Cape Breton university in Sydney, Nova Scotia has seen a huge increase in international students this year. The unfortunate side of this story is that many of these students are unable to find part time work and, worried about their dwindling savings, have turned to a local soup kitchen to eat.
Read more on the CBC.
While Chinese students are still the largest group of international students at the University of British Columbia, Indian enrollment grew 263% from the school year of 2013/2014 to 2017/2018.
Read more in the Daily Hive.
There are roughly 600,000 Chinese students studying abroad and they add a lot of money into the coffers of colleges and universities. In Canada, roughly one in three international students is Chinese. An Illinois college was so worried about the fallout of the Trump trade war that they actually took out an insurance policy with Lloyds of London.
For a short article that has some really fun details on this, read more in the Vancouver Sun.
It is hard to believe that in little more than a month it will be time for TESOL! And if that isn’t exciting enough, it is in Atlanta, so all of us who attend will have the chance to fill up on fried pickles (and chicken) at the same time. That is what they call “living”.
English Central will be there and exhibiting with our newest publisher, Innova Press. Award-winning author Terry Phillips will be with us representing Innova. Terry will also be presenting on his upcoming series EAP Grammar. As always, we will also have plenty of great books with us and fun little gifts for those who are kind enough to come and visit us at our booth.
We hope you will attend our sessions too! Here are the details:
The Skillful approach to teaching critical thinking
March 13th, 7:00 AM – 7:45 AM in A408 at GWCC
All published EAP materials claim to teach critical thinking skills, but do they ask students to do more than discuss their opinions? In this session, attendees look at low- to high-order critical thinking skills and how they can effectively be taught across levels of an EAP curriculum.
The importance of grammar in EAP
English is largely a syntactic language, with meaning being conveyed in most cases by word order. However, there is generally a focus on tense formation and usage in the ESL classroom. This session explores the importance of teaching competence in syntax to improve academic reading and writing.
Do you see yourself as a visual learner? Or perhaps a musical learner? The theory of learning styles is almost a hundred years old and endures to this day, despite the fact that there is little evidence to support the theory. Gain some insight into the different sides of the debate from a recent article in Inside Higher Ed.
Statistics Canada has reported that revenue for all 166 public Canadian colleges, cegeps and polytechnics rose 0.2 billion in 2016/17 over the previous academic year. As provincial funding has remained flat for several years, the increase in revenue is due to larger tuition being collected. There has been an increase of 27.2% in tuition since 2012/2013. It is important to note that a large part of this increase in tuition revenue is due to the 55% increase in international students.
Read more from Statistics Canada.
The University of Prince Edward Island saw a large increase in the number of fraudulent international student applications in the 2017-2018 school year, up to 50 while the number was only 10 two years ago. The director of recruitment at the university attributes 60 per cent to people who wanted to study but did not have the grades needed to enter the university, while he says the rest are people who are trying to gain access to Canada in order to work illegally.
Read more on CBC.
400 who have been granted admission to Niagara College for January 2019 based on IELTS test results obtained in India, have been told by the college that they must retake their IELTS test or possibly lose their admission. This decision at the college follows the finding that the number of “at risk” students went from 150 last year to 300 in the fall term. The college subsequently performed an in-house English test and found that 200 did not have the proficiency they needed to pass their coursework and that 80% of those students had taken their IELTS test in India at test centers run by the Australian-based IDP Education.
Read more in the Hamilton Spectator.
In an effort to improve the spoken and written English skills of Japanese students, the government of Japan has launched a pilot program that will see 500 AI robots introduced in schools next year.
Part of the appeal of the robots is that they are more affordable than hiring native speakers to teach or giving local teachers the language training they would need to be able to teach English.
Read more in the Japan Times.
Statistics Canada recently announced that the number of international students in Canadian postsecondary institutions has been on the rise for two decades. Int he 2016/2017 school year, international student numbers increased by 11.7% while the number of domestic students was almost unchanged.
The majority of international students continue to be from China, but the gains are attributed to the large increase in Indian students.
