Helping Saudi Arabian Teachers To Master English – EF English Live joins English for All (E4A) in collaboration with KSA Ministry of Education

In 2018, English is as essential to international communication as it has ever been. It is the language of science, business and diplomacy. For Saudi Arabians to play an active role in this deeply interconnected world there is a need to improve the English capabilities of the population.

The Saudi Government is committed to achieving this aim and have charged the Ministry of Education (MoE) to work with top worldwide English language providers amongst which EF English Live. By developing the English skills of teachers, the target is to provide the best educational opportunities for young people. This will open up a vast array of educational material to educators, leading to higher standards of teaching and learning across the KSA’s schools.

The “English4All” E4A program will offer the opportunity to over 600,000 Saudi teachers registered to the iEN educational portal to improve their English language proficiency.

Teachers interested in developing their skills and careers by improving their own English can easily register on the iEN portal to join the initiative. They simply look online for the English For All (E4A) programme and follow the instructions given there.

To support the Saudi Government initiative, EF English Live will offer a premium product with a special discount, enabling teachers to meet their own personal commitments and their preferred learning style. Teachers will be able to choose between studying in a group, or by themselves. If it suits their personal circumstances better, they can even opt to participate in private on-line classes.

Ali Alromaih is the Director of the English Language Development Program withT4edu. He says of the programme:

‘English for All initiative is offered to teachers of all disciplines and its main objective is to improve their English language proficiency, thus allowing them to access abundant online and print educational resources in English.’

Through making use of these wider range of resources, available across the globe to those competent in English, teachers and students will develop skills, not only in English (as crucial as this might be in the world economic market) but across all areas of the curriculum.

‘English for All is a unique program that aims at providing teachers and (at a later stage) students with cost effective solutions to improve their English language proficiency,’ says Abudulrahman Alfuraih, Head of (English) Supervision at the Ministry of Education. He is also the English 4 All Program Manager at the department.

‘We at the Ministry of Education will do our best to encourage and support the implementation of the program. We believe that this program would be helpful in achieving the Saudi 2030 vision,’ he continues.

EF English Live is a leading global force in the delivery of the teaching of English across the world. Past projects have included helping with the acquisition of English language to more than a million volunteers involved with the Olympic Games over recent years. EF Education First, the group company of EF English Live, has been behind that work, and the plan, as one of the Olympic Games’ sponsors, is to continue that support in Tokyo 2020.

“As the largest online English school in the world, we are delighted to work in this close partnership with the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia” said Nick Barnet, CEO of EF English Live. “We feel that our combination of highly qualified English teachers available 24/7, combined with our easy-to-use online self-study materials and learning methodology will allow teachers in Saudi Arabia to learn English in the quickest and most rewarding way. This partnership is testament to our goal as a part of EF to open up the world through education.”

Live on-line teacher conversation classes are the necessary and natural complement to a rigorous academic course curriculum with focus on all 4 skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking. Underpinning all of the courses, teaching and training offered by EF English Live, including their Saudi Arabian operations, is its team of talented, expert native English-speaking teachers and tutors. These are the staff that make the company such a world leader in their field.

However well trained and fluent in their language, a speaker who has acquired English as a second or third language will never understand or use the colloquialisms, idiom, different dialect and idiosyncrasies of a language in the same way as a native speaker who has picked up these elements naturally. Through native teachers, English is able to be delivered not only in a well-structured way, but also in a form that understands and employs the subtleties of the subject matter.

That will be to the benefit of the many Saudi Arabian teachers who take on their Government’s pledge to help them acquire and master English. Soon older students will also have the opportunity to take part in the E4A. The programme will assist all in their studies opening up to a much wider range of educational resources which are available in English language.

And it will offer accelerated learning to anybody who makes use of the premium one-to-one private classes offered by EF English Live.