Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education
Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education (BIFHE), now part of Belfast Metropolitan College, created the Centre for English Language Teaching in 2005. This was in response to the significant growth in the demand for teaching English to speakers of other languages and the growth of migrant workers coming to Northern Ireland. The intensive courses delivered by the Centre were designed using a communicative approach based on speaking, listening, reading, writing, pronunciation and language awareness.
The rationale for developing the courses derived from Belfast Institute’s close contact with the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities and the Chinese Welfare Association which revealed that many immigrants needed an intensive training provision to overcome their very low English language skills and in some instances literacy problems. They needed to integrate into the Northern Ireland society as quickly as possible.
The Centre has been an unprecedented success, with the number of courses rising from two to twenty per year, delivered by 20 tutors. Official figures from April 2007 indicate that the Centre for English Language Teaching had 2,997 students enrolled on its programmes.