Negros Occidental English Teacher Training Continues
by Rocky Peltzman

Elementary Level

Mambukal Resort, outside of Bacolod City, was the venue for the Using Communicative Methodology for the Conversational English Classroom training for twenty elementary school teachers July 4-8, 2005.

Rocky Peltzman, ESL Consultant at JCCI, facilitated the intensive course, which taught strategies and techniques to immediately improve the teachers’ ability to improve student speaking skills. Governor Marañon, recognizing the need to graduate students who will have the skill sets needed for the ICT, call center and BPO industries, is committed to teacher training.

The course also served as a refresher speaking course for the teachers themselves, concentrating on the needs of Filipino speakers of English—past simple, present perfect, prepositions, count and non-count nouns, and articles—as well as functions such as question-asking, giving quick replies and sustaining a conversation. The teachers learned about table-chair placement to facilitate students working in pairs and small groups, practice taught interactive, communicative activities, and acquired the preferred method of correcting students.

This batch of elementary teachers will begin echo training in the province of their colleagues in the near future.

High School Level

On July 9, Peltzman traveled to two towns to observe the second full-day echo training for high school teachers. Four teachers (trained in May 2005) at each venue conducted the Using Communicative Methodology for the Conversational English Classroom program for groups of 50 teachers. The groups are meeting over five Saturdays in three towns.

Peltzman spoke at length about the ripple effect of improving oral English skills in the country and in Negros Occidental in particular, as the government is negotiating to build an IT park near the capitol building. The governor’s goal of bringing IT and ITES companies to this park is highly dependent upon a large pool of proficient speakers of English in order to fill jobs. Suppliers and vendors of products and services will grow the local economy, improving lives in local communities.