Cebu: Soon to be the world's English hub

Thanks to the Korean tourists that have been coming in droves into our country, especially here in Cebu. They are coming not just for our beaches, but to learn English. Cebu is fast getting international recognition as the English Language Hub of the world as envisioned by Mr. Paul Robertson, founder of the Asian EFL Journal and Time Taylor Group of Companies. He was the guest of our show Straight from the Sky last Aug.3 on the topic of getting Cebu to be the English Language Hub of the world.

Last Aug.8, I sneaked into the International ESL (English as a Second Language) Conference at the Diplomat Hotel that brought English language professors from the USA, UK, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Korea and even as far as Saudi Arabia and Russia. Mr. Robertson sent me a brief about that conference. Let me reprint a few notes.

“As a result of coming to Cebu, seeing some local schools here run by Filipinos professors from Taiwan, Bangladesh and Japan are now asking how they can bring their students to Cebu in the future. Cebuanos now have credibility on the International ESL Conference scene. In 2010 TESOL Asia will hold a 5-day convention in Cebu where we will bring 150 International Universities here for a language conference with 200 speakers. Hence the Cebu Hub Authority has to be formed.”

The keynote speaker for that international conference was Prof. Rod Ellis of the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland who wrote the book, “Second Language Acquisition” published by Oxford University Press. He is also the Chairman for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). I met Prof. Ellis and he told me that it was his first time in Cebu yet he went straight to the conference without really seeing the Cebu that foreigners have learned to love. I’m sure he’ll be back here again.

Prof. Robertson pointed out in his report, “English learning is a growth industry. It will continue to be a growth area as English becomes the dominant Lingua Franca or Lingua Economica. It is both recession proof and unlimited in growth as English changes forms (world Englishes-English a san International Language). It has been estimated that in China, there are 4 million Chinese learning English (as of August 2009). In Korea there are about 16 million Koreans learning English. Japan has three times as many as Korea.”

At the end of Prof. Robertson’s report he said, “In the last few years Cebu has seen an explosion in international students coming here for the one on one teaching, yet the Korean school owners have been ignorant in providing the basic training for the incoming students. This is because Korean school owners in Cebu are not qualified in education and have no understanding in English language learning methods; they merely understand the domino effect in Korea where when one person does something and everyone follows blindly.”

Here is a great opportunity for our schools and teachers to augment their incomes by joining forces with the group of Prof. Robertson in making Cebu the English Hub of the World. Already the Cebu Leads Foundation has done a SWOT analysis to follow up with that convention and make this a reality. Soon, I predict the bigger problem we face will be lack of hotel rooms as students and tourist would elbow each other to get rooms in Cebu.

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With the fighting expected to produce heavy casualties from both sides, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chair Leila de Lima has appealed to both sides to respect human rights and the international humanitarian law at the same time asking the government to extend assistance to civilian who may be caught in the crossfire.

A little over a week ago we wrote asking CHR Chair Leila del Lima to quit her post as she, as exposed by Rep. Pastor Alcover Jr., is a close relative of Julietta de Lima Sison, wife of Jose Maria “Joma” Sison, Chair of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) that has been waging a 40-year old struggle to establish a Communist government in this country! Of course she denies being a communist and we are not accusing her of being one. But if she were the head of another government agency, I would give it any second thoughts. But to chair the CHR where the atrocities of the New People’s Army (NPA) are never even brought out in public view is enough to raise eyebrows.

As far as our military is concerned, perhaps the only abuses they commit is when they get drunk or rowdy, which hardly tantamount to a CHR violation. But the Muslim insurgents have cut off the heads of the Marines they kill in ambush and use civilians as human shields, yet what has the CHR done about it, huh? All the more we should ask the CHR Chair to quit!