ISSUE 10, FEBRUARY 2022

AE NEWSLETTER

English in the Community – A Training

Program by ANELTA
Teófelo Domingos
Significant educational achievements accomplished share the same first [...] language” (p.13).
during a challenging moment should be widely shared As English becomes a global language, many people
among the people and especially those in the excellent are willing to learn it to get better jobs or for training
community of ELT professionals from Africa ELTA. opportunities. Gaining communicative competence in
By doing that, we would be inspiring others in similar English could open up the world to Angolan citizens and
would allow them to take opportunities such as, working for
teaching contexts to do the same (conduct training
Oil companies, Telecoms or being granted a scholarship to
programs and support colleagues locally) or even better
study in an English speaking country, these opportunities
than what was done, moreover, it raises my desire to
are otherwise not available for them without having a certain
keep supporting local citizens in various ELT initiatives, level of proficiency in this language.
namely creating English clubs, and presenting lectures
on topics of local groups´ interest. In July 2021 the Angolan English Language Teachers
Association and I decided to launch a program in Angola
In this technological era where the world becomes more entitled “English in the Community.” It was established
globalized, networking and establishing communication with the intention of helping Angolan citizen (both learners
with people from all around the world has become and teachers of English). The association aims to provide
important for business, education, commerce, tourism, and threshold proficiency in English to groups of people with
cultural exchange purpose. A global life requires a common low social status and other potentially interested groups
language to achieve communication goals and English (ranging from 12 to 50 years old) across Angola, free of
is that language. Harmer (2007) notes that “by the end of charge. Another objective of the program is to provide free
the twentieth century English was already well on its way ELT mentorship to non-trained teachers of English and
to becoming a genuine lingua franca, that is a language equip them with English club leadership skills so that they
used widely for communication between people who do not can scaffold their learners in the best way possible. For that

purpose, a group of three teachers, who are members of the Angolan English Language
Teachers’ Association – ANELTA, volunteered to work for the program. A big group of local
citizens attended the General English course and ELT sessions, and overall 100 people
benefitted from the program.

The course design process needs to follow several steps for a course to be considered
an effective one. A good EFL course attracts a lot of students, satisfies the learners,
teachers and sponsors (stakeholders, in general), results in a lot of learning, provides a
graded coverage of language items, skills and strategies and follows accepted principles of
curriculum design (Nation & Macalister, 2010).

For the association to take on this English in the community program, first I had to carry
out an environment and needs analysis of the target groups and communities taking into
account the aspects that a good course resembles, as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I conducted surveys so that I could get the full scope of the available teaching facilities, potentially interested groups,
availability of the prospective learners and their target learning needs. The main purpose of this data collection process is to
have a gist of our prospective learners´ profile, and be aware of the possible challenges we would face in the implementation
phase, such as lack of teaching resources, adequate teaching facilities or work under a tight timetable.

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Nation and Macalister (2010) assert that in an environment would model the new words or phrases and students
analysis the “useful information to gather about the would repeat them after him, whereas in an English club
constraint is how much class time is available, how much session we are more likely to see a club member asking
time out of class could be given to learning, and what the to a partner “What´s your father´s job? Is your mother a
goals of the course are” (p.20). Based on the participants’ street vendor? Or Do you think teachers should be better
feedback concerning their availability for in and out of class paid taking into account their role in society?” without
activities, their needs and wants and their current level of feeling the pressure of being observed by a teacher, or
English ( based on a self-assessment of their English level) that his/her mistakes will be spotted and over corrected.
just to mention some. We designed a 90-hour syllabus for
CEFR A1, A2, and B1 levels that was broken down into three On the other hand, English club sessions provide both
modules with 30 hours allotted to each module. teachers and students what was otherwise not available
in the general English classes. It is important to highlight
In partnership with the Municipal Direction of Education, we that English clubs gave the students a chance to use
carried out the course for two weeks. The teachers spent all the language repertoire at their disposal. They
six hours a day at the local school where the course was could practice using their language in a free-stress
being conducted apart from the other four hours they had to environment and they could learn more by joining
spend planning lessons and preparing teaching resources. other people from different group ages and levels of
The students had classes five days a week, two hours and proficiency. The students had fun and could engage in a
a half per class. Additionally, an English club was set at the variety of activities, such as guessing games, vocabulary
local community (Speakout Nzeto English club) because activities, dictation activities, discussion activities and
we understand that, unfortunately, the overall amount so forth, but most importantly they had a chance to take
allotted to each level is not sufficient to take the students a step forward in their learning process.
to a higher level of proficiency in English. Pimsleur (2013),
informs us that 220 hours of study (roughly 8 weeks) is Whenever the courses run, students gauge the
what a “language learner of average ability” needs to reach effectiveness of our courses in terms of language
an Elementary level of proficiency when learning an easy learning content and whether it covers their target needs.
language, more or less time can be allowed depending on What is more, teachers are interviewed to give their
the differences of language aptitude. However, the English viewpoints on the course application. We will continue
club sessions and out of class tasks would enable us to conducting surveys with our participants so that we can
reach an estimate (roughly 180 hours in 6 weeks). Apart have a clear understanding of where the course is taking
from the various advantages that English Language clubs us and how far or close we are from reaching our general
can bring to language students and their communities, they objectives. ANELTA aims to take this program to the 18
play a major role, namely, in that they expose students to provinces of Angola in two years, have English language
the target language, this last point leads students to have an clubs spread across the country and train many teachers
exponential growth in foreign language learning. to have English club leadership skills. Shortly, the former
and future (prospective) participants of our program will
Spratt, Pulverness and Williams (2005) note that presently receive public speaking training from our partner Fijate
innumerable experts believe that being exposed to the target Bien (an Academy from Mexico). all the sessions will
language is one of the ways we learn it (p.41). The students be online either on Zoom or WhatsApp and it basically
had classes during the weekdays and the interaction was entails helping leaners to foster communicative skills and
restricted to classmates and their teachers. Moreover, their communicate effectively without anxiety, considering
attention was focused on one topic in which controlled and that even advanced speakers of any language may still
freer practice were aimed at practicing specific vocabulary, face problems in speaking in public or dealing with a
structure and language functions under the teacher´s control large audience.
or in small groups or pairs. For example, a class with the
topic “Jobs and Occupations” for A1 students, the teacher (for reference list contact the author)

Bio

Teófelo António Domingos is an EFL teacher in Angola, a senior graduate at the teacher training college
for Secondary level teachers Magistério Mutu Ya Kevela , ANELTA member and he is currently studying
ELT Methodology at the Higher Institute of Education Sciences – ISCED/LUANDA.

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The Featured Member Interview

to the Africa ELTA Newsletter

its program “English Connects” run in Africa. Since then I

have been running and creating English Language clubs, I
ran an English Club with more than 200 members for three
years – 2019-2021 (The MMK English Club). In January
2021, I accepted an invitation from a friend to join a teaching
project “Projecto Shaping Your English” where I started
mentoring non-trained teachers of English free of charge,
currently I lead an English club at the Higher Institute of
Education Sciences – ISCED/LUANDA where I am studying
ELT Methodology.

2How did you hear about Africa ELTA?

What motivated you to become a member?

I knew nothing about Africa ELTA, until 2019 when I attended

a lecture held at the school where I was studying at that
Teófelo António Domingos time, and David Fernando ran the presentation on the Topic:
The Importance of Knowing and Mastering the Sounds of
English. During his presentation, he mentioned that he has
written an article about the new Phonemic Chart he has
created and that the same article was published in the Africa
Can you give a short self-

1 introduction? (Talk about your

work and experience.)
TESOL Newsletter issue 4 – 2019. After his presentation, I
browsed the website and downloaded the Newsletter issue
4 and many others. There could not be a better choice for
me as an ELT professional from Africa than joining a team of
I am Teófelo António Domingos, a senior graduate many ELT professionals who share similar teaching contexts,
at the teacher training college for Secondary and share quite similar difficulties. Africa ELTA provides
level teachers Magistério Mutu Ya Kevela. For my professional development opportunities to its members, in
High School graduation, I conducted an action addition, teachers get the chance to share local problems
research on the topic “Teaching Speaking to and achievements regarding ELT to the whole community of
Young Learners Aged 13-14 – action Research of teachers from Africa through Webinars, Newsletter articles
Grade 8 students at 1100 School” with four other and Conferences, in order to encourage similar initiatives,
mates. I am a former participant of the English and together tackle the problems. All this seems to be
Club Leadership training by the British Council in appealing to me concerning Africa ELTA.

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3 What insights can you share with us

about the English teachers in Senegal?
the Angolan English Language Teachers´ Association-
ANELTA in Zaire, one of the provinces of Angola and
Their needs or challenges? covered both students and teachers of English from
public and private sectors. Overall, in two weeks 100
There has been an increasing number of teachers of people participated in the program.
English in Angola in the last few years, ranging from
very young people (in their early twenties) to older ones.
Not everyone has been to a Teacher Training School or
has taken an initial Teacher Training Course, but many
people see English language teaching as a means to
5 Tell us about one big achievement in
your professional career.
survive, and it automatically results in many language
centres and non-trained English teachers enter this grand
industry. A large number of teachers have been applying Before I presented at the Africa ELTA 5th International
techniques that are consistent with the features of the Conference, I would say that my biggest professional
Grammar Translation and Audiolingual Methods in their achievement was to design a syllabus for A1, A2 and
classes. Some, even those trained, are still stuck to the B1 levels (based on the CEFR) that was successfully
PPP model (Presentation – Practice – Production). It implemented in the target communities. Now, I can
means that there is still a lot to be done in terms of initial say that my biggest achievement was to be one of
teacher training courses and Continuous Professional the presenters at the Africa ELTA 5th International
Develop (CPD) for those who took their training long ago, Conference. I was pleased to share a virtual stage with
so that teachers start shifting from the old to the new excellent ELT professionals from Africa and from around
teaching approaches and following the latest trends in the world.
ELT methodology. Moreover, lack of adequate teaching
facilities and lack of teaching resources constitute part
What advice would you give to the
of the problems faced by teachers of English in Angola.
6 Africa ELTA members to develop
professionally?
What activities have you done
4 to professionally support your
colleagues in Senegal, if any?
We are living in the digital era, although not everyone
can have access to high tech devices, there is a massive
number of people connecting through social media in
Since 2019, I have been supporting teachers from one of different platforms. When planning to take a Professional
the Teacher training college of Secondary level teachers Development course, we should all first weigh the impact
in Luanda (the capital city of Angola) by conducting of our classroom work and based on that, we can create
presentations in a less formal way at the school setting. a detailed action plan to attend webinars and seminars
I decided to design my own intensive ELT Methodology that would fulfil our needs. We can find numerous CPDs
syllabus, broken down into four Modules so that I could when we browse the internet. I would recommend
be running ELT Methodology classes in a much more Helbling English Webinars and Future Learn platform
formal way. In January 2021 I was invited by a friend, for free online training for teachers. In addition, if you
Filipe Bengala, to join an ELT project, and in 5 months I think of going further in the future, try doing something
mentored about 100 teachers of English, senior students much more challenging or instructive, and for this, there
and to highlight, I also mentored university students is a variety of courses like CELTA, CELTYL, TKT or Trinity
studying ELT Methodology and some were studying Certificate widely available.
Linguistics and Literature. In June 2021, I worked on
a program “English in The Community” launched by

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7 Any suggestions to share with the Africa ELTA Board?.

At first, I want to congratulate the Africa ELTA board for carrying out a series of monthly Webinars that covers many
important ELT topics, but I think there is still much to be done. The African continent has 55 countries, but we don´t
have 55 Africa ELTA affiliates either because Teachers´ Associations do not exist in many of these countries or
because they have not joined the Association yet. I would suggest the Africa ELTA Board to mediate the creation of
more Teachers´ Clubs and Associations. Growing in number will somehow represent a growth in quality, because
I believe that there are excellent teachers whose contribution to the organization would be extremely important
but who are yet to join Africa ELTA. The Africa ELTA Board can still connect to the Teachers´ Associations from as
many countries as possible; so that we can all share, our local achievements cheerfully and together come up with
solutions for many ELT problems afflicting us.

To share your experience with

our members and be the next
Featured Member, email us at:
africaeltanewsletter21@gmail.com

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