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IASTP also offers a program of English language training as part of professional development for the mentors in the project. The mentors are Indonesians in key positions in government and non-government organizations who work with the IASTP team in identifying and selecting participants for the specialized training conducted by the project. As participants come from across Indonesia mentors also represent a large number of provinces. Their one-month intensive English course at IALF Jakarta focused on developing their communicative ability in English and included a presentation from Kevin Dalton from Kang Guru Radio English (KGRE).
He encouraged them to continue working on their English after
the course finished and suggested they access the learning resources made available
through the KGRE project.
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Pam Griffiths, Team Leader IASTP III, addressing participants at the closing ceremony for the English for Mentors program. On the left are Gai Littler, IALF teacher and Hendro Susanto IALF Computer Services Manager and on the right is Geoffrey Crewes, IALF CEO and Rika Kiswardani, Head of Bilateral Technical Cooperation, State Secretariat.
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Caroline
Bentley from IALF Bali and Don Hancock from IALF Surabaya attended the 41st
RELC International Seminar in Singapore from 24 – 26 April. The theme
of this year’s seminar was Teacher Education in Language Teaching. The
seminar was well attended, with over 500 delegates from the Asia Pacific region,
as well as from the USA, Canada and Germany. The aims of the Seminar were to
examine different approaches to training, look at how far training can improve
an individual’s teaching and consider whether there is one particular
training approach that can suit all teachers.
Caroline presented a paper entitled Teacher Development for Islamic Schools: Making up for Lost Time, which described the teacher development activities currently being conducted in a number of Islamic high schools in East Java under the AusAID-funded Islamic Schools English Language Project. Don and Caroline jointly presented a paper entitled Exploring Teaching Through Observation – A Means to Teacher Development, which described an ongoing teacher development project at IALF Surabaya using classroom observation as a basis for discussion of issues in teaching and learning English.
HE Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s Minister of Education presided over the opening ceremony, and invited speakers included Jeremy Harmer, Thomas Farrell, Anne Burns and Amy Tsui. The full and varied program consisted of workshops, panel discussions and papers by over 100 presenters. A number of Indonesian academics presented papers on topics in teacher training as diverse as networking, competency-based curriculum, English for Academic Purposes and teacher supervision.
One of the strong themes throughout the seminar was that peer support approaches to classroom observations are beneficial not only for trainee teachers, but also for longer serving teachers, with the recognition that the journey of a teacher is an ongoing one, and opportunities for development and the need for support are necessary at all times. The IALF plans to strengthen the role of peer observations among its own teachers as well as promote this approach in its work in teacher training in Indonesia.
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Indonesia Australia Language FoundationIALF Language Centres in Indonesia: |
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| Jakarta Sentra Mulia Building, Ground Floor Jl Rasuna Said Kav X-6 No. 8 Jakarta 12940 Tel. (62-21) 521-3350 Fax (62-21) 521-3349 ialfjkt@ialf.edu |
Surabaya Jalan Sumatera No. 49 Surabaya 60281 East Java Tel. (62-31) 502-6400 Fax (62-31) 502-6408 ialfsby@ialf.edu |
Bali Jalan Raya Sesetan 190 Denpasar Bali 80223 Tel. (62-361) 225-243 Fax (62-361) 263-509 ialfbali@ialf.edu |
