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ELT diary November
Learning English
Friday November 13th 2009
Poor Toefl results attract the displeasure of France's president and driving without English becomes an offence in Dallas, in this months round up of ELT news
Friday November 13th 2009
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, not pleased with results Photograph: Philippe Desmazes/Reuters
Edinburgh bids farewell to dictionary after 130 years
The future of the Chambers English Dictionary, which has been published in Edinburgh since 1872, was in question after its parent company Hachette UK announced last month that it will move production from its Chambers Harrap offices in Scotland to sister company Hodder Education in London.
The Edinburgh offices will shut on 31 December with a loss of 27 jobs.
Hachette UK blamed the closure on the growing use of the internet to access reference information. This has hit sales of print dictionaries and reference books in recent years.
The company said that it would move publication of its Harrap bilingual dictionaries to France, but that it had failed to find a buyer for the Chambers titles.
A Hachette UK spokeswoman said: “In the light of the steep decline in sales that is affecting sales of printed dictionaries and reference books, we conducted a thorough, independent review into the future of the Chambers Harrap and concluded that we should move the Harrap business to within Larousse in France, which effectively orphans the Chambers business in Edinburgh where it is not viable on its own.”
Low results spur French reforms
Prompted in part by French students’ recent poor performance in the Toefl test of English, president Nicolas Sarkozy, below, has called for an emergency plan to produce more bilingual students.
In a speech outlining education reforms, Sarkozy stressed that “a foreign language is meant to be spoken”, and suggested that language instruction should be shifted away from written grammar and memorisation to emphasise oral skills.
Sarkozy pledged to change the way foreign language learning is evaluated and to bring more native speakers into schools. He also wants to encourage young French people to study abroad, the Associated Press news agency reported.
Sarkozy voiced his disappointment that French students ranked 69th out of 109 countries in recent Toefl test scores.
British Council hopes to score with football skills
The British Council, the UK’s international cultural relations organisation, has teamed up with the Premier League, home to England’s leading football clubs, to promote study materials that combine English language and football skills.
The multimedia language learning resources, which were launched last month, can be downloaded by schools from a dedicated Premier Skills website. The council says they will harness the motivational power of football to encourage learners and teachers to explore key social issues such as health and social inclusion.
Meanwhile, the council has also announced that it will develop English language training capacity for the Iraqi International Academy, a skills training institution being developed in collaboration between the Iraqi government and the US-led Multi-National Security Transition Command.
Driving with poor English an offence in Dallas
The head of the Dallas police force disclosed last month that his officers have improperly issued penalties to drivers for not being able to speak English 38 times in the last three years.
The discovery was made after a woman was pulled over in her car for making an illegal U-turn and was given a ticket for being a “non-English-speaking driver”.
Police chief David Kunkle said the citations were disappointing for Dallas, a city where Hispanics make up 44% of the population and where many other residents are of southeast Asian origin.
Kunkle said his department’s computer system for citations had a pull-down menu that included a law requiring drivers of commercial vehicles to speak English. He said he believed that federal law had been misapplied to local drivers of private vehicles.
Max de Lotbinière
max.delotbiniere@guardian.co.uk
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