Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011. By: Perla Trevizo

Some Hamilton County teachers recently got the chance to experience a class through the ears of a foreign student.

Anjelika Riano, English for Speakers of Other Languages coach for the Hamilton County Department of Education, taught a lesson about the different parts of a plant. She spoke entirely in Russian.

By the end of the lesson, the teachers were able to identify and name each part of the plant with labels in Russian.

The point, Riano said, was to show the ESOL teachers the effectiveness of the teaching method known as Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, or SIOP.

“It proves to the teachers that when you use a universal strategy, you can teach any child,” she said. “It makes them better professionals.”

The SIOP method is a research-based model intended to help English learners, but school officials say it benefits every student.

For the plant lesson, Riano used an actual plant, something students would be familiar with. She made a lot of hand gestures and repeated the names of the plant parts many times — all part of the SIOP method.
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ScienceDaily (July 20, 2009) — A study at the University of Leicester highlights the need for a new approach to the teaching of English pronunciation given that English is now a lingua franca, with more non-native speakers in the world than native speakers.

It suggests that the emphasis on ‘correct’ pronunciation of English as depicted in films like ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘the King and I’ should be discontinued in favour mutual intelligibility among non-native speakers, as well as celebrating the national identity of non-native speakers.

Therefore a Chinese or Indian speaker of English need not seek to ‘disguise’ his or her origins in seeking to speak English ‘properly’ – instead they should feel free to speak with their dialects and accents intact so long as what they said was clear and intelligible.

Research presented at the University of Leicester’s Festival of Postgraduate Research highlights the emphasis based on replicating the phonology of native speakers – and suggests instead that an intelligibility-oriented approach to pronunciation teaching would be more appropriate.

Doctoral student, Wafa Zoghbor from the School of Education said, “I was taught English as a foreign language and after years of learning Standard English pronunciation I found a wide gap between the target I have been trying to achieve and the level of intelligibility required to communicate effectively. Very few users of English today would claim that aiming at native-like pronunciation is necessary or even desirable. I hope that my contribution to this field can challenge the existing stereotypes of teaching English pronunciation. ”
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Thursday, 23 July 2009

Hawassa, July 23 (WIC) – Over 4,300 teachers in the SNNP state have reportedly received English language improvement training over the just ended budget year, state education bureau announced.

Bureau Public Relations Department Head, Temesgen Gebre-gziabher, told WIC that the stated number of primary and secondary school teachers attended the training, which was designed as part of ongoing education quality improvement efforts.

Some 2,150 of the trainees who attended the language improvement courses were women, he said, adding that the training was provided by 100 highly skilled English language professionals.

The head also indicated that there are plans to further scale up the language improvement courses with a view to involving large number of teachers in the program.

Temesgen also pointed out that preparations have also been made to provide higher level English language training to 100 teachers who scored outstanding results in previous trainings.

The language improvement program was designed in a bid to improve the language proficiency of teachers and students, it was learnt.

Source: http://www.waltainfo.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13168&Itemid=45

By DAN SOKIL, For The Times Herald
Published: Saturday, July 4, 2009

A class of English as a Second Language students at North Penn High School had a unique lesson in the power of language this year.

And they helped make a local service member feel a little closer to home too, as members of ESL teacher Jodie MacDonald’s classes had a chance to see and hear firsthand.

“A dear friend of mine, Petty Officer Vance Corey, was in Iraq serving in the Navy, and he and I got the idea. I’d heard that he was lonely and missing everyone, that it would be a fun idea and a learning experience for my students to write to him, as well as a nice way for him to feel connected to people back home,” said MacDonald.

Corey could not be reached for comment on this story, but MacDonald said the two know each other through family connections, and she saw an opportunity last year for both her students and her friend by asking her beginner level ESL students to send letters to Corey.

“These students are all in grades 10 through 12 at North Penn, and are English language learners from many different countries, including India, Korea, Vietnam, Honduras, El Salvador and others,” said MacDonald.
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