Nurses in Japan find language a barrier
By Philip C. Tubeza, Philippine Daily Inquirer

KYOTO, December 6, 2011—“It’s like taking a nursing course all over again, but this time, in Japanese.”

That is what Filipino nurses here told Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz when they met on Sunday and asked the labor chief for help in hurdling the national nursing board exams of Japan.
Baldoz said she met with six nurses and five caregivers who came here under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa), and they asked for help because the board exams were in Japanese and “were really very difficult.”

“They asked for assistance in their review and suggested that we negotiate (with the Japanese) to find ways to make the exams easier. They said the exams were really very difficult,” Baldoz said in an interview.

“They said it was like studying again, but this time using the Japanese language,” she added.

Baldoz is in Japan to attend the International Labor Organization’s 15th Asia and the Pacific Regional Meeting (APRM), which will discuss jobs protection and economic growth amid the global financial crisis.

Baldoz said the government would raise the issue when Japan and the Philippines review the Jpepa next month.

“That’s one area we will take up in January when we have the negotiations in Manila. We will be looking into areas for improvement and that is one of the things we will check,” Baldoz said.

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Philippines beats India to emerge as leader in call centre business
By Vikas Bajaj, NYT News Service

MANILA, November 28, 2011—Americans calling the customer service lines of their airlines, phone companies and banks are now more likely to speak to Mark in Manila than Bharat in Bangalore. Over the last several years, a quiet revolution has been reshaping the call centre business: The rise of the Philippines, a former United States colony that has a large population of young people who speak lightly accented English and, unlike many Indians, are steeped in American culture.

More Filipinos—about 400,000—than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly American consumers, industry officials said, as companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have hired call centres here, or built their own. The jobs have come from the United States, Europe and, to some extent, India as outsourcers followed their clients to the Philippines.

India, where offshore call centres first took off in a big way, fields as many as 350,000 call centre agents, according to some industry estimates. The Philippines, which has a population one-tenth as big as India’s, overtook India this year, according to Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines.

The growing preference for the Philippines reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing business and in part a preference for American English…

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Learning aids in dialects to be developed for mother-tongue multilingual education
By Rainier Allan Ronda, The Philippine Star

MANILA, December 1, 2011—The Department of Education (DepEd) will allocate more funds for the development of learning aids and materials in the various dialects as it seeks to bolster mother tongue-based multilingual education in public preschools and elementary schools all over the country.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said the development of the learning materials will go full speed ahead especially with his release of guidelines on the use of funds to develop learning materials for schools offering mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE).

The languages used for instruction and learning under the MTB-MLE include Iloko, Pangasinense, Kalangoyan, Kapampangan, Sambal, Tagalog, Minangyan, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Aklanon, Cebuano, Waray-Waray, Chavacano, Yakan, T’Boli, Surigaonon, Adasen, Bunungan, In Laud, Maranao and Maguindanaon.

Mother tongue-based education prescribes the use of the language learners speak at home or in their respective provinces in delivering lessons and in classroom discussions. MTB-MLE is implemented from preschool up to Grade 3 and in the alternative learning system. He said “producing educational materials that suit the specific needs of learners will result to better learning outcomes”.

Luistro explained that DepEd came up with the guidelines to synchronize and decentralize the production of indigenized teaching and learning materials as well as in the monitoring and evaluation of the MTB-MLE.

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Outsourcing stems Philippines labor exodus
By Cecil Morella, Agence France Presse

November 25, 2011—Malaysia-based computer whiz Arlene Teodoro packed his bags and flew home to the Philippines this year, going against the tide in an impoverished country that sends millions of workers abroad.

Forced to leave his family and friends in 2008 in search of a decent job overseas, the 35-year-old bachelor says he is back for good because his skills are suddenly in big demand amid a business process outsourcing boom.

“Nothing compares to being back in the Philippines,” said Teodoro, part of a 30-strong computer science class at a Manila university in the early 1990s, most of whose members also went overseas to find work.

“When I was working abroad I'd use up all my vacation leaves to attend family events and reconnect with my family.”

Teodoro now earns about $3,000 a month as a business intelligence analyst for a US data mining firm, which uses powerful software to predict such key measures as future sales and trends for clients.

Big multinationals from aircraft manufacturers to retail chains are increasingly using these sophisticated tools, and the Philippines and India offer the most cost-efficient locales for such labour-intensive tasks, he said.

They also, crucially, have large English-speaking populations.

Data mining is one small part of the outsourcing phenomenon in the Philippines that has emerged from virtually nothing 10 years ago to become one of the country's most important economic planks and sources of jobs.

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Church revises Roman Missal
By Jerome Aning, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, November 25, 2011—While Roman Catholics in the United States will be using a revised missal at the start of the Christmas season on Sunday, Catholics in the Philippines will have to wait another year to do so.

Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez said the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) already had an English version of the Roman Missal. But it needs to be translated into various native languages in the Philippines, he said.

“We already have an English translation but we’re still waiting for it to be translated to the vernacular. We’ll be using the revised missal starting the First Sunday of Advent 2012,” Iñiguez told the Inquirer over the phone.

The CBCP Episcopal Commission on the Liturgy, headed by Zamboanga Archbishop Romulo Valles, is leading the translation of the missal into Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Bicolano, Waray and other major languages of the Philippines in consultation with various dioceses.

“The 41-year-old liturgy, with its colloquial English phrasings, will be replaced by a revised Roman Missal that’s word-for-word more literally tied to the original Latin Mass,” USA Today reported.

The Roman Missal, also called Order of the Mass, is the liturgical book that contains the texts and rubrics for the celebration of the Mass in the Roman Rites of the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II authorized the revision of the missal way back in 2001 to reflect the Latin original. Pope Benedict XVI approved the revisions last year.

An example of the changes is the response “Et cum spiritu tuo” (literally, “And with your spirit”), which is rendered “And also with you” in the current missal.

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Filipinos off to learn more than just English
By Abigail L. Ho, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, November 7, 2011—If the government will have its way, Filipinos will not just be known the world over for their ability to speak English, but other languages as well.

That vision is one step closer to becoming reality following the agreement between the Board of Investments (BoI) and computing giant IBM Philippines to eventually put up a facility that will train existing and potential business process outsourcing personnel in languages other than English.

According to Ming Espineda, research analyst at Canada-based XMG Global, the planned training facility would be part of the BoI-IBM partnership dubbed “Philippines as the Global Leader in Multilingual BPO.”

“The partnership is a purely BoI-IBM initiative. However, the benefits are not exclusive to just IBM or BPO employees. Setting up a training facility to develop multilingual talents is part of the plan of this partnership. A move to encourage (overseas Filipino workers) to return and practice at work the language they have learned abroad will be part of the goal,” she said in an e-mail sent to the Inquirer.
IBM commissioned XMG to conduct a study on the potential of the Philippines as a multilingual BPO location.

Espineda added that another objective of the BoI-IBM partnership was to “simplify and integrate processes and policies on work permits for foreign nationals and visa applications for local talents going on knowledge-transfer (training) abroad.”

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Education Department hopes to rekindle interest in reading

MANILA, November 2, 2011—The Department of Education (DepEd) is hoping to bring back the interest of school children in reading instead of them spending too much time on the Internet.

DepEd has declared November as the National Reading Month and has urged schools and learning institutions to conduct a month-long reading program to revive the youth’s interest in the printed word.

In a memorandum issued this week, Education Secretary Armin Luistro ordered school officials to conduct various reading activities in schools and other learning facilities, among them a Read-a-Thon, “Drop Everything and Read (Dear)” and remedial reading classes for children.
The program is part of DepEd’s move to institutionalize the national “Every Child a Reader” program, Luistro said in his Memorandum No. 244.

“DepEd is initiating programs that would promote reading and literacy among the pupils and students, motivate our youth to learn from the lives and works of eminent Filipinos, uphold one’s own heritage and values and make reading a shared physical experience,” said Luistro in his memo.

Among activities DepEd lined up for November are the Read-a-Thon, which aims to discover outstanding readers in class; the Dear program, which engages students in 15 to 20 minutes of reading daily; and the shared reading or readers’ mentoring program, where older students are encouraged to assist younger readers with reading difficulties.

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China expert comes home to the Philippines
By Junne Grajales, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, October 30, 2011—Emmy Award-winning journalist Chito Sta. Romana led the first live telecast from Llasa, Tibet, for ABC’s “Good Morning America” in 2006. The famed Potala Palace, one of the “new seven wonders of the world,” is atop the hill behind him.

“I understand China more than the Philippines.”

That was the confession of Chito Sta. Romana, a 63-year-old Filipino Emmy-award winning journalist who returned home after 39 years in China.

“I’ve been giving talks about China,” Sta. Romana shared when we met up for an interview at in Fort Bonifacio recently. Earlier, he had addressed a forum organized by the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) about “the most important Asian country now.”

“That is why I am considering teaching and consulting on the side,” added Sta. Romana, who holds a master’s degree in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, Massachusetts. “But right now, I would just like to get to know the country [the Philippines] more.”

When asked to recount his China experience, Sta. Romana, the former Beijing bureau chief for ABC News, paused a while.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Sta. Romana began. “It was supposed to be a three-week visit to China. I led the Philippine youth delegation of student leaders—15 of them—invited by the Chinese People’s Friendship Association in 1971.”

But history would extend Sta. Romana’s three week tour to over three decades. While touring China, then president Ferdinand Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus following the Plaza Miranda bombing. Student leaders and dissident leaders were arrested. A year later martial law was declared throughout the Philippines.

“I was 23 years old,” he recalled.

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Philippines sees outsourcing industry boom

MANILA, October 15, 2011 (AFP)—The Philippines outsourcing industry will grow strongly over the next five years despite global economic concerns and threats to its call centre sector, industry officials said Tuesday.

The industry is expecting to continue its rise from nothing 10 years ago to currently the world's number-two player behind India with 600,000 workers, said Business Processing Association of the Philippines chief Alfredo Ayala.

“It may slow down, but it’s still going to be double-digit growth,” Ayala told reporters at an outsourcing conference in Manila.

Blessed with an English-speaking work force, the industry expects outsourcing revenues to rise at least 15 percent each year to $20 billion by 2016, when it would employ 900,000 workers, Ayala said.

He said the Philippines now accounted for 6-7 percent of the global market for all outsourced business services, second only to India's 51 percent share.

Business outsourcing covers a wide range of services, from call centres to accounting, legal work, health care and information technology.

In the call sector centre alone, the Philippines last year overtook India to have the world's biggest industry in terms of revenues and workers, largely on the back of catering to the United States and other English-speaking countries.

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Filipinos’ English proficiency is a competitive edge, says top PEZA official

QUEZON CITY, October 4, (PIA)—Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Dir. Gen. Lilia De Lima said Filipino workers have a competitive edge in the global industry because of their English proficiency and work ethic.

She said that being proficient in English is a great advantage and gives Filipinos a better chance to be employed. Without the language barrier, it only takes two months to train Filipinos workers instead of the usual six months.

Aside from good command of the English Language, Filipinos are also very cheerful, De Lima added. Foreigners appreciate the happy disposition of Filipino workers and their work ethics.

“Filipinos have the right attitude. There are employees in other countries who don’t go to work today and you need to erase them [on the list of employees] because surely they have already gone to other companies. But, not our workers. When they are leaving, they will ask permission 30 days before,” she said in Filipino.

De Lima said that the problem is our lack of belief in the capabilities and skills of the Filipino workers…

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Focus on “soft subjects” harming teenagers” job prospects
By Graeme Paton, Telegraph.co.uk

November 24, 2011—Researchers warned of a “strong correlation” between the youth unemployment rate and failure to gain at least a C grade GCSE in English and maths at the age of 16.
According to data, the link is strongest in deprived towns and cities with fewer job opportunities and a larger number of school-leavers competing for skilled employment.

Figures show that young people in areas such as Grimsby, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Hull and Birmingham are more than six times as likely to be claiming jobseekers’ allowance as those in Oxford and Cambridge.

Many “struggling” towns and cities also had the worst exam results, it was disclosed. No more than four-in-10 pupils left school with five A* to C grades including English and maths in areas such as Barnsley, Burnley and Hull over a three year period, it emerged.

The disclosure is made in a report by Centre for Cities, an independent think-tank tasked with boosting urban economies.

It comes a week after the youth unemployment rate soared to a 15-year high, with more than one million 16- to 24-year-olds now out of work.

Joanna Averley, the institute’s chief executive, said the problem was exacerbated by school league tables that encourage pupils to concentrate on “soft” subjects at the expense of core academic disciplines.

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Labour backs English baccalaureate to boost languages study
By Jeevan Vasagar and Jessica Shepherd, Guardian.co.uk

November 27, 2011—The government’s English baccalaureate (Ebacc), which recognises pupils who achieve good passes in a mix of academic subjects at GCSE, has won support from Labour's education spokesman.

Stephen Twigg, who was appointed shadow education secretary last month, gave qualified praise to the measure, which he said might reverse the decline in children studying languages.

His endorsement is the latest shift in position after Twigg expressed support for free schools, if they raise standards and help narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor. In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “The Ebacc has one clear positive: more children carrying on to languages at 16. Let’s be frank, the government has achieved something there and I welcome that.”

However, Twigg said the Ebacc had “a whole set of negatives” in terms of potentially crowding out other subjects.

In 2003 the Labour government decided to make languages optional after 14, a change that was introduced from September 2004. Language study has waned steadily since then. This year there were 154,000 entries for GCSE French, compared with more than 300,000 in 2004.

The English baccalaureate, introduced in school league tables this year, recognises pupils who have achieved a C or better in English, maths, history or geography, sciences and a language.

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“English banned” at song contest for minority languages
By Nik Martin, DW-World.de

LONDON, November 24, 2011—It’s all about taking part...

A song contest to raise awareness of Europe’s most endangered languages has been held in Italy. Organizers hope they can galvanize support to keep Asturian, Sami, Romansch, and other languages alive.

A 2,000 strong crowd turned out for this year's final of the Liet International Song Contest—featuring 12 artists—in the northeastern city of Udine, home to the Friulan minority language.

The team behind Liet International, which is now in its eighth year, is proud of its blanket ban, preventing contestants from singing in English. And officials said the finalists were not obsessing over whether the average European could understand them.

The audience was made up of young people who were the first or second generation never to learn their centuries-old regional dialect.

In Scotland, the Gaelic language - which is pronounced gallic - is mostly spoken in the highlands and islands in the north.

“People who speak Gaelic are choosing instead, as I am right now, to speak in English,” said Dol Eoin, lead singer with Macanta, Scotland’s entry for the competition.

Born on the island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, Dol Eoin’s parents taught him Gaelic from a young age. But over the years, English became more predominant.

"All these different languages are in similar positions," the singer-songwriter told Deutsche Welle. "I think that hopefully the song contest will help each respective language to smell the coffee because we're not called a minority language for nothing."

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BookThug lives up to its name, in poetry
By JOHN BARBER, Globe and Mail

November 13, 2011—With 35 candidates competing in seven different categories for this year’s English-language Governor-General’s Literary Awards, due to be announced Tuesday, all eyes as usual will focus on the two or three novelists most favoured to win the marquee fiction prize – the same few who have dominated the busy award season that Tuesday’s ceremony will unofficially bring to an exhausted end.

But when it comes to real domination, none of the authors or publishers vying for the big prizes can match the obscure one-man shop that virtually owns the shortlist for the 2011 Governor-General’s poetry award.

Of five books nominated for the $25,000 prize, three were published by upstart small press BookThug, operated on a kitchen table almost single-handedly by Toronto poet Jay MillAr.

Not since Coach House Press first published the likes of Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje more than 40 years ago has a single publisher of poetry made such an impression on the national literature.

The difference is that today there are literally dozens of similar small presses – maybe not many so small as BookThug – doing the same thing. Fifty-three publishers, most of them surviving on modest grants from the Canada Council, submitted a total of 170 books for the 2011 poetry award.

The unifying theme of the three BookThug nominees is their diversity, according to MillAr, whose unconventional signature honours the legacy of such pioneer avant-gardists as bpNichol and bill bissett, publisher of blewointment press, the original inspiration for BookThug.

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Alarm sounded as schools axe foreign language aides
By Susan Smith, Scotsman.com

November 14, 2011—The number of language assistants in Scottish schools has dropped by 80 per cent in the past six years, sparking fears that they are being phased out.

More than three quarters of Scottish councils have now completely axed their programme of foreign language-speaking teaching assistants, with just seven councils employing 41 native speakers of Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish in state schools this year. Another 18 are working in private schools.

Since 2006 the number of language assistants has fallen from around 300 to just 59 this year.

The British Council Scotland, which is funded by the Scottish Government to run the national language assistant programme, said that Scotland could miss out on foreign investment because its citizens could speak only English.

Lloyd Anderson, director of British Council Scotland, said: “Assistants perform a vital role in supporting language teachers by bringing a cultural dimension to language-learning that enthuses and inspires young people.

“Teachers are in no doubt that this helps increase linguistic fluency and makes it more likely a young person will continue studying languages to a high level.

“In an increasingly globalised world, Scotland needs to be outward-looking.

“Scotland could miss out on international investment and export opportunities if we simply expect everyone to speak English.”

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Business English teaching is slow to turn professional
By Roisin Vaughan, Guardian Weekly

November 8, 2011—The debate surrounding professionalisation of the ELT industry has recently been reignited on the business English teaching community’s discussion forums. The questions that are firing online exchanges are: should there be more accredited qualifications for business English teachers? and would the community benefit from a professional association to raise standards and enable teachers to command higher and fairer rates of pay?

With low barriers to entry, no professional governing body and few recognised international qualifications, it is debatable whether business English teaching can call itself a profession.

While there is a high level of interest in continuing professional development (CPD) among practitioners, the lack of accredited qualifications suggest low levels of demand for certification. Unlike general English teaching, for which there is a clearly set out qualification pathway, no such Celta or Diploma gold standard exists for business English practitioners, who must carve their own pathway through fragmented training courses.

Trinity College London does validate a Certificate in International Business English Training (Cert Ibet) and there have been calls for a diploma to follow on from this. But there is still no higher diploma or masters-level course specifically for business English.

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Foreign language driving tests to be banned
By Robert Winnett, Telegraph.co.uk

October 15, 2011—There are growing fears that tens of thousands of people may have been granted British driving licences despite not being able to read road signs in English.
The rules currently allow the theory test to be sat in 19 foreign languages. People are also permitted to attend the practical test with a translator.

In total, 93,407 car driving theory tests were sat in a foreign language last year. There were 18,927 Urdu tests last year, 12,905 in Polish and 298 in Albanian.

Last night, Mike Penning, a transport minister, said that the Government was studying how to change the rules to ban the “politically correct” foreign language tests.

“I find it incredible that Labour thought it was a good idea to let people without a basic grasp of English loose on our roads,” he said. “Road safety should be our priority, not political correctness.

“Instead of spending taxpayers’ money on costly translation services and interpreters we want to explore whether that money would be better spent on actually helping people to learn enough English to be able to drive safely.”

Figures released by the Department for Transport also disclosed that foreigners were regularly arriving for practical driving tests with translators. For example, last year, 230 Russians took the test with a translator, 452 Romanians and 21 Bulgarians.

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States linked in failure to provide trained teachers
By Max de Lotbinière, Guardian Weekly

October 11, 2011—The US state of Massachusetts and New South Wales in Australia may be distant geographically but they find themselves closely linked in opprobrium. Both have admitted to be failing to provide adequate language support for migrant children in their schools.

The US justice department has censured Massachusetts for violating civil rights law by failing to train teachers in the state’s schools to support over 67,000 students with limited English. It found that 45,000 teachers were not adequately trained.

Last month Massachusetts officials promised to correct the situation by the end of the current school year. Education experts estimate that teachers will need a minimum of 70 hours of training to meet minimum requirements.

Meanwhile, state officials in New South Wales have admitted that over 50,000 students are missing out on English language teaching because of a lack of funding.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported data revealing that only 20 new specialist English language teaching positions were created in the last decade despite the number of students in need rising from 16,000 to 137,000.

State education minister Adrian Piccoli said an additional 900 teachers would be hired under a $249m literacy and numeracy action plan.

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Language test for foreign doctors to bar those who can’t speak English

October 4, 2011—Foreign doctors will be barred from treating patients unless they have a good grasp of English under tough rules to be announced by Andrew Lansley today.

The Health Secretary will pledge to end the scandal which has seen 23,000 doctors from Europe registered to work in the NHS – despite never having been asked if they can speak the language properly.
A new law will give trusts the statutory duty to check the English language skills of all new overseas doctors before they are employed by the Health Service.

Failure to pass the language test will see them prevented from taking a job in an NHS hospital or a GP surgery – ensuring patients are treated by doctors they can understand, and who can understand them. 

Last year, a report by the Commons Health Select Committee concluded that the failure to ensure GPs on out-of-hours shifts can speak English had cost lives.

Three years ago, pensioner David Gray died after being treated by out-of-hours locum Dr Daniel Ubani, who was exhausted after having flown in from Germany. He was allowed to treat patients despite having a poor grasp of English.

Doctors’ language skills are not yet routinely tested because Britain sticks rigidly to an EU directive which outlaws checks on overseas GPs’ language skills – while France flouts it.

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Australian universities compromise standards to attract foreign students, says report

A top-level Australian state government report has leveled serious allegations regarding the treatment of foreign students by some of that country’s top universities, foremost of which is that universities are attracting bigger numbers of foreign students, and as a result increasing revenues, by compromising on English language requirements for students selected for admission.

Victoria’s Ombudsman has uncovered worrying evidence that universities have been putting the need for student fee revenue ahead of the ability of students to complete their courses, apparently enrolling students with too-poor English skills, according to a October 27 report in The Australian, a newspaper in Australia.

It also warned that bribery and attempted bribery by students, including an instance where a student offered sexual favours, may be a bigger problem than the sector accepts.

The report adds fuel to repeated anecdotal complaints from academics that they come under pressure to drop standards for under-prepared international students to ensure they pass.
“I consider that the universities need to shift their focus from recruiting students and boosting their revenue to ensuring their international students have the necessary skills to study successfully,”' acting Ombudsman John Taylor said in his report, “Investigation into how universities deal with international students,”

The ombudsman report notes that the four universities have rejected any suggestions that admission standards have been compromised by revenue concerns. The universities also questioned the methodology of the report, including the number of witnesses.

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Primary school languages plan hits resistance
By Andrew Stevenson, Sydney Morning Herald
 
NEW SOUTH WALES, November 22, 2011—Primary school students in NSW, many of whom learn no languages other than English, would be taught a language for two hours a week under the national curriculum the federal government is developing.

But the NSW Education Department exhibits no enthusiasm for the change, warning of teacher shortages and a crowded curriculum.

Currently, the first formal requirement for language teaching does not begin until high school, where 100 hours of language instruction is mandated for students in years 7 and 8. Primary
The national curriculum for languages will be written on a basis of primary students spending 5 per cent of total teaching time - or 350 hours - learning a language. In years 7 and 8 this would rise to 8 per cent of teaching time, or 160 hours.

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority yesterday issued its final shape paper for languages in the curriculum. Italian and Mandarin will be the first languages developed for the curriculum, and 13 others are under consideration for the next stage.

A spokesman for the federal Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett, said: "It won't be compulsory, but the intention of the shape paper is to make it clear all kids will be entitled to learn a language from kindergarten onwards.''

The national plans represent a challenge for NSW, which lags other states in language teaching. ''If implemented in NSW schools, this will have significant implications for teacher education and teacher supply, as well as the potential crowding of the primary curriculum,'' a spokesman for the Education Department said.

Change in NSW would require the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, to get directly involved in overcoming traditional resistance from the education bureaucracy, said an authority on language teaching.

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More than just LOLs, texts boost literacy
By Stephanie Anderson, Canberra Times

CANBERRA, November 21, 2011—Texting, Twitter and their social media contemporaries have long been blamed for the purported demise of proper English.

But it appears that Generation Text may have the last LOL, as some academics credit the rise of social media technology for boosted literacy levels and an increasingly layered English language.

Bruce Moore, from the Australian National Dictionary Centre, said the increased use of text language through mobile phones and online forums meant young people were producing more written material than previous generations.

“'They are writing more than they ever did, especially in the shorter forms, like text messaging,”' he said.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed an 18.1 per cent increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers over the six months preceding December 2010.

Of those 9.7 million subscribers, 37per cent had signed up for internet access.

Dr Moore said the increased use of non-verbal communication technology had forced the evolution of the English language and led to the establishment of text talk as an accepted communication tone.

Though it may not be as widely used as formal or colloquial tones, text talk had its legitimacy confirmed when the Oxford English Dictionary added OMG, BFF and LOL to its online edition earlier this year.

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Beaten by the language barrier
By Sarah-Jane Collins, TheAge.com.au

November 1, 2011—For some international students, passing their university course is worth offering their body. Desperate to up her grades, one student proposed such a deal with her lecturer.

“This is an offer that will change her life in terms of her potential in the future in her society or whether she could get married at the right level and everything else. Because that’s how important [the grade] was for her,” a Deakin university academic is quoted as saying in a state Ombudsman’s report tabled in Parliament last week.

“What really was damaging to me was that the stakes are so high, absolutely sky-high, that you can get to that point as a student.”

Such desperation is part of life for some international students, who struggle with English and do not get the support they need to complete their studies satisfactorily, according to acting Victorian Ombudsman John Taylor.

The Ombudsman initiated an investigation into international students at four of Victoria’s eight universities — RMIT, Deakin, Swinburne and Ballarat —in December last year, after his office received a number of complaints.

Over three years to the middle of this year, the number of student complaints more than tripled. The report says a large number of those were from international students unhappy with their treatment.

Why are they unhappy? Because, the report concludes, universities are not always meeting their obligation to admit only those who can handle the coursework. Once students who cannot cope enter the system, they begin — quite rapidly — to flounder.

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Tenth person charged over Curtin English language test bribery

PERTH, November 2, 2011—A Corruption and Crime Commission investigation into a scam at Curtin University has resulted in a tenth person being charged.

Rajesh Kumar, 31, today appeared in the Perth Magistrates Court on four counts of bribery over an alleged English language testing scam.

A former Curtin University employee is believed to have accepted bribes to alter International English Language Testing System (IELTS) scores at the Curtin English Language Centre over 12 months to June 2010.

In some of the cases, false test reports were submitted to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship in support of application for visas or permanent residency in Australia.

The Coolbellup man left Australia during the CCC's investigation but was detained and charged after returning to Australia yesterday.

It is alleged he took a total of $32,000 from three candidates, keeping $14,000 for himself and paying the rest to an intermediary who passed some on to the former Curtin employee to alter the scores.

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Sydney toughens up English rules
By Bernard Lane, The Australian

SYDNEY, October 31, 2011--Overseas students hoping to study business at the University of Sydney next year will need better English.

Without fanfare, Sydney’s business school is lifting the minimum English proficiency level for entry to programs such as the bachelor of commerce.

In Australia, undergraduate students from overseas are concentrated in business and commerce courses; many are Chinese struggling with English.

Like its competitors, the University of NSW, the University of Technology, Sydney, and Macquarie University, the University of Sydney had set a minium entry score of 6.5 on the International English Language Testing System test for these courses.

Next year, Sydney will demand a minimum score of 7.

Francisco Pinto, a Chilean student taking a masters of commerce at Sydney, told the HES he felt the change was justified.

He had found some day time classes dominated by Chinese students unable or too shy to contribute to discussion.

He switched to evening classes in the hope of finding more diversity, including local students, and better interaction.

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Telco support? English optional
By Lucy Battersby, Sydney Morning Herald
 
October 26, 2011—Sales staff for mobile and internet companies must be able to “'communicate effectively in the English language”' under a new code setting out consumer protection rules for the telecommunications industry.

The minimum English language requirements apply to all sales staff, including those employed in overseas call centres, according to a draft code released yesterday, but the new standards do not apply to customer support staff.

The new code introduces standard unit pricing for phone calls, text messages and data downloading and recommends consumers get clear and simple information about global roaming charges.

The code was drafted by the industry through the Communications Alliance, with help from the government and industry regulator.

The code has also abolished use of the word “cap” to describe minimum costs and introduced mandatory warnings when customers reach allowance limits.

Requirements such as English language skills were introduced because consumers had complained that they could not understand sales staff and may have signed up for products they did not comprehend, Communications Alliance chief executive John Stanton said.

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English language development faces some testing challenges
By Sophie Arkoudis, The Australian

October 12, 2011—The issue of English language standards in Australian universities continues to simmer. And it won’t go away quietly, especially while language standards continue to be simplistically equated with IELTS scores.

The sector’s blind faith in language testing inhibits the development of more robust ways of addressing English language outcomes for graduates.

At present, universities focus on assessing the readiness of international students to study effectively in English as the language of instruction.

Entry standards do matter, so measuring them is a necessary part of a standards framework.

But far less attention is being given to understanding exit standards and to ensuring students graduate with the English language skills for employment or further study. This is where more sophisticated methods are needed.

There is little doubt current approaches for developing English language skills in university study are not adequate. Many academics are overwhelmed by the language needs of their students and are ill-equipped to deal with them. Most English language support programs are under-resourced and operate on the margins of disciplinary teaching and learning. Allegations of soft marking continue.

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Reading of English papers help exam preparation
By Shoko Okuda, Yomiuri Shimbun

December 3, 2011—“Where can the first paragraph of this article be punctuated according to the context?”

This was a question posed by Yasumi Shiga to her students as she started an English class at Shizuoka Futaba High and Middle School in mid-September.

They were third-year students in the high school division. The 56-year-old teacher went over an article run by an English-language newspaper this summer on biomass energy. She had distributed copies of the article to the students during a previous lesson, requiring them to prepare for the next class.

“In my classes, each student gets about 100 English articles a year as study material, including ones for self-learning,” Shiga said.

Managed under a system integrating middle and high schools, Shizuoka Futaba offers a unique English education program aimed at cultivating globally-minded human resources.

Using English newspaper articles—as well as novels and magazines—has been part of the school’s practical curriculum for about 20 years to enhance students' reading comprehension skills.

In its middle school division, students start by reading short English sentences—for example, only those found in the first paragraph of articles…

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English newspapers in Japan offer topics for discussion
By Shoko Okuda, Yomiuri Shimbun

November 26, 2011—The instruction given June 17 to an English class at a middle school attached to Ryogoku High School was a challenging task for students. Takao Yamamoto encouraged third-year students to debate whether the teaching of English should start at primary school.

"Please discuss [it] in your groups," Yamamoto, 41, an English-language teacher, told the class at the middle school affiliated with the Tokyo metropolitan-run high school. His instruction prompted the students to start debating the theme in English.

In discussing the topic, the students tried to get some ideas from a Daily Yomiuri article that was published this spring. The story was an English translation of an article carried by the Japanese-language Yomiuri Shimbun as part of an installment in the “Education Renaissance” series, which focused on the teaching of English at primary school.

Yamamoto chose the English article as a tool to help students understand the current state of English education for primary school children and logically explain their views on the topic.

After their group discussions, the third-year students started their presentations on the theme, with one from each group explaining to the rest of the class the reasons why he or she was either for or against the idea of English education in primary schools.

After the presentations, Yamamoto praised the students’ efforts, saying, “You thought your explanations through in a very logical way.”

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Teaching English in Japan using rage comics
By Josh Wolford, WebPronews.com

November 2, 2011—Spawned from the depths of 4chan, perfected on the pages of reddit, and now coming to a classroom near you?

If you’re unfamiliar with rage comics, think of them as cartoons using an ever-growing set of Internet memes. Various faces and other crudely-drawn representations are used to express certain feelings – anger, shock, defeat, surprise, pleasure, success, horror. Initially, a rage comic was based around a certain rage character – the f7u12 guy (or fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu guy). Something would happen, and rage guy would be very upset by it. Nowadays, “rage comic” encompasses any comic made with a series of these drawings, no matter if it includes rage guy or not.

Want a look into the world of rage comics? Check out the subreddit /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu, the biggest collection of rage comics on the Internet. You might want to browse the face database, to figure out what they all mean.

The rage comic has a plethora of uses. Seriously. There is no emotion – no situation great or insignificant that cannot be expressed with a thoughtfully constructed rage comic.

And one teacher has decided to use them in his classroom.

Scott Stillar teaches English at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. He thinks that rage comics are a great way to teach the English language.

“Rage comics are special because at their core they consist of well known faces or expressions,” Stillar told the Daily Dot, “which are meant to show universal emotions of varying degrees under a wide variety of circumstances.”

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Lack of ALTs leaves English classes in lurch
The Yomiuri Shimbun

October 20, 2011—Takanezawamachi, a town in Tochigi Prefecture with a population of about 30,000, introduced English lessons for students in all primary-school grades more than 10 years ago. English-language classes have been conducted using a team-teaching method in which Japanese teachers are helped by native English speakers in the capacity of assistant language teacher (ALT). This year, however, the town faces a major challenge in its provision of English education.

There was no assistant language teacher available for Takanezawamachi's primary schools at the start of the new school year in April. Two new ALTs finally arrived in mid-July, a delay probably caused by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and the ensuing nuclear power plant crisis.

When The Yomiuri Shimbun visited Kita Primary School in Takanezawamachi, sixth-graders were taking an English class conducted solely by a Japanese teacher.

“I like English,” said sixth-grader Saya Kurihara after the class. “I think the earthquake [prevented an assistant language teacher from coming to our school]. I hope we have a foreign teacher again.”

Vice Principal Ritsuko Taki, who supervises her colleagues’ English teaching as well as giving classes herself, was visibly embarrassed that there were no native-speaking assistants.

“ALTs are really helpful because they’re good at praising and communicating with children,” she said. “We’ll do our best to conduct English classes on our own.”

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2012 US presidential candidates graded on official English

ARLINGTON, Virginia, December 7, 2011 (PRNewswire-USNewswire)—ProEnglish, the nation’s leading advocate of official English, today unveiled its grades for the 2012 presidential candidates.  ProEnglish has ranked the candidates based on their strength of support for preserving the historic role of English as the common, unifying language of the United States.  Over 90% of the world’s nations have an official language, but the U.S. is not one of them.

ProEnglish Executive Director Robert Vandervoort said, “We think that voters will be surprised, not only by the candidates who earned the top grades, but by those who scored the worst.

“Unfortunately, over half the candidates scored a Grade C or lower, which means that they haven’t focused enough attention on these cultural and fiscal issues that are important to the vast majority of American voters,” said Vandervoort.  According to a May 2010 Rasmussen Reports survey, 87% of likely voters want English to be the official language of the United States.

The grades are based on six different English language assimilation issues, including (1) support for “official English” legislation/laws, (2) repealing federal foreign language voter ballots, (3) opposing amnesty, (4) opposing Puerto Rican statehood without official English, (5) supporting English-on-the-job laws/policies, and 6) favoring the assimilation over the multiculturalism approach.  ProEnglish does not endorse candidates.

“These rankings are not static, so candidates can improve their scores with public statements or by notifying ProEnglish of their clarified positions,” concluded Vandervoort.

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Parents and teachers don’t see eye-to-eye on merits of language mixing
By Maane Khatchatourian, TheBrooklynInk.com

November 23, 2011—“Maria quiere coffee after class, pero I have to study.”

These ten simple words meaning “Maria wants coffee after class, but I have to study” sound harmless, but are highly contentious when uttered by a student as Park Slope teachers clash with students and their parents on the role of Spanglish in the classroom.

Unlike previous generations of Hispanic immigrants, parents are increasingly allowing the mixing of the two languages and — perhaps surprisingly — education researchers are celebrating the phenomenon.

Recent research findings conclude that the speech practice — known technically as “codeswitching” — doesn’t harm English language skills and may even boost intellectual development. This means that teachers, preoccupied from K-12 on promoting Standard English, may be the ones who are ill-informed.

Evelyn Lopez, Public School 10’s English Language Learner program instructor, said teachers are stricter especially with older students in terms of speaking “pure English” in class.
According to Lopez, past generations of Hispanic immigrants raised their children to either conform completely to American customs by only speaking English or maintain their cultural identity by only speaking Spanish.

“Sometimes parents don’t want them to speak their native tongue,” Lopez said. “They want their children to assimilate to the larger society. Because parents are coming and learning English themselves, they have become more open to bilingualism.”
Parents apparently made the better choice because studies have found that bilingualism is cognitively stimulating. In fact, multilinguals outperform monolinguals academically.

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Tagalog to be used in election ballots in Nevada district
By Rose-an Jessica Dioquino, GMA News

November 24, 2011—The future election materials in a district in Nevada state in the United States will include Tagalog as one of the featured languages, the Asian Journal said on Wednesday (US time).

According to the Asian Journal report, Harvard Lomax, election registrar of Clark County said “all aspects of the election will now have a Tagalog option including the voting screen, printed ballot, and other materials.”

The announcement came months before the US presidential elections in 2012.

Lomax’s office “reached out to the Filipino community last week” for assistance, after the US Census department told them to incorporate a language option for “the county’s large Filipino population” in future election ballots, it added.

The latest Census showed that Filipinos make up the largest Asian subgroup in Clark County—the largest district in Nevada.

Lomax said this move would be “quite a challenge” for his office because no one in his team knows how to speak, write, or understand Tagalog.

His office is now looking for an Election Operations Specialist who can fluently use both English and Tagalog, he added.

“What we want to do is go out and work with you all to make sure this is a successful program and that we serve you and your community to make sure [that] it will be easier for you to vote,” he said.

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Demand for French education surges in Louisiana

NEW ORLEANS, November 17, 2011 (AP)—The wave of Hispanics who flooded the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina doesn’t appear to have dampened Louisiana families’ demand for their children to get a French education.

There’s a waiting list at all 29 of the state’s public French immersion programs, and this year at least one school — the International School of Louisiana in New Orleans — received more applications for its French program than ever before.

Demand for Spanish language education remains strong, both for local use and as a language of inter-American commerce. But even some Spanish-speakers are seeking French language education for their children.

Gayle Perez, a New Orleans native who grew up speaking Spanish because of her Ecuadorean parents, enrolled her son in ISL’s French program. Now 10 years old, Alejandro Perez, is fluent in English, Spanish and French.

“It was the best thing I could have done for my son,” Perez said. “He’s not just learning a new language. He is learning that there’s another part of the world out there, one that’s not only English-speaking or only Spanish-speaking.”

Perez said she chose French for her son partly because of the language’s place in New Orleans’ history but mostly because of its place in the world. French is spoken in more than 30 countries across the globe, and it is the official language of the United Nations.

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Medical interpreter mends language barrier gaps
By Cindy Atoji Keene, Boston Globe 

November 15, 2011—Lilia Karapetyan’s first experience with medical interpretation came after the massive earthquake in Armenia in 1988, when devastation ripped through the country. As foreign aid workers arrived to help grapple with the quake’s aftermath, Karapetyan volunteered her services to translate for American doctors and other international English-speaking teams. “Thousands were dying and many more injured; it was hell. Interpreters were needed everywhere. I hope I helped save lives; I just did whatever I could do.”

It was a harrowing experience but one that showed Karapetyan, 54, how her English language skills could be applied in a medical setting. So when she came to America nine years ago and settled in the Watertown-Belmont area, where a large Armenian-American population resides, she said she “was inspired to be a liaison between the community and the American medical system.” Today Karapetyan is an integral part of Mount Auburn Hospital’s Interpreter Services department, translating for Armenian and Russian patients.

Becoming trained as a medical interpreter wasn’t easy for Karapetyan. “It was kind of a shock for me, learning the Greek and Latin terminology,” said Karapetyan, who said that just knowing medical terminology is not enough; the ethics and cultural intricacies of interpretation restrict multicultural conversations inside the hospital. “The interpreter is only the voice of the patient and doctor; you can’t add your own personal emotions, feelings or thoughts, otherwise the doctor doesn’t know if it’s the interpreter speaking or the patient.”

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Fresno hearing seeks reform for English learners
By Heather Somerville, The Fresno Bee
        
FRESNO, California, November 1, 2011—More than a million California students may never go to college because they are not fluent in English, despite years of instruction. More than 900,000 won’t graduate high school because of the language barriers.

The woeful results of the state's attempt to educate “English-learners” – students whose native language is not English – was the focus of a legislative hearing Tuesday at Fresno Unified School District headquarters.

State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, chose Fresno as the second stop on his statewide tour to push for reforming education for English-learners. Fresno's schools – with large numbers of immigrant and low-income students – face some of the greatest challenges in the state, he said.

“We are failing the English-learners today,” Padilla said.

Schools are under pressure from state lawmakers and district administrators to train teachers better in how to teach students who are learning English. In turn, educators have pushed lawmakers to change policies that they say impede their ability to help immigrant students and their parents.

California schools get about $1.2 billion in federal and state money to help their 1.45 million English learners. But educators want more flexibility in spending that money.

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English proficiency levels vary among teaching assistants
By Liz Farmer, DailyTexanonline.com

November 3, 2011—To work as a teaching assistant, most international graduate students have to pass an English assessment, but language still creates a disconnect in UT classrooms.

Graduate students who earn a low but passing score can serve as TAs if they take a teaching and culture class over the course of their first teaching semester, said Michael Smith, director of English as a Second Language Services in the International Office. Smith said out of UT’s 600 international graduate students, about 420 passed the English language assessment and about 120 passed conditionally.

“We work with departments and find out the typical interactions they have in class,” Smith said. “Those who fail have to retake the test before they would be allowed to go back in the classroom.”

Smith said if most student-to-TA interaction will be in another language, the international graduate student does not have to take the assessment, but he or she does have to complete an online workshop about the University’s academic atmosphere.

“We don’t really care if they speak English, but we do care about their intercultural communication,” Smith said.

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English learners: Chalkboard on the rise in county schools
By Kathryn Schiliro, MorganCountyCitizen.com

November 3, 2011—Upon her entrance, the classroom seems a bit daunting to Laura Rodriguez.
She gathers her courage, moves to the front of the crowd seated on the floor, takes a seat among the colored tiles and, quietly at first, shyly, begins reading—in Spanish.

But “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is a familiar tale, the Kindergarteners are learning Spanish and teacher Shelly Ewing is helping the class follow along with Miss Laura by using an English version of the same story.

“Caliente!” Kindergarteners reply when asked about Goldilocks’ porridge.

“This is the part where she tries out all the chairs,” Ewing tells the class. “How do we say ‘bear’ in Español?”

“Oso!” the class replies. They also know “Muy bien!” and “Gracias!” and “Adios!”

“These words are in English in this book, and these words are in Spanish in this book, but our books are the same story,”  Ewing says.

Then, asked if anyone wanted to address Miss Laura in Spanish, one boy simply yells out, “Azul!”

Laura looks at him questioningly, then at the teacher.

“He just wanted to say ‘blue,’” Ewing replies.

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Is California doing screening of English language learners wrong?
By Maggie Severns, EarlyEducation.net

October 19, 2011—A new study suggests that the state of California may have massive problems in the way it identifies English Language Learner students in its public schools. In California, where one quarter or 1.6 million students are English Language Learners, this misidentification could be costly for schools and students alike.

The report, by UC Berkely Graduate School of Education researchers Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Rosaisela Rodriguez, suggests that the mechanisms used to identify children for English-learner status may not be flagging the right students. Once children are identified for ELL-designation testing via Home Language Surveys, the authors assert, the exam they are given to establish ELL status is not developmentally appropropriate for many, leading to over-identification for ELL services.

No Child Left Behind requires that children be screened for English proficiency and given English language support if needed, but the misidentification of English Language Learners, over-identification of ELL's for special education services, and consistent low-performance of English Language Learners on standardized tests all indicate that many states have yet to design well-functioning systems for children who are not proficient in English.

In order to identify children who will be screened for ELL services each year, states require teachers to send a Home Language Survey to each student's parents. California’s survey asks four questions, including, “Which language does your child most frequently speak at home?” and “Which language is most often spoken by adults in the home?”

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Immigrant students pose language challenge for schools
By Jason Schultz, The Palm Beach Post

FLORIDA, October 15, 2011—“De hond heeft mijn huiswerk opgegeten.”

That means “the dog ate my homework” to the 21 Palm Beach County School District students who speak Dutch as their primary language.

“Tabestan madreseh tatil ast.”

That means “school’s out for summer” for the 49 students who speak Persian or Farsi, a language common in parts of Iran.

Those are two of the 145 languages that district students from more than 200 countries reported as their primary language this year. Although about 96 percent of students speak one of three languages — English, Spanish or Haitian Creole — the school district uses an array of volunteers, pictures and dictionaries to serve children in languages that district officials sometimes can't pronounce, let alone speak.

“We work around it. The communication is not 100 percent, but we use pictures and gestures,” said Solange Colon, a language teacher at Roosevelt Middle School in West Palm Beach. She has Arabic speakers in her English class and said she also has taught English to students who spoke Jamaican patois and Hungarian.

There are at least 39 languages spoken by only one student in the district. These vary from Icelandic to Native American and Eskimo dialects, such as Yupik, which is spoken in parts of Alaska, to Pohnpeian, which is spoken on the tiny island of Pohnpei in the Pacific Ocean.

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State puts pressure on city schools over English language learners

NEW YORK, October 13, 2011—New York City schools are broadly failing to meet the needs of many of their thousands of students who are still learning English, and they must improve or they may face sanctions, state education officials announced Wednesday.

“Clearly the services are poor, and the best indication of that are the student outcomes,” John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner, said in a news conference by video link from Albany.

As a measure of the problem, he said, in 2010 only 7 percent of the city’s English language learners were found to have graduated on time and ready for college and careers. In the lower grades, 12 percent were proficient in English and 35 percent in math, well behind city averages.

“These numbers are not acceptable,” Dr. King said. “We can’t leave so many students behind academically without access to college and career opportunities.”

More than a year ago, the state directed the city to create a plan to improve its performance, and on Wednesday it released the city’s 31-page pledge. Among other things, the plan spells out the extent to which the city is in violation of state law with the services it does provide.

For example, in the 2009-10 school year, about 22 percent of new students who needed to take language assessments to see if they required special services were not tested in a timely manner, the plan said.

Because of shortages of certified teachers, 5,190 children were not getting the language lessons to which they were legally entitled, the city said Wednesday.

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In “Chinglish,” language barriers are a (bad) sign of current times
By Barbara Chai, WallStreetJournal.com

NEW YORK, October 10, 2011—The new Broadway comedy “Chinglish” explores the language barriers that a U.S. businessman tries to overcome as he looks to secure a lucrative contract in China for his sign-making firm.

Performed in English and Mandarin with supertitles, the play grew out of the experiences that Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang had on business trips to China. On one visit to Shanghai in 2005, Mr. Hwang was taken to a brand new arts center “where everything was perfect, except for the badly translated signs,” Mr. Hwang said. “I think that was where I first saw ‘Deformed Man’s Toilet’ for ‘Handicapped Restrooms.’”

Last summer, Mr. Hwang (who won his Tony for “M. Butterfly”) traveled to Guiyang on a research trip for “Chinglish” with director Leigh Silverman and producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel. They were hosted for a banquet by government officials, and on the menu was “wood frog fallopian tubes.” “It turned out to be some sort of vegetable preparation,” said Mr. Hwang.

To market “Chinglish,” which begins performances this week at the Longacre Theatre in New York and officially opens Oct. 27, the producers worked with Omnicom Group Inc.’s Serino/Coyne LLC, an advertising agency specializing in Broadway productions. The marketing team included both English and Mandarin speakers, and emphasized wordplay in the campaign. “Emancipated Cow Juice”? That would be Chinglish for fat-free milk, as one ad says.

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Lawmakers urged to rethink English immersion law
By Matt Murphy, State House News Service
    
CAMBRIDGE, October 4, 2011—Armed with fresh findings by the Department of Justice that fault Massachusetts for failing to adequately train teachers to instruct students with limited English skills, supporters of bilingual education on Tuesday called for increased flexibility for school districts to meet the needs of non-native English speakers.

“Limited English proficient students are languishing in the classroom and it's affecting the well-being of an entire population of students,” said Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, a Boston Democrat and the author of a bill (H 1065) that would reintroduce bilingual education to Massachusetts classrooms for the first time in 10 years.

Sen. Sal DiDomenico filed an identical bill (S 197) in the Senate this session. Both bills were the subject of a hearing Tuesday before the Committee on Education, co-chaired by Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz and Rep. Alice Peisch.

The Justice Department issued a report in July blaming a lack of teacher training on the state’s decision not to make specialized training mandatory, and on outdated training policies that left certified teachers unprepared to properly instruct English-language learners.

As of May 2011, more than 45,000 teachers in over 70 percent of the state's school districts lacked the training required to properly instruct students with limited English skills, according to the federal government’s review.

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India offers English stepping stone to east Asian students
By Maseeh Rahman, Guardian Weekly

December 6, 2011—Jinju, often described as South Korea’s most beautiful city, is an education hub, with many high schools, community colleges and universities. It seems strange, therefore, for a teenager from the city to leave his parents and study in a boarding school in an alien land thousands of kilometres away from home.

Yet this is just what Sang Hyeon Cho, an 18-year-old 11th-grade student at the Woodstock School in Mussoorie, northern India, is doing.

He is not alone. There are hundreds of east Asian, especially South Korean, children enrolled in schools across India, pining for home food while persevering with their studies.

And the reason for their extraordinary conduct can be summed up in what to them is almost a magical word: English.

“A large part of Asia now sees English as an important vehicle for economic advancement,” said Abhrajit Bhattacharjee, development director at Woodstock. “Our ESL [English as Second Language] programme is a very big factor in wooing students to the school.”

Woodstock, nestling in the Himalayan foothills, has 63 students from Korea. It also has 14 Thai, nine Vietnamese, seven Japanese and two Taiwanese boarders, all enticed by the same dream: learning English.

South Korea’s embassy in Delhi records 1,100 boys and girls studying in 43 schools across India. The number was even higher three years ago.

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No English or know English, does it really matter?
By Vidya Iyengar & Aishhwariya Subramanian, DNA India
 
BANGALORE, December 3, 2011(DNA)—Is English really the root cause of academic problems?

Hywel Coleman, editor of Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language, and senior research fellow at the University of Leeds, said it can affect the cognitive ability of students if they are instructed in a language alien to their upbringing.

The researcher voiced his concern over English-medium schools and the quality of education imparted by them.

“It can be damaging if English is used as medium of instruction at a primary level, when it is not spoken at home. If you ask children to go to school for the first time and study arithmetic through a language they are not familiar with, it is simply not conducive to learning. Cognitive ability is lost,” he said during a lecture in the city on Friday.

He expressed his misgivings on the involvement of parents as well.

“Parents will be unwilling to go to school when they can’t speak English and will not be able to play a role in their child’s education,” he said.

But not all agree with Coleman. For Mansoor Ali Khan, secretary of the Delhi Public School, language is simply not a formidable barrier.

“Children pick up languages quickly, and it really doesn’t turn into a problem. Students are able to incorporate what they are taught at school once they are over three years of age. Over time, with sufficient interaction and teaching aids, students will be conversant in English even if their parents are not competent,” he explained, adding that students’ backgrounds do not compute when it comes to their learning curve.

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Gujarat High Court wants reply on changes in school exam languages

AHMEDABAD, December 9, 2011 (TNN)—The Gujarat high court has sought explanation from the state government for making it compulsory for higher secondary students studying in mediums other than English, Gujarati and Hindi to take their board exams in these three languages only. The new rules prohibit such students to take the exam in the medium of their learning other than these three languages.

A bench of acting chief justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and justice J B Pardiwala asked the government to explain the issue on the basis of a PIL filed by the convener of civic rights organization Jan Sangharsh Manch, Shamshad Pathan.

A government resolution was passed on May 3 amending the rules of Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Certification Examination. With the new rules, during exams, students of Standard X in mediums like Urdu, Sindhi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya etc. will be given question papers in English/Hindi/Gujarati only. The students can answer the paper in their own respective languages.

For students of Standard XII with regional languages as their medium, the schools will be providing question papers in English/Hindi/Gujarati, and students will also be required to answer the papers in only these three languages and not in the medium, they are taught.

On July 11, the education secretary intimated schools that they should be conducting exams in 2012 as per the amended rules. Many schools made representations against this in August, but the government did not reply…

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Tamil Nadu varsities to get foreign language labs

CHENNAI, December 8, 2011(TNN)—Soon state universities in Tamil Nadu will have foreign language labs to help students learn English, French, German and Chinese, among other languages. This is one of the five initiatives proposed by the government to modernize universities and meet global standards.

The higher education department has called for proposals from 14 state universities, including the University of Madras, Anna University and Madurai Kamaraj University, with regard to setting up smart classrooms with video conferencing facilities, a curriculum development cell, entrepreneurship-cum-skill development centre, foreign language laboratories and visits by foreign faculty. The state has allotted cash to 10 of the universities.

“These initiatives will help us to update our curriculum to make it more application oriented. The foreign language laboratories will help students improve communication skills, while visits by foreign faculty will help our campuses become globalised,” said University of Madras vice-chancellor G Thiruvasagam.

“Of the recommendations and improvements made by and to the board of studies only 50% are carried out. Even among autonomous colleges only 10 make necessary changes to their curriculum. A curriculum development cell with suggestions from foreign faculty could provide valuable inputs,” he said.

He said that the university had done some spade work in these areas but could not progress further because of lack of funds. The university has set up a committee to work on the proposal.

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Englishman trashes myths about English

BANGALORE, December 2, 2011 (TNN)—The importance of English can be exaggerated but it can be damaging if it is used as medium of instruction when it is not the mother tongue of the child. These are no activist’s remarks but warnings from an Englishman, an academic and globally acclaimed researcher at that. At a talk on whether English language skills pay economic and social dividends organized by British Council at Mount Carmel College here on Thursday, British academic Hywel Coleman, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education, University of Leeds, highlighted the pros and cons of using English in a country where it’s not the mother tongue.

“English is an important language. But it’s not the only international language. It’s easy to exaggerate its importance . We need to calm down,”' said Coleman. Quoting an Australian academic, Coleman cited the example of how Africa remains poor as people have no access to education, health, opportunities and governance in their own language.

Pointing at various studies on the matter, he said: “Some studies say there is no impact; migration studies point out that there’s a higher income for people with better knowledge in English; analysis of data from Indian human development survey 2005 said it applies only to younger and higher educated people.”

Though English is a link language and holds the key to employment, mobility and various opportunities, it’s not the end, Coleman said.

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English learning to be a child’s play in government schools

JAIPUR, November 21, 2011(DNA)—State Institute of Educational Research and Training (SIERT) has prepared a new syllabus for English language to be taught in classes I to VIII, from next academic session. The syllabus has been prepared with the help of ICICI foundation and aims at making English easy for the students.

The state government had introduced English textbook for class VIII developed by NCERT, called Honeydew, in all schools of Rajasthan in current academic session. However, it was felt that the NCERT textbooks would be too difficult for the students. “For long, the need of interactive English teaching was felt and this new syllabus is an attempt to make English simpler and understandable for students,” said an official of SIERT.

Therefore, the education department felt the need for the initiation of a new methodology to teach English in order to raise the standards of English teaching and learning in the state. The new syllabus will also include an audio support, consisting of rhymes and stories for listening, where children will listen just for pleasure, not overtly doing any language-related work. It's been felt that listening and speaking are two areas to be stressed upon to learn English by the students of the state. “These kinds of activities will make students comfortable with language and they will be able to understand the words clearly when somebody speaks English in front of them,” informed the official.

The new syllabus will prepare the students for new kinds of jobs, like that of BPOs. “Once the students become comfortable with the language, schools can train them for high paid jobs in BPOs,” informed Mohal Lal Bendara, deputy director elementary education…

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Now, an institute to polish teachers’ English skills

THRISSUR, October 1, 2011—The State Institute of English-Kerala, a training centre set up at Ramavarmapuram in Thrissur with a view to address serious flaws in English language teaching in the state, will be inaugurated on Saturday.

Education minister P K Abdu Rabb will inaugurate the institute that is considered as a state-level centre for coordinating research and training activities in English language teaching. The institute will work in tandem with the District Centre for English (DCE) set up in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Thrissur and Kozhikode.

According to the Directorate of Public Instruction (DPI), Thiruvananthapuram, the centre will stress on sessions that will improve the communication skills of students through training teachers. Technology-aided English language teaching methods will be used in the training sessions.

It also been planned that the resource persons at the institute will visit the schools, observe the trained teachers’ performance and identify their further training needs, if any. They will then design short training programmes to cater to those needs and offer them either at a school convenient to the participants or at the institute itself.

At the same time, the state government has requested the HRD ministry to sanction Rs 10 crore under the Madhyam Shishya Abhiyaan for the project…

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Lack of English proficiency contributes to high failure rate in Namibia                                      

July 8, 2011—About 100 linguistics experts from all over the world are attending the annual Poetics and Language Association (PALA) Conference which is currently taking place at the Polytechnic of Namibia in the capital.

In a speech read on his behalf, the Education Minister, Dr Abraham Iyambo, said English is being taught from the cradle to the grave in many parts of the world.

“But this teaching must be done properly by trained teachers. The teaching of English should not be at the exclusion or neglect of indigenous languages. Do we have these trained teachers? I do not think that we have them in enough numbers in Namibia. Is it obvious that proficiency in the English language will enable learners to perform better in other subjects because these subjects are taught and written in English,” he said.

Iyambo added that it is a fact of life that if learners have deficient English language reading, writing, listening and speaking skills; then they will not understand those subjects written and taught in English.

According to Iyambo, the strident call for the introduction of Science and Mathematics will remain just that, unless equally vocal measures are taken to improve the teaching of English in educational institutions.

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Language program bridges Korea and the world

YEONGI, August 29, 2011—Benjamin Stevens, 24, first came to Korea with his mother for a seminar nine years ago. Fascinated by Korea, he wanted to come back, and realized his dream thanks to the TaLK (Teach and Learn in Korea) program.

Under the government program, he recently visited Korea to teach English, his native language, at a rural elementary school. It was also an opportunity to travel across the country and experience the Korean culture.

Stevens is among 322 young foreigners from English-speaking countries who have participated in the 7th orientation of the program starting in early August on Sejong Campus of Korea University in Yeongi, South Chungcheong Province.

The program was launched in 2008 to provide an English immersion environment to rural elementary schools by attracting native English speakers from abroad. It is also intended to give them a chance to experience Korean culture and travel across the country.

They are placed to rural schools because students there are less exposed to native English speakers than their urban peers. The foreign teachers on the program receive monthly stipend and accommodation subsidy from the Korean government.

Currently, about 600 foreigners are in the country under the program to narrow the gap between English education in the city and the country. One foreigner is assigned per school.

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South Korean parents told: pre-school English “harmful”
By Max de Lotbinière, Guardian Weekly

November 8, 2011—Parents in South Korea who put their pre-school-age children into English language classes are wasting their money and could be slowing their educational development.

This is the message that an education pressure group, World Without Worries About Private Education, is trying to get across in a society where pressure to attain exam success has created a boom in private tuition and growing numbers of English language classes for kindergarten-aged children.

World Without Worries has distributed 200,000 copies of its latest booklet, What a Waste – Private English Education, in an attempt to change opinion about early-year language classes and convince parents that their children are likely to acquire more English if they start learning later.

The 36-page booklet assesses 12 common misconceptions about the value of starting English learning early with contributions from education experts, commentators and parents.

Research carried out in 2009 estimated that South Koreans spent over $18bn annually on private education, mostly delivered by hagwon, or cram schools. The government estimates that there are 95,000 hagwons and up to 84,000 private tutors. Hagwons open their doors at the end of the school day and children are often enrolled in classes late into the night.

Kim Seung-hyun, World Without Worries’s policy director, says the demand for additional private tutoring is driven by competition to gain scarce places in the country’s best universities, but parents are badly informed about its value.

“We think much of private education is useless and sometimes even harmful to children,” Kim said. “We try to make parents calm down and save their money and effort. That's the reason we’ve published this booklet.”

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“Let’s cut spending on English lessons”
By Yun Suh-young

October 9, 2011—To cut spending on private English studies, a civic group has launched a campaign by publishing a booklet underlining the inefficacy of learning English at language institutes.

The World Without Worries About Private Education (WWWPE), an educational civic group, publicized the booklet, titled “What a Waste! Private English Education,” which provides alternative methods to learn English without relying on expensive private institutes, on Sept. 28.

The group will begin distributing 2 million copies of the booklet to citizens.

“We’ve launched a campaign to give parents proper information about private English education, since this takes up a major portion of private tuition costs. We want to help them reduce unnecessary spending on educating their children,” said Kim Seung-hyun, a policy division chief at the WWWPE.

“Parents don’t have enough channels from which they can access relevant information. They mainly rely on what they are told by the private academies but the information they get from these institutes is, most of the time, exaggerated and distorted.”

The purpose is to spread a proper understanding of English education.

“Our organization was created in June 2008 and we have been preparing booklets ever since. This is a sequel to the first one we published,” said Kim.

The booklet discusses 12 misconceptions about English education and gives alternative solutions to each of the problems.

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Malaysia to study Australia model for effective English teaching

PERTH, December 10, 2011—The Education Ministry will study Australia’s intensive English language course with a view to making it a model in strengthening the teaching of the language in Malaysia, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said.

Describing Australia’s model as a good example, Muhyiddin said the ministry would look into whether it was in line with Malaysia’s policy on upholding the Malay language and strengthening the command of English.

Muhyiddin, who is Education Minister, said based on Australia’s experience, the ministry would look into the possibility of adding more contents to the English language subject at the pre-school level, for a start.

“If possible, we want to have a period where English is taught in an intensive manner. So we are looking at whether we can start this at the pre-school level because this is the time, when the children are still small, that they are able to pick up the language easily.

“That is for a start and after that, when they enter formal schooling, we will study whether we need to implement another round of intensive programme at Year Three or Year Four level,” he told reporters after attending a closed-door briefing by Western Australia Education Department, here yesterday.

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Laureate: BM and English important
By Han Kar Kay, TheStar.com.my

GEORGE TOWN, November 20, 2011—There should not be any quarrel over the Malay and English languages as both are important in the development of education in the country.

“Bahasa Malaysia is our national language while English is a world language that will enhance our knowledge of things.

“Therefore, the two languages should go along together,” said national laureate Prof Emeritus Dr Muhammad Salleh, when interviewed by The Star here yesterday.

He also advocates the introduction of more languages into the education system, such as Mandarin which is expected to be a major world language within 20 years.

He added: “Besides, language contains a library of knowledge through oral dispersion.”

Dr Muhammad, 69, from Bukit Mertajam, is among the five writers and poets who will showcase their works at the George Town Literary Festival 2011 that opens on Nov 26 at the E&O Hotel and the China House (an artspace, cafe and restaurant) at Victoria Street.

His latest book Bila Terkenang Zaman Dahulu: Pantun Pulau Pinang will be launched at the event.

Sourced from oral and written archives of Penang and written by Penangites from different backgrounds, the 300-page book contains more than 1,200 pantun (poems),

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Handy teaching aid
By Edmund Ngo, TheStar.com.my

November 20, 2011—Despite 19 years of teaching experience, Uma Baskaran faced a tough challenge this year in SJK(C) Poi Lam, Ipoh. She was literally lost for words as she was unable to help her pupils fully comprehend text passages in the English language.

“I could only use Bahasa Malaysia or English, which would take a longer time for them to understand,” she said.

All is not lost however with the introduction of Step Up, an English language pullout by The Star specially designed for Chinese primary schools. The pullout, which was introduced in January this year, is used as an important teaching aid in the language.

“I had previously only heard about The Star’s NiE (Newspaper-in-Education) pullout, so I was very surprised to hear of another pullout specifically for Chinese primary schools. I’m pleased to see that it has interesting contents too.

“A vital point in the pullout is that it is in line with the syllabus that we are required to teach. This is not the case with other teaching aids,” Uma said.

She also noted that the pullout caters to differing levels of English proficiency, as the language used does not discourage weak pupils. There is also interesting content to keep the academically inclined pupils challenged as the pullout also features puzzles and word games that generate excitement and keep pupils’ interest levels up.

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Mastering English in Kuching

KUCHING, November 13, 2011—It’s not to the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand that a growing number of foreign parents are sending their children to study the English language.

Rather, and quite surprisingly, it’s Sarawak on the island of Borneo that is preferred by the parents concerned.

There is a small but steadily growing community of Korean students in Kuching. Many of them are boarding with relatives while their parents remain in Korea. There are also those who are accompanied by their mothers for their study here.

The students cited cheaper tuition fees and Sarawak’s proximity to their home country as the reasons for their parents’ decision to send them to study at the English Language Academy (ELA) in Kuching. Moreover, they said, the quality of tuition there is excellent.

Many of the students are taking language classes before joining international schools to continue their secondary education.

For 13-year-old Karen Kim Yung Won, the high standard of English taught at the Academy has helped to improve her fluency in the language tremendously.

“I used to struggle with the grammar and find the different parts of speech and tenses confusing but after taking the English classes, I now have a better understanding,” she said.

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Science and maths must be taught in English, say educators
By YU JI, TheStar.com.my

KUCHING, November 6, 2011—Some of Sarawak’s top educationists are calling for English to remain as the language of instruction for Science and Mathematics in public schools.

They say the importance of English as a global language must not be denied and the education policy should be left to professionals and not politicians.

Sarawak Teachers Union president William Ghani Bina said that students in China, France and Germany – which like Malaysia have their own national languages – were all taught to improve in English proficiency.

The outspoken unionist said that Malaysia, as a developing country that needed more professionals in the scientific field, ought to accept the fact that English was the language of academia.

“If our Government says it wants students to be globalised, then English has to be important,” Ghani told The Star.

“Definitely, the standard of English is presently very low. Most importantly, we need well-trained teachers. I always make it a point to stress that English teachers should be local teachers who better understand local needs.”

On the Government’s insistence that the teaching of Science and Maths should be reverted to Bahasa Malaysia, Ghani said: “Well, if they have decided on that, there’s nothing much we can do, as long as something is done to genuinely improve the English standard at the same time.”

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak Prof Madya Dr Andrew Aeria, who specialises in Political Science, said the Government had neglected the teaching of English over the past two decades.

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No English option: Policy has been decided and should be respected

By Eileen Ng, New Straits Times

KUALA LUMPUR, October 30, 2011—The government yesterday put a lid on calls to allow some schools to teach Science and Mathematics in English, with Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin saying that “the policy has been decided and should be respected”.

The deputy prime minister, who is also education minister, pointed out that having a dual-language system would be “chaotic”.

Muhyiddin said it would also make it difficult for the ministry in terms of planning and getting enough quality teachers.

“If we give the option to parents, this will cause kucar-kacir (chaos) in the education system.

“It is hard for the Education Ministry to plan — how to do it? One school wants it in English, another in Malay. Then there is a question of teachers, how do we provide? Some of our English teachers are not so efficient, so if some schools opt to teach the two subjects in English but do not have enough English teachers, then the aspirations of parents will not be realised,” he said after opening the Language and Malay Literature Congress at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka here.

Muhyiddin was responding to calls from some parents, students and pressure groups such as Parents Action Group for Education (Page)for schools to be given the freedom to choose the medium of instruction for Science and Mathematics following the ministry’s earlier decision to reverse the PPSMI(teaching Science and Mathematics in English)policy.

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Performers in the classroom
By Alycia Lim and Priya Kulasagaran, TheStar.com.my 

October 9, 2011—It was like a scene out of a highly-functioning kindergarten class – in the best way possible.

“Krik!” said storyteller Jan Blake.
.
“Krak!” replied the packed auditorium of enthusiastic English language teachers.

The “krik krak” formula is a call-and-response technique common in Caribbean story-telling traditions, where the storyteller says a prompt word and the listeners respond as a signal that they want to hear the rest of the story.

As she told a folktale about a hen’s adventures while delivering a letter to the king, Blake illustrated how effective stories were in cutting across barriers of culture, language and age.

The conference provided a platform for English teachers and academics to share knowledge and ideas.

The United Kingdom (UK)- based storyteller was one of the featured speakers at the recent International Conference on English Language Teaching (ICELT) 2011.

Held in Lumut, Perak, the three-day conference aimed to gather local and international educators to share best practices for teaching English with each other.

While her skills worked wonders in keeping the audience fully engaged, Blake said that the most important aspect to her storytelling techniques was passion and enthusiasm.

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English-medium schools unlikely

SERDANG, October 1, 2011—English-medium schools are unlikely to make a comeback due to the country's education policy, said the Deputy Prime Minister.

The current policy required the Malay language to be the medium of instruction in national schools, said Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

“This is a question of the national education policy.

“It is not possible for us to set up national English-medium schools unless changes are made to the policy and the National Education Act (1996). It's a different story for private schools,” said Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, after attending a dialogue session with Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) academic staff and students here.

“However, we have consented for national-type (vernacular) schools to use the Chinese and Tamil languages (as the medium of instruction).”

Section 17 of the National Education Act 1996 states that the national language must be the main medium of instruction in all educational institutions under the national education system.

The Act also provides an exemption to this rule for national-type schools or any other institution exempted by the Minister himself.

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Ensure enough English teachers before making subject compulsory, gov’t told

PETALING JAYA, October 3, 2011—Parents and teachers say that the move to make English a compulsory pass subject in national examinations needs strong supporting structures to succeed.

Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE) chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said the proposal to make English a must pass subject in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations was a good move.

“At the same time, we need to ensure there are enough English teachers to properly teach the subject.

“Otherwise it will be unfair to impose English as a compulsory subject if students are not being equipped to do well in the subject. As it is, teachers are still teaching subjects that they are not trained for,” she added.

Yesterday, MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said a timetable should be set to make English a compulsory pass subject in the SPM.

“Mother tongue languages should also be encouraged and eventually made compulsory in all national schools.

“If such initiatives are planned properly with a staggered timeline, they are achievable,” he said in his speech at the MCA's 58th annual general assembly yesterday.

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“Both English and Chinese are vital,” says former Singapore PM

SINGAPORE, October 8, 2011—Former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said that, if young Singaporeans give up the Chinese language, they will have lost something valuable.

Mr. Lee noted that, while English has given Singapore access to the world, the Chinese language is equally important for cultural and pragmatic reasons.

He was speaking at a dialogue with 4,000 Chinese businessmen at the 11th World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention last night.

Speaking in both English and Mandarin during the hour-long dialogue, Mr. Lee answered a wide range of questions, including one on the country’s bilingual policy.

Acknowledging that the bilingual policy was one of the toughest policies he had to implement, Mr. Lee stressed the need for young Singaporeans to be proficient in both languages.

“Everyone knows you got to do English, otherwise you won’t get on in Singapore, you won’t get on with international companies and so on.

“And Chinese is also a must because if you haven’t got that, you wouldn’t have the self-confidence you should have as a Chinese and, secondly, you can’t take advantage of the rise of China.”

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Raising bilingual children
By Varisa Kamalanavin, PhD, Bangkokpost.com

November 29, 2011—Pongrapee Tachapahapong and his wife are native Thai speakers. But they decided to raise their daughter to be bilingual, speaking Thai and English. Today, more than 16,000 parents are following their linguistic path

Peipei is a six years old. She can speak, read and write Thai and English quite well for someone her age. Such ability is fairly common among children whose parents speak more than their native language. In that sense Peipei is no ordinary bilingual child as both her parents are native Thai speakers while English is their foreign language.

It all began five years ago when Pongrapee Tachapahapong, Peipei’s father, found an inspiring passage in a Japanese book authored by Masaru Ibuka and translated into Thai under the title Kwa Ja Ruu Kor Sai Sia Laew, or “kindergarten is too late.” The book completely changed his perspective towards learning English as a second language.

In the book the author had noted the most suitable period for linguistic and cognitive development of a child were from the time they were nine months to three years old. And Pongrapee set himself the goal to raise Peipei to be bilingual in Thai and English.

The family chose the One Parent One Language (OPOL) system, one of the most practical and well-recognised strategies for raising bilingual children in which each parent speaks one language to their child –Pongrapee speaks English to Peipei, while his wife speaks Thai to her at all times…

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Thailand “off target” with language teaching plans
By Max de Lotbinière, Guardian Weekly

November 9, 2011—Ambitious plans to increase English language teaching in Thailand’s schools are at risk because of a shortage of funds and qualified teachers, a senior education official has admitted.

Watanaporn Ra-ngubtook, director of the English language teaching strategy within the education department responsible for primary education, told the Nation newspaper that a plan to increase the number of students studying in special English programmes in over 200 schools was at risk because schools were struggling to recruit qualified teachers.

In July the Office of the Basic Education Commission announced that English language teaching hours would be increased and that an initiative in selected schools to teach maths and science in English, the English Bilingual Education programme, would be expanded.

But Watanaporn said that a strategy to recruit native-English-speaking teachers from abroad to teach English and other curriculum subjects was at risk.

“The schools cannot import only native English speakers, as it is difficult to find ones who have all the required qualifications. Some are good in English but not good in maths and science,” she said.

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Firm eager to meet nation’s steady demand for English
By Wang Hongyi, China Daily

SHANGHAI, December 8, 2011—When Shanghai schools reopened for a new season in September, 30 government officials were among the students preparing to take courses.

The officials, most of them either deputy district or deputy bureau chiefs, were at the school honing their English in pursuit of Shanghai’s goal of becoming an international financial hub.
Paul Blackstone, the chief executive of Wall Street English China, which provides training in English, said he sees nothing unusual in the officials’ interest in the language. He said he has seen many changes in the Chinese demand for English training in the past decade.

The language has lost none of its importance during that time. The characteristics of those who are learning it, though, have become more diverse, said Blackstone, who manages more than 55 Wall Street English centers in Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Nanjing.

“Ten years ago, most of our students were young business professionals with career needs being the most motivating factor for wanting to improve their English skills, as they used English to conduct trade, to engage in business negotiations, to communicate specialist knowledge to trade partners, to sign contracts and so on,” he said. “Learning English was basically limited to the demands of a relatively small group of people whose job directly required English skills.

“But nowadays everyone has realized that having a high level of English communication skills not only enhances career prospects but is also a sound investment in life. Also, different levels of the Chinese governments and State-owned enterprises are now becoming aware of the importance of the English learning and its role in facilitating trade and relationships…”

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Traditional approaches to English education should be changed, says minister

June 20, 2011—English language proficiency is considered one of the key elements in developing international competitiveness. Taiwan ranks 25 out of 44 non-native English speaking countries around the world, according to a study by English First, the world's largest private educational institution.

Despite the vast amounts of money spent by the government on English education, the ubiquitous presence of English cram schools and President Ma Ying-jou's pledge to increase the nation's international competitiveness, many college graduates in Taiwan still have difficulty having basic conversations in English despite over a decade of learning English.

Currently all third grade elementary school students and above have regular English classes on a weekly basis. According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), elementary schools can start teaching English from the first grade. However, most schools in Taiwan outside of Taipei and New Taipei have not introduced these programs due to limited resources.

According to the MOE's white paper on international education at local junior high and elementary schools, the ministry hopes to extend English language education to all elementary school students in Taiwan over the next decade. Wu said the ministry has commissioned the National Academy for Educational Research to study the appropriateness of this proposal, although currently there is no specific timeline for the implementation.

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MHA asks central offices, PSUs and banks to use local language

NEW DELHI, June 18, 2011—All central government offices, Public Sector Undertakings and banks across the country will now write sign-boards and name-plates in the 'second official language' as well, in addition to Hindi and English.

The home ministry taken the decision in order to give due prominence to the 'second official language', which is different in different states and Union Territories.

"The boards, sign-boards, name-plates and directional signs will be written/printed/inscribed/embossed in Hindi (the national language) first (in Hindi speaking states). The order of the other languages including English will be determined by the department concerned or the state concerned," said the home ministry in a statement.

The decision will, however, not affect the “order” in the non-Hindi speaking states. These states will continue to use regional languages, Hindi and English, in that order. The font sizes of the texts of all the languages will be of the same size.

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Should libraries stick to books?
By Paul Moloney, Toronto Star

TORONTO, November 29, 2011—Toronto’s budget chief questioned Tuesday whether the Toronto Public Library should be in the business of offering popular movies and material not in the English language.

Councillor Mike Del Grande, responding to the furor over proposed cuts to library hours, told reporters Tuesday that library users can access new releases like Pirates of the Caribbean at any of the 98 branches.

“Should the city library become a Blockbuster?” Del Grande said. “Is that what we should be doing? Is that our core program or is that program creep?”

In calling for a debate on library programming, the budget chair said he questions the library’s decision to stock non-English items.

“Are we an international library? What proportion of our budget should go for non-English movies and books, etc.? The argument would be made this is what makes the city great, but I would dare say our common language is English.”

“We’re spending tons of money for ESL. Should we not have a discussion of how much of the library budget should go for non-English resources? And if we are to be an international language library, let’s talk about how we do that. But right now, we are a computer centre, we’re in the movie business, we’re in the circulation business of non-English language programming.”

Councillor Janet Davis, a library board member, defended providing material in other languages spoken by thousands of users.

“Educators around the world recognize that first-language information materials are important for developing literacy,” Davis said. “We know that we need to have a diverse collection at the Toronto Public Library to reflect the diversity of our population.”

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Francophone radio broadcasters in Canada told to limit use of musical montages
By Nelson Wyatt, The Canadian Press 

MONTREAL, November 24, 2011—The federal broadcast regulator has cracked down on the use of English-language pop music montages on French-language stations.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission made limits on the use of montages a condition of the licence renewal of two stations and warned it could take similar measures with other stations.

The rulings on Thursday don't affect stations in English Canada because they address French-language content.

The CRTC was acting on complaints by three Quebec associations representing composers, promoters and the music and video industries about the montages broadcast by the Quebec stations.

The organizations described the use of the montages as “abusive,” saying the succession of English-language songs that were broadcast almost in their entirety shouldn't be counted as a single selection.

A musical montage is a compilation of a batch of songs played without interruption. It's counted as a single piece of music under federal broadcasting rules.

They can be used to help stations meet their Canadian or French-language content quotas…

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Canada’s bilingual? Who are we kidding?
By Marian Scott, The Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL, November 22, 2011—The best thing Stacy Legallee’s parents ever did was to send him to French school.

Now 47 and fluent not just in French and English, but also in Spanish, the well-travelled musician and studio engineer says knowing both official languages has enriched his life immeasurably.

“I think, if anything, it’s one of the great assets that Canada has, to declare itself a bilingual country,” said Legallee, who is pursuing a degree in English literature at Concordia University after a 30-year music career.

“That’s why even after years of travelling around and working in different countries, I’m proud to be a Canadian.”

In the 42 years since the federal government adopted the Official Languages Act, many Canadians have come to see bilingualism as the country’s defining trait.

But the recent furor over the appointment of a unilingual federal auditor-general and the revelation that two executives at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec can’t speak French have highlighted the cracks in Canada’s bilingual façade.

A new book raises questions over whether Canada can even lay claim to be a bilingual country.

While many Canadians uphold bilingualism as a quintessential value, that belief is not actually borne out by the proportion of citizens who speak both official languages, according to Life After 40: Official Languages Policy in Canada, edited by Jack Jedwab and Rodrigue Landry (Queen’s Policy Studies Series, McGill-Queen’s University Press). The book is due out next month.

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Aging Chinatown looks to youth for reinvigoration
By Meghan Potkins, Calgary Herald

CALGARY, November 20, 2011—On the last warm Saturday afternoon of fall, Chinatown is at its best. If you get there early enough, you’ll catch seniors doing tai chi near the Centre Street Bridge. By 9 a.m., students arrive for their Chinese language classes and shoppers follow suit — perusing stalls in the handful of import shops scattered across the small neighbourhood.

It’s a street scene unique to Chinatown and part of the enduring appeal of one of Calgary’s most distinct neighbourhoods — but it’s only part of the story.

Statistics gathered over the past few years show Calgary’s venerable Chinatown, one of the largest and oldest such communities in Canada, is on the decline.

Its population is mostly older and the numbers are decreasing. Part of this is attributed to an exodus of young Chinese migrants to the suburbs, especially those in northwest Calgary such as Edgemont and Dalhousie where those of Chinese descent are more than 30 per cent of the population. Because of those trends, some have expressed concern for the future of Chinatown.

But with almost half of Chinatown’s residents unable to speak English or French, the neighbourhood is a kind of island unto itself — a well-defined linguistic and cultural enclave that is, for the time being, in no danger of disappearing.

Ann Liu is one of those longtime residents. On this day, she descends the staircase of her 2nd Avenue apartment building to meet her translator.

Most of the time, the 67-year-old can manage her daily activities all on her own — walks along the river, grocery shopping and weekly trips to the Chinese church on 39th Avenue.

But today Liu will need to ask for help from the people who work downstairs, because even though she’s lived in Canada for 16 years, Liu doesn’t speak English.

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Liberals boycott vote on unilingual auditor general

November 3, 2011—A motion to approve Canada’s new auditor general was passed in the House of Commons Thursday, but without the support of the Liberals who staged a boycott and walked out in protest.

The resolution passed 153 to 94 in favour of Michael Ferguson’s appointment.

In a blog, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae said his party opposed the appointment because Ferguson does not speak French.

“How can an Auditor General—whose job it is to protect Canadian taxpayers—do his job effectively if he does not speak French?” Rae wrote.

“And how can this government—that initially stated bilingualism was a requirement for the job—change  the rules on Canadians at the 11th hour just to get their way? Liberals agree: they cannot.”

The resolution will also have to be approved by the Senate.

The 10-year appointment pays an annual salary of $334,500.

Since the Conservatives have a majority in Parliament, the third-place Liberals' boycott is more a symbolic gesture than anything else.

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Undercover investigation: Ottawa’s ability to provide service in French

OTTAWA, November 1, 2011—CTV Ottawa’s Joanne Schnurr went undercover to find out how well the capital of Canada could provide services in both official languages.

According to Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages, Ottawa businesses don’t fair too well.

“I’ve found it's easier to get an English menu in Barcelona than it is to get a French menu in Ottawa,” said language commissioner Graham Fraser.

Fraser is particularly interested in how comfortable French-speaking Canadians or tourists are with spending time in Ottawa.

So CTV Ottawa’s investigative team scoured the city with a tiny camera hidden inside a pen.

The team went into six restaurants requesting a French menu and none of them could provide one.

Gatineau residents Michel and Micheline Brassard were not surprised by the find. They say service in both languages should be a priority for businesses.

The team did find, however, that wherever they went there was someone on staff who could understand French or if they couldn’t speak it, would try to find someone who could.

At one of the stops, a tourist from Lyon, France said this is a city where you have to speak some English to get around…

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Bilingualism “key” competency for top Canadian bureaucrats
By Jason Fekete, PostMedia News
 
MONTREAL, October 29, 2011—As opposition parties protest the Harper government’s nomination of a unilingual candidate for the next auditor general, Canada’s commissioner of official languages says mastery of both French and English “is a key leadership competency” for senior bureaucrats.

Questions are also being raised about why one of the people who helped the Conservative government nominate Michael Ferguson as the country’s top spending watchdog is listed as having lobbied the auditor general’s office several times over the past few years.

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois all oppose the federal government's nomination of Ferguson, a former auditor general in New Brunswick, because he doesn’t speak French.

The government maintains Ferguson is already learning French and is the most qualified candidate who applied for the position, even though the posting for the $322,900-a-year job said: “proficiency in both official languages is essential.”

The NDP has submitted a complaint to Graham Fraser, the federal government’s commissioner of official languages, protesting Ferguson’s nomination because it doesn’t meet Ottawa's own job requirements and fails to promote bilingualism.

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Despite dire warnings, the future of French on Montreal Island not gloomy
By Jack Jedwab, The Montreal Gazette
 
MONTREAL, October 28, 2011—A report recently issued by Quebec’s Office de la langue française warned that by 2031 the share of people speaking mostly French in their homes on the island of Montreal will fall below 50 per cent. Such dire forecasts tend to attract considerable media attention, along with a predictable reaction. Opposition critics insist that Montreal is being anglicized, that the government is insensitive to the dangers facing the French language, and that it is urgent to introduce new or tighter language laws to curb any further decline.

But if Montreal francophones become the island’s minority, who will be the majority? That question is not directly addressed, which leaves the misleading impression that “non-francophones” will assume that role. The problem is that “non-francophones” are not a language group. No Montrealers refer to themselves as non-francophones. Lumping anglophones and allophones into an imagined category often appears designed to encourage francophones to wrongly associate the “ethnics” with the English language. However, the first language of most Montreal Island nonfrancophones is not English. Identifying with more than 100 groups, allophones simply don't have a common language to impose on the island's francophone population.

The demographic projections for 2031 would see the share of the Montreal Island population that speaks mostly English at home fall to about 23 per cent; in 2006, it was 25 per cent. In other words, 75 per cent of the island’s population will not speak English at home—though one never hears the term “non-anglophones.”

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Strict language rules for immigrants proposed
By Thandi Fletcher, Postmedia News

October 15, 2011—The Harper government wants to force immigrants to prove their proficiency in English or French before being able to write an exam and be considered for Canadian citizenship.

Currently, immigrants ages 18 to 54 must only prove their language proficiency by taking a multiple-choice written test on citizenship questions, which federal officials believe “does not adequately assess [for the] listening and speaking skills” needed for effective integration into Canadian society.

The proposed changes, which would affect about 134,000 applicants a year, would require immigrants to prove they can speak English or French when they submit their first application for citizenship, which immigration officials believe will streamline processing of the applications.

They would have to submit results of an English or French proficiency test approved by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, proof of secondary or post-secondary education in French or English, or proof of completion of a language-training course such as the federally funded Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada.

“The ability to communicate effectively in either French or English is key to the success of new citizens in Canada,” said Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in a statement on Friday. “This change will encourage applicants to ensure that they can speak English or French when they apply for citizenship, thereby improving the integrity and effectiveness of the citizenship program for Canada and for new Canadians alike.”

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Startup aims to teach English on the Web
By Grant Buckler,

TORONTO, October 7, 2011—When Danny Wang came to Canada from China in 2000, he soon got a shock.

“I learned about English in China for 20 years,” says the co-founder and co-chief executive of Toronto startup WeblishPal Inc., “so when I came to Canada I thought my English was okay – but when I tried to open a bank account, I found I couldn’t understand what the cashier was talking about.”

As Wang discovered, books and exercises only get you so far. It takes conversation with native speakers to really master a new language. And when Wang became a Master of Business Administration student at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, that lesson led to a business idea that became WeblishPal.

For a class assignment, Wang pitched the idea of an online business that would link Chinese students studying English with tutors in North America via web video chat. The students would get instruction directly from a native speaker, and the online conversations would help them master pronunciation and idiom. It’s an idea that has been used in teaching languages face-to-face for years, but in this case, students living in China would be able to learn from native English speakers living mostly in Canada and the U.S.

The idea appealed to Barbara Tassa, one of Wang’s classmates, who had come from Estonia with her parents at an early age…

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Vietnam demands English language teaching “miracle”
By Ed Parks, Guardian Weekly

November 8, 2011—More than 80,000 English language teachers in Vietnam’s state schools are expected to be confident, intermediate-level users of English, and to pass a test to prove it, as part of an ambitious initiative by the ministry of education to ensure that all young people leaving school by 2020 have a good grasp of the language.

As part of the strategy, which includes teaching maths in English, officials have adopted the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) to measure language competency.

Teachers will need to achieve level B2 in English with school leavers expected to reach B1, a level below.

But the initiative is worrying many teachers, who are uncertain about their future if they fail to achieve grades in tests such as IELTS and TOEFL.

“All teachers in primary school feel very nervous,” said Nguyen Thi La, 29, an English teacher at Kim Dong Primary School in Hanoi.

“It’s difficult for teachers to pass this exam, especially those in rural provinces. B2 is a high score.”

“All we know is that if we pass we are OK. If we don’t we can still continue teaching, then take another test, then if we fail that, we don't know.”

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$3.5 million grant awarded for teaching English education in Afghanistan

July 14, 2011—This month, U.S. troops began withdrawing from Afghanistan. Thirty thousand troops are expected to return home by next summer.

Now, as the country begins the process of standing on its own legs, the U.S. State Department has awarded an IU center nearly $3.5 million to help teach English education there.

The $3,487,454 grant will fund a three-year project organized by IU’s Center for Social Studies and International Education.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the American University of Afghanistan will serve as partners for the project, which will be directed by two IU School of Education faculty members.

Its goal is to develop and implement a master’s degree in English language education at Kabul Education University in Afghanistan.

The faculty members, Terry Mason and Mitzi Lewison, have worked with Afghan higher education for a number of years, establishing an education master’s degree at Kabul — the first master’s degree ever offered there — and bringing Afghan educators to study at IU.

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Kenyan girl beats world in English examination
By Christine Mungai, Nation
  
July 15, 2011—Shiro Keziah Wachira is extremely articulate, almost disarmingly so. She is only 16, but speaks like a person twice her age.

The first time one meets her, one is taken aback by her eloquent and coherent speech, devoid of redundancies like “umm”, “as in”, “like” and “yaani” that characterise a typical Kenyan teenager’s speech.

“We only speak English at home. I read everything, and that’s mostly due to the influence of my mum and dad. We have a big library in our house. I can’t really say I have a favourite genre of literature, I give anything a shot,” says Shiro.

Her parents’ influence has certainly paid off. The former student of St Austin’s Academy, Nairobi, scored the highest marks in the world in English Language when she sat for her Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) O-level examinations in June 2010.

She beat more than 420,000 students from all over the world.

“The news was unexpected, but I was very proud of myself,” she says.

Her English teacher at St Austin’s, Mr Frank Atuti, says she is an exceptional student and that her command of the English language is far beyond that of her peers.

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Sixty judges, court personnel complete English language course
                                                                                   
July 10, 2011—A group of 60 Supreme Court judges and other court workers have completed four months of intensive training in the English language.

The training pilot programme was conducted by US Peace Corps in cooperation with the Rwandan Government, the Millennium Challenge Corporation Threshold Program - Rwanda Justice Strengthening Project (MCC JSP).

The programme's objective was to serve as an aid and catalyst for the justice system's transition from a Francophone civil law to an Anglophone hybrid common-civil law system.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Fabian Yankurije, one of the trainees, said that he benefited a lot from the programme since he can now speak and write in English without any difficulty.

"Now I am able to conduct court proceedings in English, for instance, in trans-national cases or foreign investment disputes," he said.

Speaking at the event, Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice, Sam Rugege, observed that the English language remains a major concern for the Rwanda judiciary.

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151 graduations frozen over faked English test scores

Surabaya, July 18, 2011—After it was discovered that they had falsified their English-language proficiency scores, 151 students from Surabaya State University were prevented from graduating over the weekend.

Heru Siswanto, the university’s head of public relations, said on Monday that the students from a variety of majors had failed to obtain the minimum score of 400 out of 677 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), which was a prerequisite for graduating.

“We canceled their graduation because of the falsification,” he said.

“We’ve now given them four months in which to do a make-up TOEFL test and improve their scores.”

Despite the fact that the students had knowingly falsified their scores to make it seem as though they had passed, he said the university had still not decided whether to hand down any disciplinary sanctions against them.

Heru said the university was inclined to take a lenient stance on the students, including treating them as the victims in this case. He claimed they had “fallen prey to irresponsible parties who took advantage of their desperation after not attaining the required TOEFL score.”

“As an institute of higher learning, we will work with the police to identify and punish the wrongdoers in this case,” he said.

He declined to say whether the university suspected the students had been aided in the falsification by officials from the school’s Language Center, although he said this was a possibility now being investigated.

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Looking for qualified English teachers
By Katarína Koreňová, Spectator.sme.sk

August 1, 2011—The idea of compulsory English in Slovakia’s schools has opened the gates for arguments, both for and against the concept from its very inception. Nevertheless, the Slovak Parliament overrode a presidential veto of the amendment to the Education Act on March 1.

Starting in September this year, English will be mandatory for all incoming third-grade pupils.
Education Minister Eugen Jurzyca has said that his ministry hopes students will master at least one foreign language by the age of 15. In an interview with the weekly .týždeň he argued that “English is the language of experts and to a great extent also of diplomats,” noting that more than half of EU member states have compulsory English in their educational systems. Slovakia is the 14th to take that step.

Opponents of the new legislation do not necessarily disapprove of mandatory English classes. Apart from those who object to what they call the unreasonable preference for English over other foreign languages in the curricula, the most common concern is a lack of qualified educators to teach those classes.

“We do not have enough English teachers, either qualified or unqualified,” says Eva Tandlichová, Professor Emeritus of the Department of British and American Studies at Comenius University in Bratislava, and a recognized expert in the field of teacher training.

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English tuition needed before tablet PCs are given to pupils
  
August 16, 2011—Education Minister Worawat Ua-apinyakul has encouraged schools of all grades to offer students intensive English courses in preparation for the distribution of tablet PCs.

Since the English language is widely used on the devices, students from all grades should learn more English before the tablets are delivered, planned to be in the next academic year.

During its election campaign, the Pheu Thai Party promised to give a free tablet PC to each Prathom 1 (Grade 1) student under its One Tablet Per Child project.

The promise, however, has drawn criticisms from educators who believe that Prathom 1 children are too young for the PCs. Some critics have also voiced their concern about the inadequacy of digital educational content.

Mr Worawat said the distribution of tablets should not be limited to students at the Prathom 1 level.

"They should be provided to all actually. However, they will be handed out in lots based on the readiness of the digital content and the students themselves," he said yesterday at the second round of the ministry's executive meeting held at the Royal Princess Hotel. The minister insisted the free tablet PCs would be complementary to existing learning via textbooks.

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English proficiency or attitudes: what are the true barriers?
By Achara Deboonme, The Nation
Published on August 8, 2011

Is Thailand's low English proficiency a barrier to economic expansion?

That was a tough question from a young Thai man who graduated from a university in Sydney.

He asked that question because he is the only one on a eight-person team who has to cover English-related stuff for their magazine.

Statistically, the right answer is "yes." Studies show that in a society where over 90 per cent are literate, few are fluent in English.

Many universities are correcting this by demanding their undergraduate and graduate students to submit their theses in English.

But how can you force someone who doesn't know English to write in the language? Eventually, that requirement just gave extra work to those with a good command of the foreign language.

Given that I was also contacted for help, it's true that many English-language theses are completed by these people, not the students themselves.

That does not surprise me. In my university days, only English majors took more than 60 credits (20 courses) of English.

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Japanese visit a “huge show of loyalty”
By Alan Wood, Stuff.co.nz

November 7, 2011—A visit by nearly 200 Japanese students and teachers from Yokohama to Christchurch is seen as a significant turning point for the English language teaching industry that was hit hard by the February 22 earthquake.

Those in the Christchurch- based English as a second language industry are worried that the exit of individual colleges has seriously weakened what the city offers to attract the students back.

Christchurch College of English Ltd managing director Rob McKay said he thought the visit by the group of 187 students and seven teachers was the first large- scale return to the quake-hit city by Japanese students since the quake that killed 182 people.

“There have been some smaller groups, but nothing like this. It’s a huge show of loyalty and friendship,” McKay, who owns the college, said.

“Because, as you know, they’re from Japan, their culture tends to be conservative but they’re also very loyal.”

Smaller Japanese school- based groups have regularly been visiting the Papanui- based Southern Cross Language Institute in the period since the quake.

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English language teaching continues

September 12, 2011—Minister of Education and Science of Georgia Dimitri Shashkin spoke of a “linguistic revolution” to the diplomatic corps, representatives of international organizations and civil society gathered at the Courtyard Marriott on September 9. Presenting the achievements of the program Teach & Learn with Georgia (TLG) the Minister and TLG Program Manager Maia Siprashvili-Lee discussed the annual impact of the program on improving the level of English at Georgian schools.

Shashkin emphasized the importance of the program which according to the Minister has ensured the “success of educational reform” in the country. “We can proudly say that we have made a linguistic revolution at Georgian public schools,” Shashkin said stressing that the Georgian pupils had a wonderful opportunity to learn English from native English speaking teachers, while the Georgian teachers could improve their professional skills. “The fact that two-thirds of university entrants chose English as their second language at the Unified National Exams means that the revolution has been a real success!” stated the Minister.

Strengthening the English language learning process through TLG at Georgian schools is among the main priorities of the Georgian government. The native English speaking teachers with their local colleagues have been teaching the pupils together at public schools all around the country.

The main goal of Teach & Learn with Georgia is to improve English language proficiency through recruiting English speaking teachers for Georgian public schools. The authors of the project also rely on exchange of information, experiences and cultures to create significant ties between Georgia and other countries from different parts of the world…

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English language prioritized in Georgian schools
By Salome Modebadze, Messenger.com.ge

August 8, 2011—English language is becoming mandatory at all the accredited and authorized educational institutions in Georgia. The initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science aims to raise interest towards English language as the main priority for the Government and the initial step for the Georgian citizens to integrate with the international society. On August 5th the First Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Georgia Koka Seperteladze held a briefing where he explained the principles of the project.

As Seperteladze explained to the media, the Decree of the Ministry refers to the first year students of Bachelor’s degree from the 2011-2012 academic year and would be organized in coordination with the National Examination Center (NAEC). The higher education institutions that get a relevant license from the National Center for Education Quality Enhancement would also be able to carry out English language exams. “Those entrants who passed an English language exam at Unified National Exams should have B2 level in English and those who passed exam in other foreign language should obtain B1 level in English,” he said stressing that the students who hold TOEFl, IELTS or other international certificates in English language will be free from the additional exam.

Deputy Minister of Education and Science Nodar Surguladze explained the six international educational levels to The Messenger. A1 is the starting level for the foreign language and C2 emphasizes the highest educational background – equal to the mother tongue. B1 is the level necessary for overcoming the Unified National Exams in Georgia, while B2 is considered for Master’s degree, followed by C1 – for Doctor’s degree.

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Kano employs Britons to teach English language
By Ibrahim Bello, DailyTimes.com.ng

November 7, 2011—Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State has urged the management of the Local Education Partnerships, a British Council funded education project, to employ teachers from Britain to teach English language in Kano schools.

Kwankwaso also asked the LEP management to sponsor students from the state to the United Kingdom to attend courses in English language, adding that when such students returned from the British institutions, they would be expected to serve in the state public schools.

He disclosed this while receiving a team from Somerset Local Education Authority, UK, which was on a working visit to the state. The governor stressed that the move was important as most students in the state were having difficulties in Mathematics and English language.

He said the mass failure in the subjects made his administration to employ British teachers to teach the subjects at the new Governor’s College, Kofar Nasarawa, which would start admission during the next academic session.

The governor noted that the partnership was a welcome development. He, however, advised that such projects should not be limited to urban schools alone but should also cover rural areas.

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English anguish

“Our own experience shows,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa told the 9th International Language and Development Conference on Language and Social Cohesion on Monday, “that language can be an instrument of division and conflict.”

He continued that Sri Lanka is trying use language to bind our people together. The government is committed to securing the language rights of all communities and to transforming the country into a trilingual society, and English was to be used as a link language.

What President’s words entail is the conversion of a multilingual society made up of essentially monolingual communities into one comprised of one multilingual community.

That this is possible is proved by the existence already of multilingual language communities, for instance Bohras, Malays and Sindhis—who, in addition to their mother tongue, speak English, and the two main languages of this land.

Now, the learning of English in Sri Lanka has been fraught with impediments, not the least of which is that caused by myth.

For example, the language policy of 1956 has been blamed for the alleged decline in English knowledge. The truth is that, at that time only five percent of the population were proficient in English, the then official language, whereas the figure was 13 percent two decades later.

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Why Americans no longer say what they mean in plain English
By Lara Marlowe, The Irish Times

IRELAND, June 25, 2011—In the preface to Pygmalion , George Bernard Shaw famously wrote that every time an Englishman opens his mouth he makes another Englishman despise him.

This is less true in America, where social mobility and democracy have blunted linguistic markers, while in politics there’s a premium on imaginative language that makes an apathetic public sit up and take notice.

But Democrats are handicapped by their split electorate, explains Timothy Meagher, a fourth generation Irish-American and professor of history at Catholic University. Republicans tend to be white and working or middle class, while Democrats encompass the poor, ethnic minorities and Americans with university degrees.

“The language that appeals to educated Democrats is more formal, more academic,” says Meagher. “College professors love Obama, because his language is beautifully crafted. But other groups can find it alienating.”

Race further complicates Obama’s linguistic choices. In his efforts to be a “regular guy”, the president calls people “folks” and drops his ‘g’s. “If he indulges too much in colloquial English, it sounds like black argot,” says Meagher.

“It’s easier for white politicians to descend into folksiness.” Obama’s intelligence and Ivy League education can be a political weakness that make him appear distant and cold, Meagher explains. “Dropping his ‘g’s can seem hip and cool to blacks and young whites, but older whites, and especially middle-class whites, may hear language that conjures up images of poor blacks. Do white Americans see someone like them, or someone who crosses a boundary? He’s boxed in by American stereotypes.”

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Hungary wants to dump English for being too easy to learn
By Gergo Racz, Wall Street Journal (blog)

August 18, 2011—Hungary’s government wants to dethrone English as the most common foreign language taught in Hungarian schools. The reason: It’s just too easy to learn.

“It is fortunate if the first foreign language learned is not English. The initial, very quick and spectacular successes of English learning may evoke the false image in students that learning any foreign language is that simple,” reads a draft bill obtained by news website Origo.hu that would amend Hungary’s education laws.

Instead, the ministry department in charge of education would prefer if students “chose languages with a fixed, structured grammatical system, the learning of which presents a balanced workload, such as neo-Latin languages.”

Besides giving a deceptive sense of achievement, English learning also makes acquiring other languages more difficult, the ministry argues. Reversing the order, on the other hand, makes learning English essentially effortless, it added.

“If someone is earlier taught another language, they’ll hardly notice that they can learn English alongside. This is because unfortunately, we use exclusively English words when talking about computers, international music and molecular biology,” Deputy State Secretary Laszlo Dux said in a radio interview on state radio station MR1 Kossuth.

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UN peacekeeping: Over 600 police officers fail in English language test
By Mohammad Asghar, The Dawn

ISLAMABAD, October 26, 2011—More than 600 police officers were disqualified in the English language capacity test conducted by the United Nations Selection Assistance Team for deployment in peacekeeping missions here on Wednesday, it has been learnt.

A total 1,213 applicants, including 120 females, from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), motorway police and regular police of the four provinces ranking from head constable to superintendent appeared in the test which started at the Police Lines Headquarters in Islamabad on Tuesday.

The four-member UN team conducting the test comprised Ms. Victoria, Mr. Eyas, Ms. Francis and Mr. Murat. Two of the team members are from Ghana, one each from Turkey and Jordan.

During the first day of the test on Tuesday, nearly 300 applicants were disqualified in the English reading test, while their number rose to over 600 on Wednesday as they could not qualify the English language listening and report-writing test.

One of the applicants, who is associated with the Rawalpindi district police said: “Today`s English listening and report writing test was very difficult during which majority of the applicants could not qualify.”

Deputy Superintendent of Police Rawalpindi Iqbal Kazmi, who was one of the applicants, said: “It is an opportunity for the police officers to learn and also a game of luck. It would be a new experience to be deployed with the UN peacekeeping missions.”

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Aman Ki Asha: “I really like the Pakistani people, would love to return”
By Lubna Khalid, TheNews.com.pk

October 26, 2011—“India and Pakistan have a lot in common, we even have the same issues with regards to children, women’s rights, education and so many other things,” comments T. K. Arunachalam, the Indian educationist who was in Karachi recently for a teacher training conference.

“We need to build on common grounds. I think increased people-to-people contact between the two countries will go a long way towards dispelling misunderstandings,” adds the soft spoken, down-to-earth, straightforward head of a South Asian programme to promote English language teaching (ELT).

He is the Regional Manager of the University of Cambridge English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Examinations, a department of the University of Cambridge and world leader in English language assessments.

We caught up with him in Karachi on the fringes of the 27th Annual International Conference of the Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT). Hailing from Chennai (previously Madras), T.K. Arunachalm oversees University of Cambridge’s operations in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

His forte — and passion — is promoting English language initiatives for educational institutions, while reaching out to adults who have had little or no opportunity to learn English…

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“English belongs to no one, and everyone”

KARACHI, October 17, 2011—The 27th annual international conference of the Society for the Promotion of English Language Teaching (SPELT) ended on Sunday at the Habib Public School complex after three days of very productive talks and lectures on modern trends in the teaching of English and the changing global perspective of the language.

Lectures were delivered and multimedia presentation made by both local and international experts on the subject.

Day three of the conference began with a very informative lecture, accompanied by slide presentations, titled, “Pakistani English revisited”, by noted expert on linguistics Dr. Tariq Rehman of the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

Dr Rehman acquainted the participants with the various non-native English speaking brands of the language and explained the historical development of expressions of various cultures and ethnic groups that had come to be transfused into English and the historical factors that prompted the development. He also highlighted certain differences between the native and non-native brands of the language that had come about on account of the sexual and social taboos existing in countries of non-native English speakers.

The crux of his talk was that “we’d have to shed this trend of trying to copy American or British accents”. English, he said, today is a global language and as such all groups are well within their right to have their own accents and their own expressions…

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Pakistan’s madrasa reform “stalls”

October 11, 2011—A majority of Pakistanis are in favour of English language teaching being introduced into the country's madrasa schools, according to a recent survey carried out by Gallup Pakistan. The nationwide poll indicates that 59% of Pakistanis want the language to be taught as part of the schools’ traditional Islamic curriculum, with 31% of respondents against.

But a government campaign to combat Islamic extremism that is seeking to bring madrasas under closer state control and to broaden the range of subjects they teach is unlikely to deliver effective change, critics say.

While madrasas came to be characterised in the west as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism post 9/11, a decade on the US and other major aid donors say that reversing poor standards of education across Pakistan's school system, and not just in madrasas, will have the most direct impact on inequality and social conditions that give rise to extremism.

However, attempts to improve the quality of teaching in madrasas appear to have stalled. The religious affairs ministry claims there are over 18,000 registered madrasas in Pakistan. But observers estimate that the actual number of schools could be as a high as 30,000.

According to the International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy, the US-based conflict-resolution charity, only 10% of madrasas complied with the government’s voluntary registration programme launched in 2002.

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Conference on English language teaching held in Pakistan

KARACHI, October 14, 2011—The Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT), in collaboration with Habib Public School (HPS) and Oxford University Press on Friday held its 27th International Conference entitled ‘English Language Teaching: Building Bridges’ at HPS Gymnasium.

This conference was aimed at enhancing teachers’ professional skills, bringing professional development and fostering connections between teachers at local and international levels.

University of Karachi (KU)’s Husein Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry director Prof Dr Muhammad Iqbal Chaudhery was the chief guest.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief guest said that the SPELT was doing wonderful job by connecting Pakistani people with the international community. He said that English language is a tool by which one could acquire knowledge, education and communicate with international community.

He said that it built bridges among people. He continued that Pakistan was the sixth most populous country of the world in which 40 to 50 million children went to school and for these students there were just half a million teachers available.

He emphasised the need of training for the teachers and suggested to use satellite and video conferences for it.

HPS CEO Almas Bana said that they were proud to be the host of the conference. He elaborated that HPS was a non-profitable organisation, providing quality education since its inception.

Oxford University Press MD Ameena Saiyid said in her inaugural speech that the SPELT was providing an opportunity for exchange and generating of new and viable ideas.

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English language teaching in Pakistan
By Taimoor Khan, The Dawn

KARACHI, October 4, 2011—The greatest claim that English language has to its fame across the globe is its adaptability and versatility.

The practicality of the English language opens innumerable prospects in the social and financial world. Regrettably, the way English language is taught leaves barely any ground for learners to properly incorporate this language in their daily communication.

The major source of learning English in Pakistan is our school classrooms where, ironically, teaching amounts to nothing more than boring English spelling drills, some formal grammatical constructions, and precise definitions for an endless array of words which make the subject appear desolate.

Injustice done to teaching of English language in Pakistani classrooms on account of the archaic methods adopted to teach it appeals for a thorough overhaul and a dire need to introduce the concept of ‘Applied English’ which stands for teaching of English with examples from real life.

Students tend to develop anxiety which results in developing a sense of resentment towards the subject.

There is a lot more to English language teaching than merely slogging at grammar or cramming vocabulary for the sake of learning it. It is taught either as an abstract system (grammar) dealing with de-contextualised meaning or as communication
dealing with contextualised meaning.

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Learning inglês by Internet
By Martha Gill, FinancialTimes.com (blog)

September 9, 2011—As Brazilians warm up to hosting the 2016 Olympics and the 2014 World Cup, practising their stretches and squat-thrusts, they have suddenly begun to worry about their English.

This anxiety is pushing up a booming market for English language tuition in Brazil, which has grown as the economy develops and becomes more globalised. And as Brazilians look for ways to brush up their language skills, one Brazilian company is looking to the US to help fill the gap.

Abril Educação (ABRE11:SAO), a Brazilian educational company, this week paid $2m to acquire a 5.9 per cent stake in Livemocha, a Seattle-based company that bills itself as “the world’s largest online language learning community”.

The partnership would use the web to bring together Brazilian students with US-based teachers. The BM&FBovespa-listed Abril Educação had a revenue of R$510m in 2010, according companies figures from Bloomberg, and is controlled by Brazilian media corporation Grupo Abril. It sells textbooks, and serves approximately 30m Brazilian students. Livemocha, on the other hand, is a privately owned company which sets up language lessons via video-link. It currently has 11m members – 250,000 of whom are English teachers.

“There is an increasing awareness in Brazil of the importance of learning English, especially in anticipation of the World Cup,” Manoel Amorim, Abril Educação’s chief executive told beyondbrics…

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TESOL research conference slated as QNCC’s inaugural event

September 18, 2011—The Qatar National Convention Centre will host its inaugural event October 1-3: the TESOL International Association’s “Putting Research into Practice” conference. The three-day conference gathers experts from around the region and across the world to focus on key areas of applied research in the field of English language teaching.

The conference is organized by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) in collaboration with university partners in Qatar, Qatar TESOL, TESOL Arabia and other TESOL affiliates in the region.

“Increased English language proficiency is a strategic goal for Qatar and many countries around the world today. Learning English should not mean losing Arabic, however, and figuring out how to do this in the best way possible requires extensive research,” said conference chair Dudley Reynolds, Ph.D, Teaching Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and a member of the Board of Directors for the TESOL International Association.

Reynolds continued, “At Carnegie Mellon we feel it is extremely important to the success of our university and Education City that our teachers understand why certain teaching practices work in some situations and different practices work in others.”

Research projects undertaken by Carnegie Mellon faculty have provided opportunities to learn about good practices that enhance students' literacy development.

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English language schools warned against aggressive price cutting
By Patrick Cooke, TimesofMalta.com

September 28, 2011—Local English language teaching organisations were cautioned against aggressive pricing strategies at the presentation of the industry’s first benchmarking survey yesterday.

The Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations Malta (Feltom) survey, supported by APS Bank, was carried out by Deloitte and covers 2010.

It will bring “real benefits” to the industry, Deloitte financial advisory leader Raphael Aloisio told stakeholders in his presentation at the Radission Blu Resort in St Julians, as it will help schools to compare their own performances with that of the industry as a whole, enabling them to take timely corrective actions where necessary.

The report highlighted the consequences for the industry of the sharp decline in student arrivals from the peak in 2008. Although student arrivals increased 6.5 per cent last year to 72,695 students, the figures remained 15.4 per cent below the 83,288 students who came in 2008.

In an attempt to boost student arrivals, schools lowered tuition prices, resulting in total school tuition revenue last year being 4.6 per cent below 2009 and 10.6 per cent below 2008.

Reduced student volumes and lower pricing levels also forced schools to cut back significantly on their staffing costs and other expenditure by close to 20 per cent from 2008 levels.

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Language advantage
By Tony Liaw, TheStandard.com.hk

October 3, 2011—For Ng Kam-lun, operating a tutoring school may appear to be the logical outcome of a life immersed in education. After all, the early part of his career was spent as an English-language teacher in a public school and - more importantly - as a tutor.

Ng started his own cram school in 1988, calling it Intel Education. Today, it has morphed and evolved into publicly-listed Modern Education (1082).

In the process, Ng has acquired almost legendary status in local educational circles, with many secondary- school students addressing him as “Ken Sir” and legions more investing his name with a hope for academic competence that can so easily be lost in the thicket of Hong Kong's modern education system.

Having built up a recognizable name in tutoring tens of thousands of mostly secondary students, the company has diversified into skills and test preparation courses. In January last year, Modern Education entered the mainland market and Ng is eager to make his mark.

For him, operating a school is about giving students “all the support they need,” while a business is “a totally different story.”

In the first couple of years of opening up his cram school, it was no different from other such centers, which trumpet the high grades of their students as a selling point.

To make it stand out, Ng decided to turn tutors into stars by packaging them in unheard-of ways. “Of course, teachers have to be knowledgeable. But turning them into stars can encourage students to work harder. Teachers can also serve as role models."

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Firms can use English language DIFC courts

DUBAI, October 31, 2011—His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, today signed a law allowing any businesses to use the English language DIFC Courts, the Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC) independent, common law judicial system, to resolve commercial disputes.

Dubai’s judiciary has always been at the forefront of justice in the region and beyond, and by allowing businesses in Dubai, and internationally, to have the choice of Dubai’s Arabic language or English language courts to resolve disputes reflects Dubai’s commitment to choice, and to providing a world class and diverse environment to resolve commercial disputes.

The Ruler’s decree opens the DIFC Courts’ jurisdiction, something that the regional business community has been calling for. The Courtroom doors are now open to businesses from all across the GCC region and beyond and provide the international business community with access to the most advanced commercial court in the world.

Dr. Ahmed bin Hazeem, Director General of Dubai Courts said: “The DIFC Courts and Dubai Courts share a commitment to justice and the rule of law, and have always worked together for the benefit of the community. This is a very positive development for justice, and a reflection of Dubai’s commitment to supporting investors and businesses both domestically and from around the world…”

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Asian languages in demand at Zayed University

October 9, 2011—While English remains the dominant language people learn in addition to their mother tongue, an ever-increasing number of students are learning Asian languages.

A survey at Zayed University (ZU) showed Korean and Chinese as the most desired languages to learn. Asian languages look more appealing to ZU students this academic year than it was last year, said Christopher Brown, founding director of International Language at ZU. More than 600 students expressed interest in Asian languages this year, a sharp increase from last year.

ZU founded the International College in 2009 with two major institutes established with a focus on Asian studies. The King Sejong (Korean) and Confucius Institutes (Chinese) began a diverse programme of language training and cultural awareness programmes to promote languages and cultural exchanges.

When asked about the reason for the focus on Asian languages, Brown told Gulf News, “The rise of South Korea, China and Japan, along with the strengthening relation between the UAE and these nations, are good reasons for ZU to help prepare the Emirati work force for their interaction with these countries.”

“Giving the young people of the UAE a chance to learn about Asia will help them to distinguish themselves in a competitive job market,” added Brown.
"Learning a new language is hard work but it is worth the effort as it's a discriminator in a competitive job market," said student Mariam Al Tamimi, 20.

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Call to make Arabic the language of instruction
By Iman Sherif, GulfNews.com

ABU DHABI, October 4, 2011: The dominance of English language on almost every aspect is non debatable. It has become the international communication language for commerce, banking, internet, travel and politics.

The widespread use of English, however, introduces a cultural challenge — how to propel the UAE as a leader in the global market, and at the same time, retain the Arabic identity when the majority of the younger generation refuses to communicate in their mother tongue.

“English is the language of globalisation and international communication. Therefore, we need to have our students reach proficiency,” said Fatima Badry, professor at the American University of Sharjah.

So, schools educate in English, and parents speak with their children in English to help them prepare for a competitive world. Arabic is reserved for traditional studies such Arabic literature or Islamic studies.

In doing so, we are downgrading Arabic in the eyes of our children who become apprehensive of using it and focus instead on the language that will help them integrate in the workplace or society,” she added.

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Official use of English as second language recommended

DHAKA, November 22, 2011—Bangladeshi writing in English has mostly remained a step below the international standard, preventing the country’s rich culture and literature from reaching out to an international audience.

The reason, litterateurs told an enthusiastic audience at the Hay Festival Dhaka, is that English has remained an alien language in the country unlike in India where it has been adopted and naturalised into its own unique and separate mould.

Many can read and write well in English, they said, but the problem is writing English that others would want to read.

The views came at a discussion on “Contemporary voices and trends in Bangladeshi fiction,” held at the British Council on Fuller Road in the city yesterday.

“Why don’t we officially accept English as a second language—after all, we are already using it as a second language,” said Prof Kaiser Haq, a poet, essayist and teacher at the University of Liberal Arts.

Haq underlined a need for developing a “critical English writing framework” for South Asia instead of having separate frameworks for each country in the region.

This would help increase readership of Bangla literature within the region, and create interest outside the region as well, he said.

A galaxy of poets, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, musicians, and thinkers from home and abroad participated in the first-ever Hay Festival in the country.

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Unique fair at 300 high schools

October 4, 2011—The Daily Star and Robi will hold English Language Fair in 300 high schools across the country from October 12 to inspire students to improve their proficiency in English.

The fair will start from a well-known school in the capital under English in Schools (EIS) initiative of The Daily Star and Robi, and will be gradually held in other schools till April next year.

The fair will also cover students of 700 more schools that are under the EIS programme.

Two world famous films—Alice in Wonderland and Lion King—willbe screened at the daylong fair.

Besides, students will take part in spot quiz on vocabulary, one word question, extempore speech, etiquette test, and competition for describing pictures. Prizes will be handed out to the winners at the fair.

The announcement came at a meet the press in a city hotel yesterday.

Michael Kuehner, managing director and CEO of Robi Axiata Ltd, Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, Prof Shafiqur Rahman, director of Secondary Education of Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, Segufta Y Samad, vice president of Robi and Mahmudur Rahman, executive vice president of Robi, spoke there.

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French language website creates list of English words it wants to ban
By Lee Moran, DailyMail.co.uk

October 12, 2011—As custodians of the French language, the Académie Française takes its job very seriously.

It has fought against the creeping use of English for decades—asking for certain imports to be replaced with their purer French alternatives.

And now, with the threat of its beloved mother tongue becoming even further diluted, it has taken the radical step of starting to list English words it wants banned from use.

The body has introduced a new section to its website—called “Dire, ne pas dire” (Say, don’t say).

To date only two “anglicisms” have been listed, but the body promises that more will be added over the coming months.

The first is “best of,” which is commonly used across Le Manche (English Channel), with the words joined by a hyphen.

The second word to come under fire is the Franglais construction “impacter,” which the Académie recommends replacing with “affecter.”

The Académie Française was created in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII.

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South Sudan adopts the language of Shakespeare
By Rosie Goldsmith, BBC News

October 8, 2011—The young nation of South Sudan has chosen English as its official language but after decades of civil war, the widespread learning of English presents a big challenge for a country brought up speaking a form of Arabic.

I knew there might be problems as soon as I arrived at Juba International airport—and was asked to fill in my own visa form, as the immigration officer could not write English.

The colourful banners and billboards hung out to celebrate South Sudan's independence back in July, and still adorning the streets now, are all in English. As are the names of the new hotels, shops and restaurants.

After decades of Arabisation and Islamisation by the Khartoum government, the predominantly Christian and African south has opted for English as its official language.

At the Ministry of Higher Education, Edward Mokole, told me: “English will make us different and modern. From now on all our laws, textbooks and official documents have to be written in that language. Schools, the police, retail and the media must all operate in English.”

South Sudan’s education system is very short of resources and most people are illiterate
This was “a good decision for South Sudan,” he added forcefully, rather playing down the fact that there are very few fluent English speakers in the country.

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Hotels train in English, manners, motivation
By Rachel Nielsen, Moscow Times

MOSCOW, November 22, 2011—Konstantin Goryainov runs not one but two hotels in Moscow, Holiday Inn Lesnaya and Holiday Inn Suschevsky. After becoming the Lesnaya’s general manager in July 2010, he was promoted to senior general manager of both hotels earlier this year. He now is in charge of 600 hotel rooms, two restaurants and substantial conference space. Goryainov is a fluent English speaker with a long background in the hotel business.

Earlier this month, he went for training.

That his hotel sent its top director for training — albeit at a global meeting for general managers in InterContinental Hotels Group — underlines the importance that hotel companies place on proper skills and good management. From personal grooming to hotel promotion to English proficiency, the skills required for hotel employees in the capital are many and exacting. The importance and the scale of hotel employee training in Moscow will only increase in the next few years, as international hotel companies open more properties here and hire thousands more employees.

InterContinental, which owns the Holiday Inn brand, held the IHG Way for General Managers from Nov. 14 to Nov. 17 in Istanbul. Goryainov in fact was required to attend the event as part of his first-year training as a general manager, or hotel director.

Hotel directors from properties run under the IHG brand attend annual conferences, Goryainov said, so that they can interact with directors from other hotels, swap problems and advice, and hear about the overall hotel market.

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Language lessons: Russian retailers sued for English ads

MOSCOW,        November 9, 2011—Moscow’s largest department store TSUM has been put on trial over language issues.

The claimants – the Federal Anti-Monopoly Agency – are trying to prove that TSUM violated Russian legislation by using the English word “sale” in its advertising.

Officials refer to the federal law on advertising, according to which all foreign words used in promotion materials should be translated into Russian. In that particular case, the officials say, the Russian alternative to the word “sale” was more appropriate.

TSUM is also accused of omitting important information about the goods in its advertising, as well as the conditions of purchase and use.

If the court rules against it, TSUM – one of the most luxurious department stores in the capital – will have to pay up to $20,000.

The regulation about the use of Russian language in advertising has been in place for some time.
Back in 2008, Prime Minister Putin pointed to the excessive amount of adverts in English placed around Rostov-On-Don, which he was visiting.

Officials started to look into the matter and, as a result, launched 60 cases against business owners, most of which had to do with the unlawful use of the word “sale.” In Moscow alone, 10 such cases were launched in the past two years.

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Russian-language broadcasters promote Russian abroad

October 31, 2011—The International Congress of Russian-language broadcasters opened in Moscow on Monday. It features over 60 Russian-language media from 30 countries, including the Voice of Russia service, which came to Moscow to find ways to tackle various challenges they face:

“The Russian language is a unique lingua franca and an efficient mechanism to strengthen cooperation and understanding in the modern world,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated at the forum. The event will be significant primarily for the Russian community abroad.

The number one priority for the broadcasters is to set up mutual interaction and try to be appealing to every audience, not only the Russian-speaking diaspora, in the era of rapidly changing technology, the VoR head Andrei Bystritsky adds:

“Not only those who can speak Russian or consider themselves ethnic Russians tune to the Russian-language radio stations. Thus, we need to decide on the range of our distribution, collective projects, campaigns and current strategies.  They may deal both with the Russian-speaking media and radio sphere in general.”

The main task of the Russian-speaking media is to promote the language of Pushkin and Dostoevsky, Mikhail Shvydkoy,  Special Envoy for International Cultural Cooperation says…

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Deciding on our children’s language of future
By Jackie May, TimesLive.co.za

ZAMBIA, November 20, 2011—A young boy’s mother has been asked by another parent to dissuade her son from speaking English to his classmates.

The primary school he attends is Afrikaans medium. Although the boy’s father is Afrikaans, he speaks English at home. The school, by all accounts, is a delightful community school and is for many people in its neighbourhood the obvious choice for their children. But not all are happy.

It’s an especially strange response from a parent when you know the school has chosen English as its first additional language for the new policy to be introduced next year.

This story surprised me. We’re living in a fiercely multicultural country. We have an abundance of official languages, and the more we can listen and hear one another, the better we can understand each other.

And what harm is there in speaking English on the playground? Surely it’s not still regarded as the language of the “vyand?”

The fierce emotion around language, hopefully not alienating anybody, was illustrated at my children's school recently.

It is tackling the new language policy and there's a robust debate among the parents about which language to choose. Parents are taking this very seriously. Some parents want Afrikaans, others Zulu.

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