The Way Forward: Learning from international experience of TEYL
Regional Institute of English, Bangalore, India, 3rd - 6th January 2008
Regional Institution of English, Bangalore (RIESI)
The conference is organized by the IATEFL YL Special Interest Group in partnership with the British Council
About the Conference
There has been a huge expansion in Teaching English to Young Learner (TEYL) programmes across the world in the last two – three decades, mainly in response to the impact of globalization. As governments often discover that secondary and tertiary level students lack the proficiency levels in English required for operating in a global world, they increasingly lower the starting age for English. So the perceived importance of English is beginning to have a significant impact on policy decisions, increasingly from pre-primary upwards, which has huge implications for teachers, students and resources.
Many policy decisions to make an early start with English are not informed by research and empirical evidence based on tried and tested experience of countries with longer histories of YL programmes; programmes are often hastily implemented without the planning necessary to ensure that appropriate conditions are in place. There is evidence of considerable resources being invested in early foreign language learning, particularly English, often at the expense of other subjects on the curriculum without the necessary consideration of the costs and benefits to the countries concerned. However, evidence from successful programmes show that there are many benefits to be gained from successful early programmes, provided that the challenges in implementation are fully identified and appropriate planning is available to ensure that appropriate conditions can be provided.
Institute library
The title of the conference ‘Learning from international experience’ is intended to both highlight the international nature of the trend and to indicate that a strong theme of the conference is the sharing and dissemination of experience in implementing English programmes for children in the state school sector across regions and continents, leading to the identification of principles which could guide policy and planning. The conference complements and builds on a number of initiatives in recent years e.g. research and practitioner conferences in Europe, a newly established regional primary project in South East Asia and rapid growth in development of international research in this field.
Conference Themes
The conference will provide an international forum for participants:
- to document and identify trends and issues internationally and regionally;
- to investigate the links between policy and practice across varied contexts;
- to identify the conditions which support successful TEYL programmes within and across contexts;
- to identify the kind of developments, linguistic, cultural and attitudinal which different types of programmes appear to support;
- to identify shared and country-specific constraints on implementation.
It is targeted at experts and decision makers within the educational process with the aims of influencing future policy and planning decisions with regard to teaching English to children and creating opportunities for further collaboration, joint research and sharing. In addition, the conference will provide opportunities for showcasing of specific innovations, experiments or projects (which are not nationally implemented) within the state or private sector with regard to teaching English to children.
Conference Aims
- to provide an international forum for discussion and dissemination of insights (via detailed case studies) into the implementation of TEYL state programmes in a range of international contexts
- to provide participants with opportunities to share knowledge and experience of researching, implementing and evaluating YL programmes in the state sector.
- To encourage collaborative exchanges and YL projects regionally and transnationally.
- To inform and influence future policy in regard to the implementation of TEYL and provide direction for future research agendas
