Supporting English Language Teachers

Many people around the world need a good command of English in order to succeed in their careers, and indeed in life. If you come from a well-off background, and especially if you come from one of the highly developed countries of Europe or North America, you have access to all the facilities you need to acquire a good level of English.

But for people in the poorer regions of the world, the situation is very different. If you manage to get any English lessons at all, it is very likely that your teacher doesn’t really know enough to teach the language properly. There’s no point in blaming the teachers, because they can only teach what they themselves know, and probably haven’t had the training they need.

Before we can expect students in less well-off regions to learn English successfully, we have to train the teachers. And that means starting with the training of teacher trainers. The question is who the teacher trainers are.

In the days before the internet, teacher training was in the hands of universities and teacher training colleges. The British Council has also done an excellent job in promoting British English around the world. But relative to the size of the problem in the twenty first century, this is no longer enough. It is no longer enough to train an élite who can then pass on their expertise in their home environment. We need to get quality information and training to teachers in villages in India, in China and in Cambodia. We have got the technologies, and people all around the world have the expertise, and what we need to is to put these together.

This is what this blog is about: organising the English language support that people need to succeed. I’ve spent many years in UK universities teaching teachers of English, so I have got the linguistic expertise; but I need other people to help at the other end, delivering the support to people who need it. I’ll be dealing with these and other matters in more detail in future postings. So watch this space!