English Central Blog – Page 4

Posted on November 10, 2020 by Nicole

Pandemic may represent up to $3.4 billion loss for Canadian universities

Statistics Canada crunched some numbers related to the devastating impact of the pandemic on the national education scene.

International students allowed back into Canada

As of October 20th, international students are again allowed into Canada provided that they are studying with an institution that has an approved covid-19 readiness plan. It will be interesting to see how quickly students return.

We should take this opportunity to give a shout-out to Languages Canada. They have been working hard since the outset of the pandemic to work with the government to advance the interests of this industry which, as we all know, has been hit particularly hard by this pandemic. They have pointed out that over 75% of English and French programs are at risk of permanently closing and that with international students contributing $22 billion to the economy every year, Canada needs international students as well. They developed the Study Safe Corridor, a well-thought out plan, that would ensure that students could get to Canada for their studies, ensuring that they depart safe, arrive safe and study safe.

Getting Materials to your students while campuses are closed

While the majority of post-secondary educational institutions have quickly made a heroic switch from the classroom to online learning during this pandemic, it has surfaced that an associated problem is how to get learning materials into the hands of students. Campus bookstores are for the most part closed and so is gone the usual source for student books and eBooks.

English Central is happy to say that we are able to help in this situation. We can get physical books and eBook codes into the hands of your students, economically and reliably. Further convenience is that we deal with all major publishers (and a lot of smaller ones too), so we offer the convenience of one-stop shopping.

Some notes follow on the service we can provide, though we encourage you to contact us with any questions or to go ahead with this program. Please email nicole@englishcentral.net.

How does it work?

We will need you to supply us with the titles and ISBNs of the materials you use, your start date and expected enrolment (we understand that numbers right now are often a bit of a question mark; estimates are fine). We will then confirm prices and order in the necessary quantities so that they will be available to ship out as soon as students place their orders. We will add these materials to our eCommerce site. We will also create a PDF for your program to distribute to your students, listing the materials by course and hyperlinking them to our eCommerce site; this will make the ordering process as simple as possible for students and will ensure they order the correct materials. Physical books will be shipped to students’ homes, codes will be emailed to them.

Pricing

We will charge list price for the materials, which is either the same or less than what students would be paying in a campus bookshop. For eBooks, there will be no additional charges (other than tax). For physical books, we will be subsidizing shipping charges. For orders over $100, shipping will be free. For orders less than $100, we will charge half of the Canada Post rate (there will be a promo code on the PDF we produce for you). Of course, there will be no shipping charge for eBooks. Contactless pickup is also available for those in the Toronto area.

Are there any obligations?

No. And if not many of your students end up buying, there will be no penalties.

How do you move forward with this?

Posted on March 9, 2020 by Nicole

The Broken business model of EFL

There is an insightful article that was recently published in the EL Gazette about the broken business model of EFL schools in the US and the UK. While many teachers think of language schools as money makers that deliberately keep their teachers poor, this article blows that idea out of the water to show an industry that definitely is not making money the way it used to. Note too, that many of the problems the US and UK are facing also exist in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

SFU and Navitas extend their partnership

Simon Fraser University and Navitas, which operates the Fraser International College on the SFU campus, have signed an agreement to extend their current partnership until 2030.

ILAC acquires CTC and Sterling College

Mega private langauge school ILAC has aquired two British Columbia colleges : Canadian Tourism College and Sterling College. ILAC recently created a Higher Education division and will be offering programs in tourism, hospitality, nursing and business. The two colleges were acquired to strengthen this new division.

Enrolment and graduation rates continue rising in Canada

Stats Canada recently revealed that the school year of 2017/2018 was the third consecutive year of increases in enrolment and graduation from postsecondary institutions. Our readers will not be surprised to also learn that this growth was largely attributable to international students, whose numbers increased 15.6%. The increase in domestic students was much more modest at 0.2%.

The higher a student’s level, the more they blame their teacher

We remember once teaching a beginning level class at a Toronto college. At the end of the course, the students startled us with a $200 gift certificate and a lovely card signed by everone. We were amazed at this and didn’t feel truly deserving; the students had made a lot of progress, but seeing as they had almost no English, it would have been difficult for them not to.

The following month, we taught an advanced level class. There was no gift certificate that time; rather there were some complaints that we hadn’t done a good enough job. We were annoyed. Certainly, advanced students did not make as quick progress as beginners. Furthermore, advanced students have such wildly different individual needs that it is difficult to address them while still following a curriculum.

And so we read with great interest an article in the EL Gazette that summarizes recent research that shows that, indeed, as students become more proficient, they tend to blame their teacher for their slow progress (beginners tend more to blame themselves when they do not make sufficient progress).

Read the article here.

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Nicole

Record number of Indian students now studying in the US

In December, it was reported that the number of Indian nationals studying in the US had passed 200,000 for the first time. This is the sixth consecutive year of growth and represents 18% of all international students studying in the US.

Something else to feel bad about: the carbon footprint of international students

It is probably a good bet that a larger than average percentage of ELT professionals are concerned about climate change. Well, a recent article in Inside Higher Ed puts the spotlight on international education and the large carbon footprint that it has. Possible solutions are suggested – including students staying home – but that leaves ELT professionals between a rock and a hard place.