ETTE

Teaching English communicatively is becoming more and more popular in our country. There are quite a lot of teachers who have been trained to use Communicative Methodology and now are trying to implement their knowledge in their classrooms. However, there are still many more teachers who mainly rely on translation from English into their native language and back. It is generally known that this is not ultimately effective. Nowadays, our students need to acquire communicative competence to enable them to use English for everyday life and work. This need for communicative competence inspired the development of the ETTE Project.

British Council Nepal has initiated the project and implemented it in various districts of Nepal through partnership with government line agencies and NGOs. The main aim of this project is to develop English language and communicative teaching methodologies amongst Nepalese primary teachers through training, workshops and mentoring. The ETTE Project started in 2008. ETTE training has expanded to many remote districts of Nepal including, Kailali, Solukhumbu, Baglung, Gulmi, Manang, Lamjung, Makwanpur and Nuwakot. In the year 2008/09, 216 Primary English Teachers were trained from three remote districts, Kailali, Solukhumbu and Baglung, with 120 hours of English language and teaching methodology training over one intensive month from 17 June to 14 July 2008. In the second year, 377 Primary English Teachers were trained from remote districts, Kailali, Solukhumbu, Baglung, Gulmi, Manang, Lamjung, Makwanpur, and 186 teachers from other districts with 120 hours of English language and teaching methodology training.

Project Target Districts:

The ETTE project districts were:

• Nuwakot District
• Kaski District
• Morang District
• Gulmi District
• Solukhumbu district
• Baglung District
• Manang District
• Lamjung District
• Makawanpur District
• Kailali District

ETTE Course

The course is designed by the ETTE trainers (Parash Malla, Dhak. Bahadur Pun & Sunita Suri) and English trainer (Ms. Christine Stone) with the guidance of master trainer (Ms. Sue Leather). The course is designed for 112 hours (16 days x 2 input sessions of 2 hours and 45 minutes and 2 reflection sessions of 45 minutes), and are very flexible. While designing the materials the authors catered for primary level English school teachers with an elementary-pre-intermediate level of English. Due to this level of English, every day has language input sessions. The materials are designed for groups with a maximum of 24 participants, but could easily be adapted for bigger groups. The course is very practical, the participants are expected to: demonstrate their ability to present new language (vocabulary and grammar); create a lesson plan on teaching receptive skills; and adapt and demonstrate an activity from their course books. The authors used the course book (Better English) written by Christine Stone which is fully based on the government curriculum.