Home Local News Prestigious award for local Talk English Project

Prestigious award for local Talk English Project

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A unique scheme that has helped people in Burnley, Hyndburn and Pendle to learn how to speak English has been given an award by the British Council.

The Talk English scheme makes English language learning more successful by taking it out of traditional education settings and into the community.

The project has been so successful that the British Council recently awarded it a prestigious ELTon award for local innovation at a ceremony held in London and hosted by writer and presenter Angela Rippon OBE. The annual awards are the only international awards to recognise innovative achievement in English Language Teaching (ELT) globally and celebrate innovation and excellence in ELT from around the world.

Talk English is a partnership between Lancashire County Council, Manchester City Council and a number of other councils in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. More than 300 people have benefitted through Lancashire County Council’s adult learning service, with 5,000 people taking part in total.

The scheme works by training volunteer teachers and staff from local businesses to help people who are learning English to develop their skills as they go about their daily life. Supported by the volunteers known as “Talk English Friends”, learners attend informal classes and take part in activities such as shopping trips, outings to the park and visits to libraries and museums. All this helps to build the learners’ confidence at the same time as improving their language skills.

Amanda Melton, Interim Principal of Lancashire County Council’s Adult Learning Service said “Lancashire has such a wonderful, diverse mix of people from many different cultures. This scheme has been so successful because it recognises the importance of local people in helping others in their community to learn and become more confident in English. This not only helps the learners acquire better language skills but strengthens the community itself.

“We are really proud to have been involved in this award winning scheme and hope to help many more Lancashire residents to improve their English language skills.”

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