Short Intensive Teacher Training Courses: How Effective are They?
Grace Wiradisastra
Considering English as an important factor in improving
students’ performance during their studies and to give them an edge on the job
market, the University of Indonesia
has developed a New Foundation English course for all first year students. This
foundation course is meant to give the students competence in all four skills:
listening, speaking, erading, and writing. One of the main problems in
implementing this course was finding enough teachers to teach more than 8-
classes every semester. To solve this problem, anyone with a good command of
English willing to be involved in teaching the course was recruited and
trained. This included several subject matter teachers and teachers of other
languages with a good command of English, post-graduate students, fersh
graduates and even a few outstanding undergraduate English students in their
final year. Considering the funding available for the training of the teachers
and the time available, one-week residential intensive teacher training courses
were held in order to train the etachers. This paper describes the course
methodology and components. It also reports the teachers’ views of this course:
to what extent the course helped them to teach the classes and what important
things they found lacking in it. Based on this survey, interviews of teachers
and classroom observations, suggestions are made on designing and implementing
effective short intensive teacher training course.
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Wiradisastra, G. (2006, April). Short intensive teacher
training courses: How effective are they? Paper presented at the 41st RELC
International Seminar, Singapore.
Website: www.geocities.com/eltindonesia
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