No more English at the British Council in Moscow?

The British Council is renowned worldwide for its English language teaching programmes. According to their website, in 2005-2006 they employed over 2000 teachers to teach 1.1 million English class hours to 325,000 learners in 53 countries.

Unfortunately though, in the New Year, their teaching centre in Moscow is to stop providing English classes. This is reportedly due to the Russian Foreign Ministry’s demand that the Council apply for a teaching license. A license has not been required before and applying for one is, according to the British Council’s Natalya Minchecnko, quoted in this article, “an arduous and time-consuming process which the British Council finds practically impossible to complete”.

Although the students who have signed up for classes in 2007 will have to look elsewhere, the British Council does stress that its non-teaching services will not be affected, and that it remains committed to “working in Moscow and across Russia and delivering projects and activities in science, arts and education, including the Information Centres and exams”.

What do you think about the Foreign Ministry’s demand and the British Council’s decision? Post a comment below…

A debate is raging in Switzerland over the teaching of English at primary school level. Legislation is being introduced aiming to protect Switzerland’s national languages German, French, Italian and Romansh, and includes a proposal to give one of these languages preference over English in foreign language teaching.

Supporters are arguing that national languages should be given priority as many young people have trouble communicating in them, and worry that the national languages could be eclipsed by English.

But several regions have already introduced English at primary school level.

So, in a country with four national languages, should children be taught two of these before considering English, or should English take priority? What do you think? Post a comment below…

Adult ESL students at the Aiken County School District in South Carolina have been participating in a Christmas card writing scheme for American military personnel in Iraq. The project was started to help students with their writing skills, learn something about the culture and increase troops’ morale, according to the article.

What do you think about this project? Post a comment below…

Last week we posted that the British government spends £110 million a year on translation services for immigrants, money that many would argue would be better spent on English classes.

Perhaps the government should follow the example of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Teaneck, NJ, USA. The church has recently started offering ESL classes to immigrant day labourers on the road. The church has offered classes on their premises for some time, but recognise that not all immigrants can attend, for transportation or financial reasons. So instead of the immigrants coming to them, they’ve taken the classes to the immigrants, teaching them while they’re waiting for work.

The classes focus on language useful to the immigrants in their work, such as the names of tools, explaining what the matter is if they get sick, and asking when they will get paid.

The feedback from the participants in the article is positive. One immigrant, who is also co-director of an immigrant resource centre, says the classes “provide visible evidence that immigrants are eager to assimilate into society” and that “we really want to adjust but we don’t always have the opportunity”.

The church, according to the article, is not the first organisation to bring the ESL classroom to the streets, with immigrant-advocacy groups nationwide doing the same thing.

So it would seem that given the opportunity, immigrants are keen to learn English and integrate into American society. Should the British government learn from this example and change its funding priorities? What do you think? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

Ever wondered where your career in teaching English as a Foreign Language can lead? Have a look at Bruce Hope’s story. Bruce went to Japan in 2002 with the intention of watching the World Cup and teaching for a year. Now, four years on, he is married, and working as foreign human resources manager and trainer for a worldwide chain of English language schools…

If you’ve ever taught English to children, you’ll know that songs feature in many textbooks as an effective way of teaching grammar and vocabulary.

Have you ever wondered how they get written? Have a look at this interview with Steve Roslonek, who has just released an album of children’s songs called Marvelous Day. At least two of the songs were originally written for publisher Macmillan Oxford for educational products distributed in Asia and Mexico.

Fast Monkey is one, and the lyrics, according to the interview, go something like this:

I’m happy, I’m very, very happy, I’m happier than a happy monkey. I’m sad, I’m very, very sad, I’m sadder than a sad monkey.

What do you think about using songs to teach children? Do you find them effective? Post a comment below…

At a time when issues of integration and cross-cultural understanding are hot political topics in the UK, the British government has revealed, according to this report in the Daily Express, that it spends £110 million a year on translation services for immigrants.

Apparently, the costs include a local council translating details of its refuse collection service into 15 languages so that non-English speakers can understand the recycling system, and one-to-one “Quit Smoking” sessions in Turkish.

The report quotes the head of MigrationWatch UK as saying “We should expect immigrants to learn English and should not remove the incentive to do so by spending millions on translation.” A Bangladeshi woman quoted in the report agrees, saying “When you are trying to help us you are actually harming… We don’t need to speak in English at all.”

On the other side of the argument, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality is quoted as saying that the costs were a feature of globalisation that we should “just soak up”, and a project manager for a local council project says “If they need it in their language we make sure they have it… everybody should have equal access to knowledge of the services”.

So, who is right?

Could this money be better spent on teaching English, to help migrants integrate into British society, taking on the “obligations that come with the privilege of living and working in Britain” as Tony Blair pointed out in a speech on migration two years ago.

Or should everyone have the right to access knowledge in any language regardless of the cost to the British taxpayer?

What do you think? Post a comment below…

According to the Education Guardian, discerning students, influenced by economics, global terrorism and even the threat of avian flu, are choosing to study English in Australia, New Zealand and Malta, rather than the UK.

What’s more, fewer students overall are going abroad to study English, as the quality and availability of private schools and language education in state schools around the world continues to improve, and countries become more self-sufficient in providing English language education.

In fact, according to the report, non-native speaker English teachers now outnumber native speaker teachers globally.

As well as the cost of studying in the UK, another factor turning students away, according to the report, is the declining interest in British cultural references in teaching material. Is this the end for red phone boxes, London buses and fish and chips in our text books? What do you think? Post a comment below…

Need a new way to teach your students shopping vocabulary? Show them this video, filmed in a Jusco shop in Japan and made, says purplemary, who posted the video on YouTube, for high school students learning English…

A group of parents in Texas has taken the state to court over the quality of their kids’ ESL classes. They say that when their children have to repeat a grade, it’s because of poor quality ESL instruction, not because they are not capable. Their claim would appear to be backed up by statistics, which show 16% of “Low English Proficiency” students dropping out of school, compared to 4% of other students. The court will decide whether the Texas Education Agency needs to do more to monitor ESL classes…