Reflections of an English Teacher 2

This is the second blog post coming out of some recent research here at ILS which made me think about how things have changed in Estonia over the past 20 years.

The average of my students 20 years ago was 25-35. As we can see from the pie chart, the largest single age group today is 35-50. Why is this? Do younger people not need to improve their language skills? Some people say that teaching standards have improved so dramatically that consequently, all young people speak great English by the time they leave school. However, I seem to recall that there was something of an English teaching crisis in Estonian schools in the early to mid nineties when language teachers left the profession in droves for greener pastures and in some cases, students were teaching students in schools.

So, I tend to think that whilst teaching standards may have changed, I rather think that the opportunities for young people to learn and use English outside school are so various now, that it is increasingly rare to find a person under 25 who can’t get by in English.

People in their late thirties and older who find themselves on the job market are finding that English skills are essential to get a job and this is a big motivator for some to go back to school.

Phil

Reflections of an English teacher 1

We’ve been doing a bit of research here at ILS over the past couple of weeks by asking our students some questions about themselves and what they think about the courses here. It made me think about how things have changed in Estonia over the past 20 years. So I thought I’d write a few posts.

The first thing to say is that the standard of English in Estonia seems to have increased quite a bit. Back in the mid-nineties, the largest single group of English students were at the A2 level – perhaps 40 % of the total. Today the largest number of students is at the B2 level. If we take the ILS student base as a representative sample of the country, this is a significant improvement in a relatively short time. Of course there has been a revolution in all levels of education in the past 20 years but students of all ages now are more motivated to learn English – not so much because they will have plenty of opportunities to use it but increasingly because it is becoming essential in the job market and in higher education.

Phil

Language school

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Reflections of an English Teacher 2

Reflections of an English teacher 1