E-Newsletter
September 2008

If you are having trouble viewing this
email you can view it online here.

Steve's Quartlery Update

Welcome %PERS_NAME%! It has been three months since I last contacted you, so the website has been updated to reflect what has been happening on the education front in Thailand.

The Self Access Center is starting to take shape and a pilot course has started for primary school teachers of English at Bantatprachanukoon School in Banphue District, Udon Thani.

Some new resources have been added and there is now an opportunity to acquire free English language books for not-for-profit organisations as well as government schools with libraries.

Please feel free to contact me about any areas of English language learning, teaching and management that you care to discuss.

Contact Steve at:

steve@steves-english-zone.com

Or register as a member here.

News Articles

Every month there will be articles concerning all the latest developments in education reforms in the news.

The focus will be on Thailand and S.E. Asia; however, anything that has an impact on education in this region will be analysed and published.

Subjects covered so far include the use of telephone watches to cheat in examinations, free laptop computers for students and the increasing of the retirement age for teachers.

Anyone with news items or comments that they think are relevant are welcome to forward them to me and I will do my best to reply to all correspondence.

Steve Graham

Steve Graham is an English language teacher at the Language Center, Udon Thani Rajabhat University. This university is in the north-east of Thailand; an area which is predominantly agricultural, where English language education is not in the forefront of people’s minds.

As well as teaching English, Steve has been writing a regular weekly column in the Education Section of the Bangkok Post for over a year.

Click here to forward this message to a friend

Click here to unsubscribe

ESEA College Asia

This project was instigated by Alec McAulay in Japan at the start of 2008 and uses the Flickr website to bring students from around the world together using the English language as their medium.

To quote Alec, “College Asia on Flickr is a collaboration of Asian universities allowing English-language learners to exchange photos and information about their lives. Universities in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines and Hong Kong participate to foster cross-cultural understanding.”

My students at Udon Thai Rajabhat University will be encouraged to participate in this project as part of their coursework. Students will be asked to post their favourite photographs on the internet using Flickr and write a description in English about their photograph. See the results for yourselves.

Primary School English Language Teachers

This is a work in progress that will hopefully lead to a resource bank that can be accessed by all those interested in the learning and teaching of English. Anyone who has found good websites and believes they should be publicised is encouraged to forward them to me with the details.

This site is divided into three headings; however, there are resources available for everyone under all the headings.

Learner Resources
Teacher Development Resources
Teacher Resources

Croston House Children’s Home

Glenn and his wife Rosjana run a children’s home in Lamphun in the north of Thailand. This home is a legitimate government registered foundation with two members of staff (Glenn and Rosjana) looking after nearly 30 children.

They need to purchase transport rather than to contract transportation out to someone else and to make this home permanent, land needs to be purchased saving on monthly rent payments.

Glenn has decided to walk 1,400 kilometers across 15 provinces in 45 days to raise 2 million baht. Help him in his quest for a better life for Thailand’s disadvantaged children.