- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday March 14 2007 10.47 GMT
A course that allows people to brush up on their grammar before taking an English language teaching course is being launched today.
The online English Language Awareness (ELA) course is designed for those who want to take an initial four-week ELT training certificate, but are "concerned about their lack of knowledge of grammar and how English works," said course author John Hughes.
The course, launched by Cactus Tefl at a Guardian-sponsored event to promote English language teaching tonight, is divided into 30 units of work that cover all the rules and terminology of grammar through a series of online exercises. It also includes audio clips to help with pronunciation, video clips to give students a taste of life in the classroom and a message board, which allows students to communicate with each other and post questions to tutors.
The launch of the course comes on the eve of a report that is due to question the way English is currently taught in the UK. The report, 'As You Like It: Catching up in an age of Global English', published tomorrow by the thinktank Demos, is expected to say that the UK needs to focus English teaching on how the language is actually used around the world, not according to "arcane strictures of how it should be spoken and written".
The report is expected to criticise the UK's "outdated" attitude to English.
Mr Hughes, an English language teacher, trainer and author, said the aim of the ELA course was to boost confidence, specifically among those who did not learn grammar in much detail while at school.
"It's to give people a confidence about talking about English language," he explained. "To give them the confidence needed to walk into a classroom."
He added: "It's aimed at people who are thinking of doing a certificate course or a teacher training course, or who have signed up to start [one] and they just want to do a bit of preparation work. They want to look at what some of the issues are."
Each course unit is estimated to take 30 minutes and can be taken at a student's own pace. The cost of the course is £50.
· Find out more about the English Language Awareness course at Cactus Tefl here.
