From March 2015 to April 2016, the Angolan English Language Teachers´ Association (ANELTA), in partnership with the American Embassy in Angola, with the support of the Ministry of Education of Angola, implemented seventeen workshops around the country. These workshops were about developing English language teaching issues, such as lesson planning, testing, classroom management, teaching vocabulary, teaching skills, techniques to develop writing, speaking, reading and listening, just to mention some.
Angola is a very challenging environment for ELT, since it is a non-English language speaking country, with Portuguese as the main language spoken. This means the number of teachers of English qualified for this job is very small, compared to the demand which is huge. The majority of teachers do not have any qualification to teach, but are more qualified in areas related to engineering, law, civil construction, IT, etc., non-related to English. Moreover there is a shortage of teacher training centers where English is taught as a major or specialty. This means the demand for higher-standard teacher training centers for high school, undergraduate and post-graduate courses is also huge and the opportunities for developing courses are ample.
This series of workshops had the participation of around 1000 teachers of different levels. Reading material about methodology in different topics for English language teaching was distributed.
Through the project ANELTA expanded its activity to the regions, and as a result managed to open 15 offices with effective provincial coordination, so we can consider the project to have been a success. One of the major benefits taken from this is that by having a local team, ANELTA can immediately support and reach those teachers in need of expertise to improve their day-to-day work.
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