Zambia Project background
3. Outline of the course and rationale
1. Description of the partners This project involved the collaboration of the Language Teachers Association of Zambia (LATAZ) and Celtic English Academy Cardiff (CEA) in the UK. CEA is a private language school and has been offering English language tuition for over 16 years. CEA designed and delivered the course to members of LATAZ, which has approximately 160 members who are teachers in Zambia primary and secondary schools.
From the outset, the course was designed to improve the participants’ confidence in using English daily and an English-medium instruction (EMI) approach was adopted. Conversations with LATAZ also highlighted that writing was an area which the participants could benefit from, with a focus on as this was an area the pupils of the course participants struggled with. Participants were also invited to directly influence the course content with an aspect of a negotiated syllabus being woven in. A weekly breakdown can be seen in Appendix 1. Learning points
2. Key features of the context The participants on the course were practising teachers from Zambia who taught at both primary and secondary level (approx. 50:50 split). The majority of the participants either taught English as their main subject or as one of their main subjects. Those who taught another subject used English as the language of instruction. Although 156 teachers initially signed up to take part in the course, the number of participants who took part in synchronous live lessons was 57 in total (just over one-third). Most of these attended on a regular basis; however, there were some participants who attended on a more ad-hoc basis, giving a weekly average of around 45 attendees.
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Through the EMI approach and writing tasks, participants were able to see a direct link between the course content and their own teaching context, making the course relevant to their context and needs The negotiated approach motivated the participants by giving them direct influence in the course content and led to participant engagement in lessons
There was a good balance of male and female students with approximately 55 per cent being female and 45 per cent being male. Initially, approximately 50 per cent of the participants who signed up for the course came from rural locations. However, the number of participants who actually took part from rural locations was lower at around 20 per cent. This was mainly due to poor connectivity in more rural areas.
Partnered Remote Language Improvement (PRELIM) project report
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