English Language Program

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BEA's English language program focuses on all the four skills of English language learning:  speaking, listening, reading and writing.  It was a massive undertaking that took two years of field research and and an entire year to design all the programs.  This length of time was needed to adapt teaching methods and materials to a Cambodian teaching and learning environment, which meant incorporating Cambodian culture and values into all of our programs.  BEA's curriculum uses Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Learning Teaching (TBLT).  CLT emphasizes interaction to help students learn and use English in real-life situations.  This includes having students work in pairs or groups to complete activities like role plays, interviews and games.  Because of this, we've had incredible success in helping our students acquire English language skills in a very short period of time.  Complete beginners who enter our program at the start of the school year in September gain a conversational ability by the end of the semester in mid-February.  Our curriculum and dedicated teachers help motivate the BEA students to work hard and try their best in every lesson.  Not only do students show improvement in their English language skills, but they also show greater confidence in themselves.  Because we emphasize student-centered learning through pair and group work in all of our programs, students always have the opportunity to discuss their lives, and share their accomplishments and struggles with each other.  As a result, this has fostered friendships among the BEA students.  

Nicole, BEA's director, has researched the use of CLT and TBLT in Cambodian classrooms, and published a book chapter, Bridging communicative language teaching and task- based language teaching in Cambodia: A case study of an integrated TBLT and CLT program, ​on the success of these methods. 

Student Guidelines

For all of our language courses, students get a set of BEA's language program guidelines in their first lesson that outlines the program goals, grade evaluation, and expectations. Below, you can view the student guidelines for the Pre-Intermediate English Language Course. ​

Sub-Goals for BEA's English Language Courses

In addition to the overall course goals, BEA also has a set of sub-goals for each of the four skills and their activities. These include speaking and listening, journal writing, intensive and extensive reading, paragraph writing, and poster presentations. 

Teaching Schedule

To make sure that there is the same quality and consistency in each of our courses, all teachers follow a teaching schedule for their course. This helps them to stay on schedule, and to make sure the students don't fall behind. More importantly, it helps us to cover everything in our curriculum. During the semester, teachers make notes on this schedule, which are then used to revise the curriculum and schedule for the following year.