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| Educational Approach The primary goal of this Foundation is provide quality and practical English language education in local Thai schools on Phuket Island, focusing on primary and eventually secondary school children. Although there is an English language curriculum in Thailand’s public schools, its implementation is less than adequate and funding is severely limited. Teaching methods usually revolve around rote memorization and there is short supply of native-English speaking educators. As is common in many places around the world, the English language education provided in government schools is also of a low quality relative to what can be obtained in private schools. With only a portion of the population able to access and afford a private school education, a fragmented social structure is developed and maintained over time. | |
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Click here to see how we teach (Windows Media Video) Click here for an article about us and our educational approach featured in the Phuket Bulletin, January, 2007. This article is written in both Thai and English. Our Foundation will work with local educators to fund and implement a quality English language education in government schools. Our belief is that a language program that emphasizes conversation and shifts the focus away from rote memorization will allow Thai children to meet with greater success in learning the English language. Through interactive exercises, role playing, and other approaches, we seek to build the confidence and increase the intercultural understanding of tomorrow’s Thai youth. Learning Material About Local Life Our first Director of Education, U.K.-born Kate Cope, designed and implemented unique pedagogical approaches for each grade level. This included the development of illustrated instruction books to supplant what is commonly available to English language teachers in Thailand. Most books are written to be of use to as wide an audience as possible, causing them to become generic, and in many ways alien, to a local community. Ms. Cope is developed a text that makes specific reference to images familiar to local children and the vocabulary that would be most useful to Phuket residents. This is not only familiar to children on Phuket but introduces the notion to them that local images are important enough belong in a book. Click here for a video about our first English textbook A Lively Curriculum Our teachers use an interactive approach to teaching English, including the use of a miniature, hands-on, “educational playground” for the English language classroom. “We use total physical response which engages the children by hearing, seeing and actually doing. We have a maxim which is, ‘I hear and I forget, I see and remember. I do and I understand.’” Our program begins by testing the student’s level of understanding of written and spoken English. The tests include cards with pictures of local images that they can point to when they hear the English word. A year from now, we expect the children to have moved from barely being able to point to the right pictures, to being able to talk about the pictures and their context. The Foundation’s English language education program is total immersion in English. Use of Thai language is very limited. The children we serve certainly have find the new program to be a challenge. Nevertheless, with patience and a smiling, reassuring face, our teachers are able to move them along. We will be posting some more specific information on our curriculum and teaching methods. Please check back soon! | |
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