Page 4 - ELG1601 Jan Issue 432

ELlanguage news
Page 4 January 2016

ELT worker Quebec in

jailed for a quandry

sex crimes over Syria

AN ENGLISH language teach- CANADA HAS pledged to
ing assistant has been sentenced welcome thousands of Syr-
to 24 years in prison after being ian refugees, with the Montreal
convicted of nine counts of child Gazette reporting that the new
molestation in Butte County, Cal- Liberal government has declared
ifornia, local newspaper Chico that 25,000 Syrian refugees will
Enterprise-Record reports. be resettled by the end of 2015.
The assaults took place between But in the officially francophone
2001 and 2010 when You Lee Canadian province of Quebec
Vang was teaching English in an English-medium schools cannot
ESL programme for Hmong stu- take any of the more than 7,300
dents in Poplar Avenue School in Syrians that the province expects.
Thermalito School District. The According to Quebec’s Bill
Hmong people are a minority eth- Copyright Suneetha Balakrishnan 101 – the Charter of the French
nic group from the mountains of Language – only immigrants
Vietnam and Laos, who began set- with parents who were educated
tling in the US in the 1970s. in English in Canada can go to
Investigations into Vang’s con- the province’s English-medium
duct started in 2011 when a girl at schools. Suanne Day, chair of
the school reported that he abused Indians pray for divine visa intervention Lester B. Pearson School Board
her during 2006 and 2007 when (one of Quebec’s largest) said
she was seven years old. But before the refugees will be welcome
investigators were able to question There’s nothing like divine the devotee returns to make 108 Mr G. and Mr T., both software in her schools. She has written
Vang he moved to Alaska, where intervention, even for a visa hunt, circuits of the inner shrine. The engineers, are not first-time to Quebec’s government in the
he worked as a teacher until he was reports Suneetha Balakrishnan from crowd swells in May and June as visitors here; they have already hope they will grant humanitarian
arrested by detectives there in 2013. Hyderabad. And that’s what’s H1B visa allocations (temporary been blessed with US visas. But exemptions allowing the refugees
According to the Butte County happening at the Chilkur Balaji worker in specialist occupations) for Mr M., a techie with a top Indian to attend English schools, which
authorities, all Vang’s victims were Temple (above) in Hyderabad, say are cleared by the US consulate. company who heard about the reportedly have a considerable
aged ten or younger, and the way visa aspirants from south India, Mr R. and Ms P. are students on temple from his friends, it’s a capacity to take in Syrian children.
he carried out the assaults indicated including student visa applicants, their first visits; both have made return visit – his visa to the US has This is not the only problem
‘planning and sophistication’. Sen- mostly for the US. Friday to Sunday wishes and are looking forward to just been approved. that Bill 101 is causing Que-
tencing, Judge Robert Glusman sees peak traffic at the Visa going abroad for their higher Kannaiah Swamy, the priest of bec’s English speakers. UPI
said Vang ‘had to isolate those girls’ Venkateshwara Swamy temple; the (postgraduate) studies on student this small temple, says it’s 500 news agency reported that in
by first gaining their trust, and that week’s numbers going up to 75,000 visas. Mr R. is especially years old and known for its November Quebec’s French
he represented a ‘serious danger to devotees. impressed about how the temple benevolent deity, but it is only language office, supported by
society’. He was finally sentenced And there is a system to prayer manages without a collecting box, within the last twenty years that Bill 101, demanded the removal
in November 2015 and placed on – the devotee walks around the entrance ticket fee, or ‘VIP queue’ huge numbers of visa aspirants of bilingual signs from all hos-
the sex offender’s register after the inner shrine eleven times, making – all quite common features in have been flocking in. ‘Please, no pitals in areas where less than
prosecution defined the case as one a wish. Once the wish is fulfilled, other Indian shrines. pics inside,’ he says. 50 per cent of the population is
of ‘criminal sophistication’. n English speaking. n

Obituary: Eddie Byers already know that, recalls Sarah Cooper. News in brief with Lea Corbin and Andrea Perez
Eddie took over officially as chief execu-
Eddie Byers, chief executive of English tive of English UK in May 2014. For all too
UK, passed away suddenly in November. brief a time we worked closely together.
He had joined the association from the He spent his first six months visiting as New laws force Punjabi agents to register
British Council, and was a director of many members as possible, starting to THE INDIAN state of Punjab warned all its language travel agents and Ielts coaching operations
Education UK, responsible for the Eras- shape a new direction for the association. in November that they had a deadline of one week to register with the district authorities under the
mus and Comenius exchanges. Eddie Eddie was a businessman, a strategist state’s Prevention of Human Trafficking Act 2012. Deputy Commissioner Varun Roojam told The
had also spent six years as director of and a political animal who understood how Tribune that most such institutions had yet to register and the state would begin to ‘take legal
industry engagement for VisitScotland. the game needed to be played. He was also action against the defaulters’ shortly. Unregistered travel agents face a 500,000 rupee (£5,000) fine
‘I’m going to make this the best lan- a leader. Above all he was a gent – a kind or imprisonment.
guage association in the world,’ was and thoughtful man who made a difference
Eddie’s pledge to the board of trustees to people’s lives. We are devastated he is EFL and psychological support in Yemen
almost two years ago. He was as good gone, but he did exactly what he said he
as his word, but if you met him you’d would do. Now we have to see it through. UNICEF AND Yemen’s ministry of education are training teachers in giving ‘psychological
support’ to schoolchildren traumatised by ‘listening to bombing and gunfire day and night’, and
the ‘physical upheaval’ of a conflict that has closed 3,500 schools and wrecked 502 school
buildings. Unicef’s website interviewed Tahini, an English teacher based in the captial San’a
who described combating trauma in her EFL classroom by ‘practicing normal activities …
ELT Summer children could release their tension and stress through drawing, acting, colouring, role-playing
and games’.
Schools 2016 2016 Year of English Language

UKRAINE HAS declared 2016 the Year of English Language. In November 2015 President Petro
Oxford Teachers’ Academy English Language Teachers’ Poroshenko signed a decree and the Cabinet of Ministers will provide detail on measures for 2016
Summer School Summer Seminar and beyond with the aim of intensifying English study in the country, reported the official
presidential website. The government will introduce ‘gradual certification’ for teaching English as
17 – 29 July 24 July – 5 August a foreign language following EU guidelines and also plans to establish TV and radio programmes
for English language learners.
Week 1 (Choose any one course) Week 1 (Choose any two workshops)
Raising the Bar: Challenging and Writing Classroom Materials; Exploring Grammar; PhD denied over ‘inadequate’ English
Inspiring Teenage Learners; The Creative Classroom; Integrating Pronunciation;
Engaging, Challenging and Motivating the Unmotivated AN INTERNATIONAL student from China was dismissed from his graduate programme in
Motivating Young Learners
Week 2 (Choose any two workshops) clinical psychology at Idaho State University in May 2013 after his English language
Week 2 (Choose any one course) Teaching with Technology; Accessing the Full communication skills were judged inadequate. According to Inside Higher Ed, Jun Yu is alleging
Engaging Teenage & Adult Learners Potential of your Students; English as a Medium denial of due process and discrimination based on national origin and has asked for compensatory
beyond the Classroom; 21st Century of Instruction; Contemporary English: Teaching a damages, as well as seeking readmission to the PhD programme. In its answer to the complaint,
Learning Skills for Primary Teachers Changing Language; Promoting Speaking Skills the university wrote that that Yu’s dismissal was ‘due to performance deficiencies’. One of Yu’s
www.conted.ox.ac.uk/X162-3 www.conted.ox.ac.uk/X162-2 supervisors from the Centre for Autism in Cleveland said the ‘level of remedial work [on his
English] is beyond the scope of this placement’.
Fees: From £2,200 (including all tuition, guest lectures,
accommodation, meals and full social programme)