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 The British Council - Hornby annual ELT Summer Schools aim to provide professional training and development to primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers of English across India. World over, teachers belong to a community of 'interactive performers'. They are the people who inspire learning by skillfully engaging their wards with appropriate lessons, tasks and tests within the performance space of the classroom. To succeed, teachers need to tune into to the wavelength of their audience, establishing purpose and ensuring variety to obtain and hold the audience's interest. Effective teachers are often multi-faceted, multimedia communicators.
A brilliant performance 'happens' when the performer is almost invisible and the subject springs to life. The role of the teacher is to direct the audience to grasp concepts and precepts through repetitive and deductive patterns. Ideally speaking, an effective teacher will be able to smoothly drive students along their learning curve with minimal stress. Techniques used by such teachers include group work and settling of skill-based tasks and projects that would relate classroom knowledge into real world experiences with a tangible outcome.
 However, the realities of the English language classroom across South Asia are difficult to characterize. Most classes have 60-100 students at different proficiency levels in English. With limited facilities and only a blackboard as a teaching aid, dynamic instruction presents a challenge. In addition, may of the teachers have different English language proficiency levels themselves, making it difficult to train students to become competent readers, writers, listeners and speakers of the English language. This highlights the need to skill and re-skill teachers in both the language and method of instruction. Only such an approach will ensure any degree of professional development.
The British Council - Hornby annual ELT Summer Schools aim to provide professional training and development to primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers of English across India. The first of these four summer schools will be inaugurated in Lucknow in North India/Nimpith in East India; Anand in West India and Bangalore in South India between January and March 2001.
In Bangalore, from 12 to 22 February 2001, fifty secondary and higher secondary teachers of English from India and Sri Lanka will participate in a residential programme at the Regional Institute of English, South India.
 The Inaugural Summer School, Sponsored by the AS Hornby Educational Trust, UK and the RIESI, Bangalore, will focus on Teachers Development - Communicative Language teaching for large classes and will be led by Ms Sarah Hunter, Director of Studies, Colchester English Study Centre, Colchester, UK and Dr. Mukta Prahlad, Professor, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages,
Hyderabad, India.
For further information on the ELT Summer Schools in India and/or application forms please contact the English Studies Unit at:
Tel: 044 852 5002
e-mail: m.prasannakumari@in.britishcouncil.org
or rathi.jafer@in.britishcouncil.org
Source: The British Council, Newsletter
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