Life-long Learning

The key to successful teaching is getting rid of the teachers' "know-it-all" perception of reality and deciding that teaching is a lifelong learning process. But what happens if you live on an island far away from the centre of action, the capital city of your country, or an Asian, South American, or African country where the opportunities are rare? e-Learning is the solution to the problem. There are many courses offered by several universities that give great opportunities to teachers worldwide.
The course I attended this summer was one of those and I consider myself quite fortunate to be selected. I was part of a select group of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) educators who were participating in this innovative and exciting online project! The course was offered by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Office of English Language Programs; the U.S. Embassy of Greece ; and the American English Institute in the University of Oregon's Linguistics Department and was a 10-week online training course.

Course description

Teaching English to Young Learners 

Students ages 5-10 are "primed" to acquire English in an integrated skills and content-based, experiential approach. Educators who understand the cognitive and social processes of language acquisition for Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) are better equipped to help learners while also creating a fun, positive environment. In many cases TEYL educators in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings have limited time to reach their teaching goals and meet local requirements on the use of specific texts, tests, or other materials. A low-resource environment can also pose challenges. In this course, participants explore solutions for such challenges through an overview of current research and "best" practices (always context-dependent) for TEYL, plus hands-on experimentation with a wide array of freely available online resources. Participants can also opt to identify resources and create final projects for "tweens" (ages 10-12).

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
     - Identify, evaluate and selectively apply a wide variety of stimulating and age-appropriate materials (e.g., read-along texts, audio, songs, video,  hands-on manipulatives, games, puzzles, realia) to existing or new EFL curriculum, tailored to EFL learners' needs and interests.
     - Effectively apply strategies to motivate and manage classroom-based language activities for young learners, with a "tool set" for rewarding desired individual and group behaviors.
     - Conduct an needs analysis, develop a learner profile, and then develop unit/lesson plans for young learners in a specific local context. This may also include the amassing of a collection of new resources and materials for strategic application to the local TEYL-related context.
     - Clearly articulate language learning goals and appropriately aligned measures to justify and evaluate any new approaches, activities and/or materials applied to local contexts.

 Presentation of the Final Project of Group A
Angela Tsakiri, Anna Grabowska, Cristina Cernei, Narith Souk
Teaching English to Young Learners on PhotoPeach


 Part 1
General Description , Lesson 1 , Lesson 2
Teaching English to Young Learners on PhotoPeach


Part 2
Lesson 3, Lesson 4, Lesson 5

I met teachers from parts of the world I had never imagined I could have, read about their problems, shared ideas and cooperated in every step of the way. I am also proud to say that the final project of my Group was awarded the highest grade and was chosen to be a model project for the courses to follow. Special thanks to the people who informed me about the course and helped me become part of it, to Wanda Walker the instructor of the course, my fellow participants and my partners for the final project.