CEC-EPN

CEC-EPN is the Continuing Education Center of the National Polytechnic School In Quito, Ecuador. There are currently over 7,000 students enrolled in the English program with over 400 classes this cycle.[1] The National Polytechnic School (Spanish: Escuela Politécnica Nacional), also known as EPN, is a public university located in Quito, Ecuador with over 10,000 undergraduate students.

CEC Classroom building on the National Polytechnic School campus in Quito, Ecuador.

English Program

Five cycles per year in eight week segments with four written exams and one oral exam during each cycle. The sections are designed into a series of levels with beginner, intermediate one and two, advanced one and two as well as many Academic and Superior levels. Part of the class is designed to work with listening exercises where tve students are asked to answer specific questions from the conversation exercises built around perfect pronunciation and grammar.

French Program

Since 2008, there has been a program at CEC-EPN where students can learn the French language from native speakers. The sections are designed into a series of levels with beginner, intermediate one and two, and advanced one and two levels. According to a survey of the European Commission, French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.[2] It is also the third-most widely understood language in the EU.[3]

Mandarin Program

Since 2008, there has been a program at CEC-EPN where students can learn the Mandarin Chinese from native speakers. The sections are designed into a series of levels with beginner, intermediate one and two, and advanced one and two levels.

The English word "mandarin" (from Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri, from Sanskrit mantrin, meaning "minister or counselor") originally meant an official of the Chinese empire.[4][5] Since their home dialects were varied and often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using a koiné based on various northern dialects. When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name Guānhuà (官话/官話), or "language of the officials".[6]

In everyday English, "Mandarin" refers to Standard Chinese, which is often called simply "Chinese". Standard Chinese is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing, with some lexical and syntactic influence from other Mandarin dialects. It is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the official language of the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan), and one of the four official languages of the Republic of Singapore.

WorldTeach and CEC-EPN

CEC-EPN has an agreement with WorldTeach,[7][8] a non-governmental organization that provides opportunities for individuals to make a meaningful contribution to international education by living and working as volunteer teachers in developing countries. Founded in 1986 by a group of Harvard University students, WorldTeach places volunteers in communities throughout the world in year-long and summer programs. Approximately 400 volunteers are placed yearly, with more than 7,000 placed to date. All volunteers must be enrolled in or have completed four year college programs, with most volunteers being recent graduates. Each instructor at CEC is able to take a free Spanish Class everyday.

TEFL course

The TEFL course at CEC, Teaching English as a foreign language is available twice a year, September and February. TEFL teachers may be native or non-native speakers of English.

The course is directed and primarily taught by Les Embleton, MATEFL, BSc, RSA DipTEFLA, a TEFL professional with 30 years of experience as an EFL/ESL teacher, course director, and writer. We also have three additional course trainers and a staff of over 100 EFL instructors to give you supplementary training, as well as any extra help or advice you may need along the way. The course trainers will give you the required skills you will need to teach different age groups, skill levels and nationalities. The Academic Coordinator of CEC is Andres Paredes, who is also an instructor for the TEFL/TESL/CCA™ Certificate Program at CEC-EPN National Polytechnic School.

The TEFL course at CEC-EPN is a 150-hour program (80 hours in the classroom with instructors) that includes a unique CCA (Cross-cultural Awareness) module and 6 hours of officially observed classroom practicum by your advisor. The TEFL course at CEC-EPN includes 70 hours of tutorials.

The TEFL program at CEC-EPN [9] has a huge focus on Language education, a teaching and learning of a foreign or second language. Language education is a branch of applied linguistics. TEFL that uses literature aimed at children and teenagers is rising in popularity. Youth-oriented literature offers simpler material ("simplified readers" are produced by major publishers), and often provides a more conversational style than literature for adults. Children's literature in particular sometimes provides subtle cues to pronunciation, through rhyming and other word play. One method for using these books is the multiple-pass technique. The instructor reads the book, pausing often to explain certain words and concepts. On the second pass, the instructor reads the book completely through without stopping. Communicative language teaching (CLT) emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. Despite a number of criticisms,[10] it continues to be popular, particularly in Japan, Taiwan,[11] and Europe. The task-based language learning (TBLL) approach to CLT has gained ground in recent years. Proponents believe CLT is important for developing and improving speaking, writing, listening, and reading skills, and that it prevents students' merely listening passively to the teacher without interaction. Dogme[12] is a similar communicative approach that encourages teaching without published textbooks, instead focusing on conversational communication among the learners and the teacher.[13]

As a general rule schools will tend to prefer qualifications that involve a significant amount of assessed teaching: it is often said that "Learning to teach without classroom practice is like learning to drive without ever encountering traffic".[14] Shorter courses and online courses often lack assessed teaching practice. Course makers have recognized this and have begun introducing combined TEFL courses which have an element of assessed teaching.[15] [16]

Linguistics is the scientific[17] study of language.[18] Such study has, broadly speaking, three aspects: language form, language meaning, and language in context.[19] The earliest known activities in the description of language have been attributed to Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BCE), with his analysis of Sanskrit in Ashtadhyayi.[20]

Linguistics analyzes human language as a system for relating sounds (or signed gestures) and meaning.[21] Phonetics studies acoustic and articulatory properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and non-speech sounds. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode relations between entities, properties, and other aspects of the world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, pragmatics deals with how context influences meanings.[22]

Grammar comprises the system of rules which governs the form of the utterances in a given language. It encompasses both sound and meaning, and includes phonology (how sounds function and pattern together), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from these words).[23]

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages is used by CEC-EPN and is taught in the TEFL/TESL/CCA™ Certificate Program.

Conversation Club

Students who want to practice and perfect their English speaking can enroll in the CEC-EPN Conversation Club. The course is built around improve your English with weekly lessons on numerous subjects that are designed to give the students an opportunity to improve their speaking ability and develop the confidence to speak English naturally. Each week of the Conversation Club at CEC-EPN has a different topic designed to engage the students in different ideas from around the world.[24]

TOEFL Testing Center

Test of English as a Foreign Language or TOEFL /ˈtoʊfəl/ TOH-fəl, is a standardized test of English language proficiency for non-native English language speakers wishing to enroll in U.S. universities. The test is accepted by many English-speaking academic and professional institutions.

CEC-EPN is an ETS Authorized IBT Center for the TOEFL, one of the two major English-language tests in the world, the other being the IELTS. TOEFL is a trademark of ETS (Educational Testing Service), a private non-profit organization, which designs and administers the tests. The scores are valid for two years; then they are no longer reported.[25] The TOEFL is offered at least once a month.

References

  1. ↑ Center for Continuing Education at the National Polytechnic School, official web site
  2. ↑ European Commission (August 2011), "Europeans and their Languages" (PDF), Special Eurobarometer 386 (Europa): 5, retrieved 7 September 2014 Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
  3. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions - European Commission
  4. ↑ China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Mathew Ricci.
  5. ↑ "mandarin", Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1 (6th ed.). Oxford University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-920687-2.
  6. ↑ Coblin (2000), p. 537.
  7. ↑ Teach for the World, The New York Times
  8. ↑ Lessons learned from WorldTeach, Harvard Gazette
  9. ↑ CEC-EPN's World Class TEFL/TESL/CCA™ Certificate Program
  10. ↑ van Hattum, Ton (2006), The Communicative Approach Rethought
  11. ↑ The Trend and Challenge for Teaching EFL at Taiwanese Universities
  12. ↑ Meddings, L and Thornbury, S (2009) Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Peaslake: Delta.
  13. ↑ Luke, Meddings (2004-03-26). "Throw away your textbooks". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2009-06-22.
  14. ↑ " World TEFL Info, World TEFL Info
  15. ↑ "Distance learning courses can also be a good introduction, but feedback on your teaching practice is important and most distance courses will not include this, and therefore will not be acceptable to many teaching institutes." The British Council
  16. ↑ [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-23061737 BBC, Language firm TEFL Scotland seals China training deal
  17. ↑ Crystal, David (1990). Linguistics. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140135312.
  18. ↑ Halliday, Michael A.K.; Jonathan Webster (2006). On Language and Linguistics. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. vii. ISBN 0-8264-8824-2.
  19. ↑ Martinet, André (1960). Elements of General Linguistics. Tr. Elisabeth Palmer Rubbert (Studies in General Linguistics, vol. i.). London: Faber. p. 15.
  20. ↑ S.C. Vasu (Tr.) (1996). The Ashtadhyayi of Panini (2 Vols.). Vedic Books. ISBN 9788120804098.
  21. ↑ Jakobson, Roman (1937). Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 0262600102.
  22. ↑ Chierchia, Gennaro and Sally McConnell-Ginet (2000). Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 9780262531641.
  23. ↑ Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer, Robert M. Harnish (2010). Linguistics (6th ed.). The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-51370-6. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
  24. ↑ http://www.cec-epn.edu.ec/idiomas/linguistica/convclub.html The Conversaation Club at CEC-EPN, official web site
  25. ↑ TOEFL iBT™ Test Scores


External links

Wikipedia Portal on Educacion

See also