Page 16 - ELG1601 May Issue 436

ELpeople
Page 16 May 2016

impeccable. How did Falling in love with language dents and teachers remains an

our English is famously
Yyou learn it? important objective.
I imagine that the role of lan-
Thank you for the compli- guage exams will continue to
ment. I can say it is down to Melanie Butler talks to Claudia Beccheroni, Trinity College London’s be determined by the aims of
a series of coincidences, the the projects themselves, as it
foresight and support of my national coordinator for Italy, about changes in the country’s ELT provision was in the last Pon programme
grandfather, my parents and my which ran from 2007 to 2013
first English teacher. where external exams were
When I was little, my grand- When I finished high school tured training programme. compulsory in some actions and
father, who had lived in France I enrolled at university for a This is why I was involved. optional in others.
and Africa and was himself degree in French literature. Dur- As the national representative For this reason it is of para-
someone who spoke several ing my university years, Anna for Trinity College London in mount importance that all those
languages, realised that I had a and her family came back into Italy I was the one who took who play a part in the delivery of
talent and started teaching me my life. They offered me a job part in all the meetings, prepared a successful Pon project under-
some French, which he spoke at the language school they ran. our teacher-training plan and stand the aims of the project
really well. His English was not This job introduced me to the made sure it satisfied the project itself. My team and I spend a
good enough for him to teach me world of ELT and to Trinity Col- needs. I always felt that we had a lot of time studying the official
though, and there were no lan- lege London, as the school was a great duty of care and a respon- Pon documents and directives
guage schools in the mountain Trinity exam centre. It was dur- sibility to make the project a as we want to contribute to the
village where we lived in the ing that time that I discovered I success. We definitely were not success of this very important
heart of the Apennine Mountains was more interested in linguis- there just to provide an external opportunity that is given to Ital-
between Florence and Bologna. tics and teaching methodology measurement. ian students and teachers. We
Luckily, he discovered that than I was in French literature, Courtesy Claudia Beccheroni I’d like to think that it is offer schools who choose Trin-
there was a lady called Anna and decided to train as a teacher thanks to all the good work done ity a comprehensive support
who had married a British sol- of English. during the Progetto years that, programme which ranges from
dier during World War II and I took a Trinity teaching more than a decade after its end, giving assistance in the choice of
had recently returned from the diploma and some years later external exams still continue to the Trinity exam that best fits the
UK. Anna had started giving went on to do a distance learning TIME FOR TEACHERS Claudia Beccheroni and her be part of the school offering project to supporting the teach-
informal lessons to children in MA in Tesol at Sheffield Hallam Trinity team see teacher support as central to their work in Italy. Trinity alone counts ers who prepare for the exams.
her house on Saturday after- University. over 3,000 exam centres in state What has been the biggest
noons. I still remember the first One major project that language courses that could be speaking and listening. It also set schools. challenge in your job and what
time I went to that corner of seems to have revitalised lan- run with similar quality criteria objectives using the CEFR levels Looking forward there is a the biggest reward?
Britain, aged eight, and had my guage teaching was Lingua as the ones in private language and introduced external meas- new Pon scheme which uses The biggest challenge was
first tea with Anna and her hus- 2000, with which I think you schools; and the introduction of urements of such levels through EU funding to improve lan- gaining the trust of Italian teach-
band Leonard. were involved. external certification, not as an agreements with exam boards. guage learning. What is the ers at the very beginning of the
In my teens languages became I really think that the Progetto end to itself, but as part of the You may think that this is not role of exams in such schemes Progetto Lingue 2000 as there
a real passion, so after finish- Lingue 2000 was a great project, educational offering of schools. rocket science, but it was a real and how can you help teachers was an understandable resist-
ing middle school in the village and at the same time very brave. It demonstrated that language challenge to implement all this. and students? ance towards external exams.
I went on to study languages at Among its merits are: the learning in school could be The introduction of external We don’t know what role The biggest reward is actu-
an independent high school in introduction of the then newly boosted by forming language exams was a particularly brave external exams will play in the ally to have seen how that initial
Florence. During those years my published CEFR into the Ital- classes by level, increasing the initiative which encountered new Pon programme, as no spe- resistance has become for many
mother and father made lots of ian educational system; the number of hours of tuition, and some initial resistance. But the cific directives have come out teachers an opportunity for pro-
sacrifices to pay the expensive encouragement of the teaching encouraging the learning of project team cleverly asked exam yet for ELT projects. But we fessional development and an
fees, and to send me on study of speaking and listening; the communicative skills by foster- boards to work with the teachers know that increasing English effective way to motivate their
trips abroad. possibility for schools to offer ing in particular the teaching of and to support them with a struc- language competences of stu- students. n