Longwood to begin training Chinese teachers of English

Longwood University next year will begin training 40 Chinese teachers of English every year.

Two groups of 20 teachers each from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China will come annually to Longwood for six months of training in Teaching of English as a Second Language (TESL). The first group of middle-school, high-school and university teachers is expected to arrive in October 2013. The two groups will not be at Longwood at the same time.

"They will receive training in pedagogy as well as cultural and practical matters to make them more effective teachers of English," said Dr. Robert Frank, Longwood's director of international relations.

An agreement formalizing the training program will be signed Monday, Nov. 5, at noon in the the Lewis Room in Dorrill Dining Hall during a visit by a 13-member delegation from the Teachers Training Center of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. This is a government agency that is responsible for education in Guangxi (pronounced Gwang-shee) province.

The Longwood program will replace one that the Teachers Training Center has had in Canada for more than 10 years, which is ending this year. The Longwood program will be overseen by Paul Phillips, an English as a Second Language instructor at Longwood.

Among the administrators from the Teachers Training Center who will visit Longwood for the signing are Liu Bing, the agency's director, and Li Qian, who oversees the agency's TESL program. Interim Longwood President Marge Connelly also will sign the agreement.

Li Qian was a student of Frank's when he taught previously at Morehead State University. Frank has worked with education officials in Guangxi province for more than a decade. One-third of the people in the mountainous province in southern China, which borders Vietnam, are members of the Zhuang (pronounced Drung) ethnic minority.