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Hi all I notice James has a paper out soon on the NRDC website following his research into learner placement in literacy or ESOL courses (The Right Course?). It got me thinking about new teaching standards in FE produced by LLUK, in which literacy and ESOL have been lumped together as a general 'English' teacher training qualification: the 'LLUK is to consider in what ways literacy and ESOL cohorts could usefully and appropriately train together.' This is new to me so I'd like to know if others have more information. I'd also like to hear what other people think with regard to the introduction of a single subject specialism (English) rather than the existing two (Literacy and ESOL). Benefits? Negatives? The new standards to be used for teacher training of 'English', can be dowloaded here: http://www.lifelonglearninguk.org/documents/nrp/app_prof_standards_literacy_esol_2nd_version.pdf Note in particular the justification on page 3. Literacy and ESOL teaching have different traditions of theory, principle and practice. These have given us areas of specialism and teaching professionals with their own distinctive identities and approaches. In recent years there has been a growing convergence of experience and practice. Many literacy teachers work with multilingual learners in their groups. Many ESOL teachers work with learners with literacy needs. Learners do not always fit easily into discrete categories of literacy and ESOL, although at either end of the spectrum this may be clear. A recent arrival to the UK may be categorised as an ESOL learner, while an indigenous monolingual English speaker is categorised as an adult literacy learner. However, within the spectrum, particularly in urban areas, there are increasing numbers of multilingual people with literacy and language learning needs who do not fit neatly into either category. These learners, who fit neither ESOL or literacy labels easily, need teachers ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System on behalf of Leeds Thomas Danby. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ *********************************** ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds. To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html A quick guide to using Jiscmail lists can be found at: http://jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/quickuser.htm To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]