor, depending on the size and nature of their school, with the largest gap at private colleges and universities. “That’s a staggering difference,” says lead author Kathleen Woodward, an English professor at the University of Washington.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1894025,00.html
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