British Council targets 20m English learners by 2015

With growing Internet access and digital resources, the British Council aims to reach 20 million English learners by 2015, announced a British Council official during the 18th annual TESOL Arabia, the region’s largest English Foreign Language (EFL) conference hosted at Dubai Women’s College. “The British Council has partnered with TESOL Arabia, which shares our goals of helping develop English language teaching skills of teachers in the Middle East,” stated Nic Humphries, Director English, Middle East and North Africa, British Council. For almost 75 years, the British Council has been teaching English to students and working with EFL teachers to build capacity, improve skills, and enhance a cultural dialogue between the UK and the Middle East and North Africa region. Humphries said that the combination of web-based tools, social media and mobile technology offers an unprecedented opportunity to bring English to tens of millions of students and teachers who consider English an essential skill to secure better educational or professional opportunities. “Over the last few years, the British Council has introduced proprietary web-based tools that tap into some of the most powerful channels of communication to hone people’s skills in an environment that is increasingly driven by English. All these services have been designed to enable every teacher and learner of English to have access to high quality resources from the UK,” said Humphries. According to the British Council, social media is increasingly becoming more significant in the field of teaching and learning English.