Come January and the British Council and English and Foreign Languages University will jointly offer an opportunity for English language educators across the country to share the best practices and experiences on teacher education programmes.
Hyderabad will host a three-day conference on ‘Starting, Stimulating and Sustaining English Language Teacher Education and Development' from January 22 to 24. State sector trainers, teacher educators and members of regional and international teacher associations will participate in the programme that would provide them a chance to connect with other practitioners for professional development and networking.
The event is being supported by the ELTAI (English Language Teachers' Association of India) and the IATEFL's Young Learner Teenagers Special Interest Group (YLT SIG) and Teacher Training and Education Special Interest Group (TTEd SIG). The aim of the event is to provide an opportunity for English language pre and in-service teacher educators from across South Asia to meet and share best practices and experiences in teaching the language. It will give English Language pre and in-service teacher educators an opportunity for professional development and updating, which will enable them to become more effective.
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The conference objective is to establish and build a sustainable community and network of English language teacher educators.
According to the British Council, studies show that teacher educators need to be empowered and provided with the necessary training and support to help them acquire a range of skills and strategies required to design, develop and conduct quality teacher education programmes which promote and mirror the target approach and methodology.
The conference will have discussions on themes that include developing English language primary teachers; teacher education in difficult and rural contexts; curriculum and materials development for teacher education; role of technology (radio, Edusat, mobiles, ICT) in teacher education; distance teacher education; continuous professional development (CPD) for teachers and teacher educators; and challenges of evolving and implementing English Language teacher education policy.
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The participants could be district centre chief tutors and tutors; international speakers and delegates; master trainers/ resource persons, State sector teacher educators; representatives of English language teacher institutes (ELTI); representatives of teacher education bodies and agencies; researchers in teacher education/ training; DIET/ SCERT lecturers and SSA teacher educators; B.Ed. lecturers of English; teacher association representatives; NGO teacher educators; teacher education managers and leaders; and teacher association representatives.
British Council has offered several programmes to step up the quality of English language learning in the country and abroad. The ‘Project English' initiative was launched in November 2007 with the aim of improving English language learning opportunities across the region.
The council has been working with State governments to design and run large scale teacher training and curriculum development projects that are helping to improve English language teaching in State schools.
It has also been working with large corporate sector employers to improve language assessment and training systems. The council had already trained over 2, 500 English language teacher educators from a number of different States across the country including Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal since 2007.