Swedish model for teaching English | Nation. ISTANBUL — The Ministry of National Education is moving to improve English language education in the country as most students' proficiency in English remains at a basic level. Too much focus on grammar is regarded as the main obstacle for students' low English language capabilities. The Turkish Association of Private Schools conducted a survey among students, teachers and parents in 13 provinces for a report entitled "Analysis of National Needs on Education of English Language at Public Schools.
" The survey found that despite attending more than 1,000 hours of English classes from primary to secondary school, a large percent of students were only at beginners level in English. The report cites that English lessons are handled like other lessons instead of teaching English as a language for communicating with native speakers. Students responding to the survey said it would help improve their proficiency if they were taught English using subjects they liked and were interested in. Time for Turkish women's voices to be heard - Opinion. Turkey's elections resulted in an increase in the number of women in the 550-seat parliament from 48 to 78. At 14 per cent, the proportion of women in the new parliament is higher than in at least two European Union states, Romania and Cyprus, according to figures compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
But it still falls well below the EU average, and even the world average of about 19 per cent. In his victory speech, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, said that "no one should doubt that we will protect the dignity, faith and lifestyles of those who did not vote for us". But the fact is, some do doubt - among them a dynamic movement of women's NGOs that both pressured and assisted Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) in legislating pro-women reforms between 2002 and 2005. In the past few years though, trust has dipped and friction has increasingly surfaced between the ruling party and these same activists. Rising tension Rejection of a restricted internet.
Erdogan: Kurdish leader should have hung - Europe. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that his party would have executed Abdullah Ocalan if it had been in power when the jailed Kurdish separatist leader was captured in 1999, according to Turkish media reports. Erdogan made the comments after the leader of Turkey's MHP ultra-nationalist party, Devlet Bahceli, said on Thursday that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was in negotiations with the country's main Kurdish party over Ocalan’s release. Ocalan, the leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), was captured by commandos in Kenya in 1999, transferred to Turkey and sentenced to death. But the sentence was suspended and then commuted to life imprisonment after Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002.
Since then he has been held in a prison on Imali, an island in the Sea of Marmara, south of Istanbul. Asked what the AKP would have done if it had been part of a coalition, he said: "Either he would have been executed or we would have resigned. " Warren Berger Tells How to Ask a ‘Beautiful Question’ In an audio recording released by TMZ, the team’s owner is heard spouting racist comments proving, once again, that he doesn’t belong associated with the NBA—or society, for that matter. Do you like NBA basketball? Are you a fan of the Los Angeles Clippers? Great! They’re in the playoffs, and have a good chance to make deep run. There’s even a home game this Tuesday! You should come on...wait, are you black? Jeez, sorry to say this, but you’re out of luck, buddy. If you’d rather not suffer through ten minutes of the whinging of an leathery, vile, unrepentant-yet-oblivious bigot, he berates her for posting a photo with Magic Johnson to “The Instagram,” hanging out with black people (he’s fine with her doing so in private) and worst of all, bringing black people to "his games.
" So to clarify: Black Clipper fans, the owner would prefer it if you not attend in person, and in particular, not with his girlfriend. When Sterling first bought the Ardmore, he remarked on its odor to Davenport. Settlers in Xinjiang: Circling the wagons. Settlers in Xinjiang: Circling the wagons.
Xinjiang territory profile - overview. 13 August 2013Last updated at 06:09 ET China's Xinjiang province is the country's most westerly region, bordering on the former Soviet states of Central Asia, as well as several other states including Afghanistan, Russia, and Mongolia. The largest ethnic group, the Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, has lived in China's shadow for centuries. The region has had an intermittent history of autonomy and occasional independence, but was finally brought under Chinese control in the 18th century.
Economic development of the region under Communist rule has been accompanied by large-scale immigration of Han Chinese, and Uighur allegations of discrimination and marginalisation have been behind more visible anti-Han and separatist sentiment since the 1990s. This has flared into violence on occasion. Continue reading the main story Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring Russian influence remained strong, especially during the rule of various warlords after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. Behind the Xinjiang Violence. Flaring violence in the Xinjiang region has highlighted ongoing tension between locals and Han Chinese. By Ross Anthony for The Diplomat March 09, 2012 Facebook0 Twitter1 Google+0 LinkedIn0 A resurgence of violence in the Xinjiang region in the past couple of weeks, in which at least dozen people have been killed, highlights the continued failure of Chinese policy within this region of western China.
In 1940, the Han Chinese population constituted 6 percent of Xinjiang’s total population (with Uyghurs making up over 80 percent). Xinjiang, like many other regions in western China, is plagued by the stigma of being left behind, as eastern coastal provinces enjoy stratospheric growth. This makes sense if you are a Chinese company establishing a presence in far-flung regions of China: all employees speak the same language, eat the same food and live in the same dormitories.
Both Chinese and western media have a tendency to associate violence in Xinjiang with Muslim extremism. Languages - The full English is no longer required in Chinese exams - news. Last Updated:1 November, 2013Section:news Nation seeks to quash ‘mania’ for language as Japan goes other way No one doubts the now unassailable position of English as the global means of communication.
But two great East Asian powers are travelling in very different directions as they decide just how prominently the language should feature in their schools. Authorities in China have revealed their desire to curb what is being described as a “nationwide mania for English” and to instead place more emphasis on the mother tongue. There are plans to reduce or even remove the subject from the gaokao, the Chinese university entrance test, in several parts of the country. Separate proposals would also see Beijing authorities delay English lessons from the existing starting age of 6 - when children first attend primary school - to the third grade, when they are 8 or 9. But in Japan, the government is doing the opposite. But now some believe enough is enough. China: English no longer compulsory subject in top university exams. Beijing: China's top universities began their annual independent entrance exams on Saturday, with English no longer included among the compulsory subjects.
In most of these universities, those who have applied for science and engineering majors will only be required to take math and physics exams, while art students will be required to take Chinese and math exams. Yu Han, an enrolment officer at Tsinghua University, said the subject was eliminated in order to reduce students' workload and attract talented students who excel in the targeted subjects, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Independent college entrance exams are held three months before the national exams, a process that allows universities to admit more talented students. This year, 27 Chinese universities are joining three leagues represented by Tsinghua University, Peking University and Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), with all three leagues holding recruitment exams simultaneously. Sochi 2014 : Encyclopedia of Spending. #SochiProblems Is More of An Embarrassment For America Than It Is For Russia. Sochi Hotel Guests Complain About Topless Portraits of Putin in Rooms at Olympics.
SOCHI (The Borowitz Report)—With the Olympics underway, hundreds of visitors to Sochi are complaining that they checked into expensive hotel rooms only to find them decorated with seminude portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The portraits, showing Mr. Putin shirtless and riding a variety of mammals, adorn the walls of virtually every hotel room constructed especially for the Olympics and were created at a cost of over two million dollars, Olympic officials said.
Tracy Klugian, who travelled from Ohio with his wife to attend the Sochi Games, said that he was appalled to find his hotel room dominated by a gigantic portrait of a shirtless Putin riding what appears to be a bear. Said Mr. Klugian, “I did not travel thousands of miles just to be grossed out.” For his part, President Putin has been dismissive of the complaints, today calling the hotel guests “babies who cry.”
“These people who are complaining about what is on their walls should be grateful,” he said. Russian to Use Cossacks Against North Caucasus Migrants. The governor, Aleksandr Tkachev, in a speech to law enforcement officers on Thursday, announced that as of September, 1,000 Cossacks would be paid from the budget to maintain public order. In the speech, he said the Cossacks — whose paramilitary forces served the czars — could take measures beyond what the police were allowed. “What you can’t do, the Cossacks can,” he told the officers in the speech, which was widely circulated on the Internet on Friday.
“We have no other way — we shall stamp it out, instill order; we shall demand paperwork and enforce migration policies.” He said that a neighboring region had stopped performing its traditional function as “a filter” between central Russia and the North Caucasus. Internal migrants from the North Caucasus are often not welcomed by ethnic Russians, who consider them outsiders. “Who will answer when the first blood is spilled, when interethnic conflicts start? Mr. Mr. “Why should they have more rights than the police? Turkey's Way Out. In Turkey's current political crisis, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been trying to compel Turkey's democrats and friends to choose between two evils: his own government's corruption and efforts to create an unaccountable one-party state, and an opaque and unaccountable "parallel state," which is allegedly formed by the followers of Fethullah Gulen's globally organized faith-based movement.
This is a false choice. Turkey can and should be a fully lawful and democratic state free from both types of authoritarianism-cum-corruption. Erdogan is also presenting himself and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) as the guarantors of economic growth and regional peace with the Kurds, even though his own actions are destabilizing the economy and only a truly democratic government can deliver lasting peace with the Kurds. But given the ongoing confusion and weakness of the opposition parties, there is no easy way out.
What is the current crisis about? ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images. 10 Signs You Went To Reed College. Photo by Visitor7 via Wikimedia Commons From the academic intensity of the classroom to the institutionalized bacchanalia of Renn Fayre, both of which Reed is famous for, Reed is a study in extremes. Accordingly, Reedies are a species all their own, and as such, they're not particularly hard to spot. Here are 10 signs that you're a Reedie. 1. You're a little hazy on the concept of a grade. via Wikimedia Commons A what? 2. Reed College: where you can drop an Aristotle reference in a bio class or crack a wicked clever Feynman joke in art history and everyone gets it. 3. It doesn't matter so much what the point is, as it does how it's argued. 4. Reed boasts one of the only nuclear reactors, the Reed Research Reactor (RRR), run primarily by undergraduates, which is equal parts awesome...and terrifying. 5.
Photo by BeBo86 via Wikimedia Commons That's because at one time, it was probably pretty good. 6. Why would you celebrate nitrogen? 7. Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto via Wikimedia Commons 8. 9. 10. Why I Bought A House In Detroit For $500. The Daily Beast.