Page 1 - ELG1702 Feb Issue 444

ELgazette

£3.50 • US$6.50 • ¥700 • €5.50 The newspaper for English language and international education Issue 444 | February 2017

Students hit

by travel ban

A STANFORD student origi-
Inside... nally from Sudan was detained
for five hours and briefly hand-
cuffed as a result of the ban on
migrants from seven majority-
Muslim countries, Reuters
report. Nisrin Elamin, who is
39 and has been legally resident
in the US for 24 years, was one
of a number of international
students immediately affected
by the ban.
‘The order is stranding students
who have been approved to study
Courtesy Quinn Norton campus, and threatens to disrupt
here and are trying to get back to
the education and research of
many others,’ stated the American
Association of Universities.
US universities have commit-
Page 3: New bilingual ted to protect the 1,700 current
programme for schools in Quebec school STUDENTS STRANDED students from the affected coun-
Colombia’s second city International students returning to study in tries, and have warned them
the US were among those worst affected by
and staff not to leave the US
boards scandal the travel ban imposed by President until the ban is lifted. ‘An
Trump’s executive order in January. This
unfortunate consequence of the
new policy appears to be that
included a 90-day ban on Iranian, Somali,
Yemeni, Syrian, Sudanese, Iraqi and Libyan
ignated countries are, for the
nationals arriving. Shown here is one of students and scholars from des-
many protests that broke out in US airports, moment, effectively detainees in
AUTHORITIES IN Quebec, Canada have Edge Inc., an international education marketing this one at San Francisco International. See this country, a spokesperson for
announced investigations into two Eng- service that signed an agreement with the Lester story on right Stanford University said. n
lish school boards following press reports B. Pearson School Board in 2012 to recruit stu-
of international students scammed by their dents from India, CBC research suggests.
agents. Management of both the English The school board has placed the following
Montreal School Board (EMSB) and the notice on its website: ‘Please note that all
Lester B. Pearson School Board, also in tuition fees/transfers need to be paid ONLY
Montreal, have denied any wrongdoing. In to “Lester B. Pearson School Board”. The
recent years, restrictions on local children name “LBP Vocational College” refers to a
Page 6: Awards – New allowed to study at English-medium schools privately owned enterprise with no affilia-
Year’s Honours recognise in the francophone province have led to tion to the Lester B. Pearson School Board,
ELT professionals school boards actively recruiting overseas. so tuitions paid to this entity ARE NOT pay-
EMSB hit headlines in the Korean press ments made to the school board.’
after students sent on vocational training Following allegations from an Indian stu-
programmes partially funded by Gyeongi pro- dent of false promises made by Edu Edge,
vincial government complained they didn’t director Narveen Kolan put the blame on sub-
receive promised work visas, and many found agents and said the company had told agents to
themselves working illegally for below mini- remove misleading statements from websites
mum wage. The students had been recruited after Edu Edge had been made aware of them.
through the website EMSBKorea, set up by a A third school board, Sir Wilfred Laurier,
Korean agent who worked with the board. But has also cancelled its partnership with Edu
the students did not attend an EMBS course and Edge shortly after discovering a private com-
were instead enrolled at private schools, EMSB pany, SWL Vocation College, had been set
chair Angela Mancini told CBA Canada. The up by Naveen Kolan in June last year, shortly
board has now cut links with the agency. before the board cancelled its partnership with
The Lester B. Pearson School Board has dis- agency Edu Edge Inc. ‘We had not authorised
covered that a ‘privately owned enterprise’ is that, nor were we aware,’ board chair Jennifer
using its name to receive fees from would-be Maccarone told CBC. ‘We did request that they
Page 10: Why are we students. A firm named LBP Vocational College remove this and that they cancel it.’ Research
teachers? Heart ELT’s was registered in Quebec in January 2014 by by CBC found the company had not been dis-
Julie Pratten reminds us Naveen Kolan, according to broadcaster CBC. A solved. There are no investigations into Sir
person of the same name is the founder of Edu Wilfred Laurier by the Quebec authorities. n

Seeing and hearing ‘-ing’ more

ENGLISH IS slowly becoming more pro- going on for hundreds of years, with the ‘-ing’
gressive. We’re noticing we’re using the form growing into new areas of grammar.
progressive form, or ‘-ing’ form, a lot more, Events are now ‘being held’ a lot, rather than
compared to the ‘to’ form. ‘held’. You’re also now more likely to hear
While language change used to be imper- ‘I should be going’ rather than ‘I should go,’
ceptibly subtle, now we can witness it slowly with ‘you’re being silly’ said more frequently
unfolding, thanks to huge corpora like Brigham while ‘you’re silly’ is heard less often.
Young University’s News On the Web, believed Back in the 1950s, ‘she likes to paint’ was as
to be the world’s biggest, with 2.8 billion words. common as ‘she likes painting’. Not any more,
Pages 12–14: Annual list According to Mentalfloss website, corpora with the ‘-ing’ form steady proliferating into
of candidates who passed analysis is revealing a steady increase in the this usage too. So ‘they started walking’ is now
Cambridge’s Delta modules ‘-ing’ form compared to ‘to’. This has been more common than ‘they started to walk’. n

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