Twenty-five primary school English teachers from throughout south
China's Guangdong Province have left for Britain for three months
of training in teaching English at the
University of Leeds.
They are among 140 people specially selected for a program designed
to train more English teachers as from last September Guangdong has
offered English courses from Grade III. The remaining 115 people
will go to Britain in three other groups.
During their stay in Britain, the trainees will learn methods for
teaching children English and skills to tutor other teachers.
Some 25,000 English teachers were needed to achieve the goal of
offering English courses from Grade III, said a local official in
charge of educational affairs.
The province is organizing on-job training among existing primary
school English teachers, plus recruiting more such teachers.
The English teacher training program has won support from the
British government.
Justin Gilbert, cultural and education consul with the British
Consulate General based in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, said he
hoped various training camps would boost the training of primary
school English teachers in the whole of Guangdong.
Meanwhile, Sino-British educational cooperation is also illustrated
by the founding last month of a Sino-British teacher training and
resources center in Guangdong Foreign Languages Normal School.
There has been a craze for learning English across China since last
July when the national capital Beijing won its bid to hold the 2008
Olympic Games and the country was admitted into the World Trade
Organization later the same year.
（Xinhua News
Agency April 15, 2002）