AY 2007-2008 Projects - Near East and North Africa

Country                                   Libya
City                                          Tripoli
Host Institution                       Academy of Graduate Studies Tripoli

Project Description
To further develop educational ties between the United States of America and the Great Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the United States wishes to provide an EL Fellow, specialized in teacher training and English curriculum design for basic and intermediate education levels (including young learners) to work with the Academy of Graduate Studies in Tripoli, Libya. The EL Fellow program is a one year 2007/2008 academic program designed to enhance English teaching capacity in order to provide teachers and students with the communication skills they will need to participate in the global economy. The EL Fellow will make use of cutting-edge methodology to teach communicative English language skills. The EL Fellow may serve as a full-time EFL teacher and may teach up to 20 classroom hours a week. In addition the EL Fellow may participate in or organize related activities such as developing materials and lesson plans, in service training, workshops and seminars, student conferences or similar professional duties specified by the host institution, in this case the Academy of Graduate Studies in Tripoli. All together the duties will not exceed 40 hours per week. 

About the Host Institution
The Academy of Graduate Studies was established in 1988 in Tripoli. Graduate studies and research are available in the following fields: Humanities, Social Sciences, Finance and Management, and Engineering. It organizes symposiums, conferences and workshops on a broad range of national and international issues. At the moment, 6,775 students are enrolled in this unusual quasi-private tertiary institution. This project is to provide American expertise to the Academy by utilizing an EL Fellow in the pre-service training program which the Academy has in place to train future Libyan English teachers. English has been declared, by the highest levels of the GOL, to be a national priority. Post has previously provided EL Specialists and RELO visits to provide short-term training to hundreds of Libyan teachers of English, but this project aims at providing pre-service training to those future teachers enrolled at the Academy. As there is a great shortage of qualified English teachers in Libya, the cadre of new teachers trained by the EL Fellow will provide a core of highly-qualified young experts to lead the modernization of ELT in Libya for years to come. In addition, Libya is the only country in the North African region which boasts English taught at the primary-school level, and placement of an EL Fellow here in AY 2007-2008 will provide a solid platform for outreach to younger audiences.