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Clayton Graves

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Profile: I am the sole teacher in a distance education ESL program for adult students living across the province of Ontario in Canada. Students pay a nominal fee to enrol, and with the help and guidance of a volunteer tutor, work through a set of learning materials that include scripted audio tapes and accompanying paper and pencil materials. The organization is thematic and provides learners with practice in dealing with a variety of personal English communication situations that they meet in their daily lives. There are four levels. The themes begin with how to greet others, provide personal information and speak in public situations, such as in stores (Level 1) and work through more and more complex language tasks to themes such as understanding news stories in the media, dealing with landlords, speaking in job interviews, interacting with schools staff in parent/teacher meetings, and dealing with personal finances. Students have weekly lessons with the teacher either by regular phone or by VOIP over the internet. The student , therefore, does not have to pay any long distance telephone charges. The lessons are recorded on cassette tapes/CDs and returned to the student along with paper/pencil learning exercises submitted by the learners and corrected/responded to by the teacher. There are no examinations, except as noted below. The course issuing agency is TV Ontario, the educational television network for the province, which is linked to the province's ministry of education. The agency has recently added updated themes to the learning materials in the program and now offers two levels as credit courses towards a regular high school diploma. The credit designation requires students to take an examination. Prior to 2007, the course was offered only as a non-credit Adult learning course. It is thus available as credit or non-credit.

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