DEEP CONCERNS ABOUT ENGLISH CAPS
I have grave concerns about certain aspects of the final draft of the FET CAPS for English Home Language.
IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW CURRICULUM
It would appear that there has been another change in the dates of implementation of the new curriculum.
ISSUES WITH THE NEW CURRICULUM
Alison Immelman, a long-serving teacher of English, has some strong reservations about the draft new curriculum for languages (CAPS).
IN MEMORIAM
It was with great sadness that I learnt last week of the untimely death of Mike Merrett of Evalunet. It was Mike who designed the bannerhead for Teaching English Today and assisted with setting up the website and training me to operate it. A knowledgeable, cheerful young man who was killed in a motor car […]
BUZZWORDS
The Macmillan Dictionary Online provides useful information for English teachers, including the latest ‘buzzwords’.
WEB-BASED RESOURCES FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS
Some useful websites containing excellent teaching resources are available.
ENGLISH MATTERS
News for English teachers
VIVA ENGLISH TEACHERS, VIVA!
I don’t believe that it is just bias on my part which makes me believe that the most hard-driven teachers in our schools are our language teachers. From one point of view, they are better off because they have always had a huge marking load and were therefore not fazed, as other teachers were, by having to do Continuous Assessment (CASS); but the demands of the new curriculum have taken this to new heights.
TO EXAMINE OR NOT TO EXAMINE (PAPER 3, THAT IS)
I’d like you to imagine the following: A businessperson or teacher or journalist is required to write a report or prepare a lesson. She will be given one hour to do this task, with no access to shared ideas, dictionaries or the internet, and not even Microsoft and Bill Gates. She will not have time to do the work in rough, certainly no time to edit, and scarcely even time to do adequate proofreading. Oh, and by the way, she will be writing this during the graveyard session from 2 – 3 pm after doing a similar, though longer, exercise in the morning. That is what we are demanding of our young learners since the curriculum experts, in their wisdom, reinstated the writing paper as part of the FET exam process
WHY ENGLISH TEACHERS NEED PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
11 April 2010 saw the formation of a professional association of English teachers in the Eastern Cape. The Association, which has been two years in the planning, was launched at the ‘Networking’ conference hosted by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University (9-11 April). This article sets out to explore the need for such an association, and to consider the possible benefits it holds for members, for education management structures in the province and, indeed, for the nation. If the Eastern Cape has taken a lead in this regard, it may be worth teachers in other provinces considering the educational gains such organizations might offer in the struggle to improve the quality of education offered to our learners.