By Bindu Varghese
As Academic Director at EC New York, I have the pleasure of meeting with different international students and helping them adapt to our school and city while they learn English. While I have a good grasp of their educational goals and learning styles while they are at our school, it’s eye-opening to get a perspective on how they learned English in their own countries.
Last week, I had the opportunity to provide some teacher training to two English teachers from Russia. I shared with them communicative, inductive, and thematic based approaches to learning grammar that are common practice at EC New York. They were surprised that students at EC New York had such an opportunity to challenge themselves and learn autonomously through such methods. However, what was more interesting for these teachers was how direct instruction and deductive methods are often used abroad. In comparison to methods in their home countries, students will experience a completely different perspective when learning English at EC New York.
What I’ve learned is that our students have wonderful foundations in English from all over the world, but it’s important to be open to new perspectives when you study abroad. To Learn English in New York gives students the opportunity to be open-minded to meeting new cultures or learning grammar in a unique way. Learning English abroad can give you great insight into how people think.