Make a Difference with EL.CD (English Literacy for Community Development)
As its advocacy, Concordia International College in the Philippines developed the EL.CD or the English Literacy for Community Development Program.
What is EL.CD
The EL.CD Program is a Scholarship Program that: (1) Promotes English literacy through a holistic learning approach that I will discuss in our next slide. (2) It focuses on teacher development by providing the knowledge and skills to effectively teach English and (3) As a result, it empowers communities thru quality education.
Why develop English Literecy
Promoting English literacy is at the core of EL.CD. Why is this important? One, because literacy lays the foundation for life-long learning and productive work. Second, because English is the lingua franca or the common language used by people who do not share the same mother tongue. Taken together, English Literacy therefore empowers the marginalized and makes community development sustainable as it opens the way for life-long learning and productive work that is globally competitive. It can help free people from the cycle of poverty – because the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Why Teacher Development
Aside from developing English Literacy, EL.CD also focuses on training our teachers. A popular Chinese proverb says “give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime”. EL.CD recognizes the ripple effect that teacher development will produce for community learning. One teacher can reach out to hundreds of students, changing their lives forever. But being able to speak English is not enough to successfully teach it. Teachers must have the knowledge and the practical skills to effectively teach and raise the level of their students’ English literacy. EL.CD provides this training.
How does it work?
Teacher Selection Process
[Online Lecture][Classroom Training][English Assessment][Curriculum and Learning Materials]
Quality Management System
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- Standard Training Process
- Monitoring of Training Completion
- Supportive Transition
- Compliance Monitoring and Feedback
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It starts with the Teacher Selection Process. In partnership with local communities, we will select the teachers that will undergo the EL.CD Program. EL.CD’s holistic learning approach involves 4 components:
- Online Lecture: teaches TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and TEC (Teaching English to Children)
- Face-to-face classroom training: to strengthen learning, teachers are taught how to assess a student’s English Proficiency level and how to teach the ESL curriculum. ESL or English as a Second Language is a specialized program based on the students’ English proficiency level.
- English Assessment documents, Curriculum and Learning materials: after the online and classroom training, these materials are handed over to the teachers so they can return to their local communities. They are now armed with the knowledge, the skills as well as the tools to start their new journey.
- Quality Management System: to make it sustainable, this system allows us to standardize the training process and to monitor training completion. It supports our teachers to successfully transition from the Program until they return to their own communities to start teaching what they learned.
According to Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kofi Annan, “literacy is the road to human progress”. Through the help of public and private institutions, Concordia is optimistic that EL.CD will indeed change people’s lives and contribute to community development.
For more information about EL.CD and our other programs, please email us at customer.service@aconcordia.com or call us at (02) 254.4415.
