At TIRF’s meeting last month, the British Council representative to the Board, Mr. John Knagg (Head of Research and Consultancy for English at the British Council), updated the Trustees with a number of exciting British Council developments. This piece shares information about each of the topics Mr. Knagg discussed with the Board members.
The Council published a significant piece of research on EMI (English as a medium of instruction) in the developing post-colonial world, focussing on India and Ghana, in partnership with EDT (Education Development Trust) and The Open University, UK. The paper, Multilingual Classrooms: Opportunities and Challenges for English Medium Instruction in Low and Middle Income Contexts, can be found at the following link: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/multilingual-classrooms-opportunities-challenges-english-medium-instruction-low-middle.
Another Council publication, “Integrating Global Issues into the Creative ELT Classroom,” responds to the growing awareness of the potential of ELT to move beyond technical language instruction. It is a book of activities for teachers which aims to address all the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. This volume can be found at the following link: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/integrating-global-issues-creative-english-language-classroom.
A second publishing activity on EMI the British Council recently produced involved an investigation on this topic in universities in China and Japan, in partnership with Edinburgh University. One of the interesting observations was some of the discrepancies between what students think, and what teachers think that the students think. The publication can be found online at the following link: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/internationalisation-higher-education-growing-demand-english-investigation-english-medium
One final update Mr. Knagg shared with TIRF Trustees was the announcement of the biannual Language and Development Conference in Dakar, Senegal. The event will take place from November 27 to 29, 2017. To learn more information about this conference, please visit: https://www.britishcouncil.com.sn/en/programmes/language-development-conference-2017.
