Workshop to grow teaching skills for language schools

Workshop to grow teaching skills for Wellington’s community language schools

Two of Wellington’s leading experts on community languages will be providing free training to community language teachers at a workshop this coming weekend organised by the Community Languages Association of New Zealand (CLANZ).

Dr Corinne Seals, a lecturer in linguistics at Victoria University, and Marty Pilott, ESOL Programme Manager at Whitireia Polytechnic, will facilitate a discussion on “How to Teach Languages”, along with CLANZ President Sunita Narayan and pre-school teacher Vijeshni Rattan. The workshop, on Sunday 27 April at the Wellington Multicultural Services Centre in Webb Street, will be opened by local MP Hon Annette King.

Dr Seals is a specialist in heritage language acquisition, maintenance and education. She has worked on this topic in relation to Ukrainian and Russian communities in the United States while at the Centre for Applied Linguistics in Washington DC, and is expanding this research to include diverse migrant communities in New Zealand.

Marty Pilott has extensive experience in teaching ESOL and is the author of a number of language related books, including his recently published How to Teach a Language.

The workshop marks the start of a renewed programme by CLANZ to grow the skills of the language teachers in the many community language schools and early childhood centres around the country.

CLANZ President Sunita Narayan says the organisation has developed a draft national community languages professional development framework which will set the pathway to national certification.

“This will help community language teachers to identify the knowledge and skills they need to run their classes more professionally and creatively. The better the teachers, the better the chances of New Zealanders maintaining a wide variety of languages that are important to cultural identity and to our international connectedness,” she said.

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