WHAT WE DO AND WHY
Introducing the International Language and Literature Teachers’ Cooperative (ILLTC)
Does your school need access to experienced teachers to support self-taught mother-tongue students?
A challenge for many international schools is that they have students who require, or would benefit from, mother-tongue instruction, but they do not have locally-available qualified teachers; or the resources or contractual possibilities (such as work permit eligibility for temporary, part-time workers) to recruit and employ suitable teachers from abroad.
Experienced teachers help to contribute to the success of exam candidates.
The International Language and Literature Teachers’ Cooperative helps schools improve the educational experience of their students by enabling them to offer a broader base of mother-tongue options for families who seek this as part of their international education experience. It can also provide that important reassurance of quality-control for schools that must rely on this ‘out-sourced’ service.
How It Works
The International Language and Literature Teachers’ Cooperative (ILLTC) is an independent network of experienced educators serving school-supported self-taught mother tongue programmes and, in exceptional circumstances, middle years and second language programmes. These teachers share their expertise by engaging for one hour per week and meeting students remotely via a videocall arranged at a mutually convenient time each teaching week of the school year.
Since we started 10 years ago we have supported fifty (50) languages through the ILLTC including: Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Belarus, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari (Afghan Persian), Dutch, Dzongkha (Bhutanese), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Macedonian, Mandarin, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Swahili, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese. (We seek to provide other languages on request.)
Based in London, a cosmopolitan international capital city with a concentration of international schools, the ILLTC is a group of teachers who bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise, including previous IB Language A teaching experience**, that can be shared with schools worldwide seeking to expand their mother tongue provision to better serve a wider range of mother-tongue language speakers.
Additional Services
The ILLTC has also worked with our client schools to support special situation in order to better serve the language needs of IB students.
Language Assessments
- Sometimes an IB candidate requires an assessment for the school to better evaluate whether a student has the necessary skills in order to take the mother tongue as an SSST Literature (SL). Our ILLTC consultants are happy to provide a formal assessment and a written evaluation that schools may use to determine the suitability of a student’s language choices. There is a small fee for this.
Special Request Language A (SL)
- In two cases (Azeri and Khmer) ILLTC have helped schools submit special requests to the IBO for these languages that are not amongst the 50+ IB Language A programmes available. This included having our consultants work with the schools to devise lists of suitable texts that meet the SSST Language A criteria.
Language B (HL&SL)
- In a few cases when it has become evident that students lacked the level of written or reading comprehension proficiency skills required to fully access and succeed in their mother tongue Language A programmes. This occurs when a family moves internationally and formal instruction of the mother tongue is not sustained and lapses over the years. In these cases, supported by our consultants’ formal assessments, schools have been granted permission to convert the SSST Language A (SL) to Language B (HL). (In these cases, these students were also doing English Language A and were hoping to earn bilingual diplomas by taking a second Language A in their mother tongue; however, although lacking the full literacy to accomplish this, the IB appears to adopt a perspective that it is preferable to at least do the mother tongue as a Language B rather than for the student to forfeit the mother tongue altogether.) We have also supported Language B Ab Initio. This is entirely the discretion of the IBO and the application for Language B may not be successful.
Supervision for Extended Essays
- Two schools have used our IB tutors to work under the schools’ direction to support Extended Essays in the target language.
Middle Years Mother Tongue Support
- ILLTC also provides mother tongue language support for youger students who wish to maintain the mother tongue with a view to peparing for return to the home country’s education system or for starting Literature A at IBDP level. We have worked with a few IB World School on a blended model that enable students to continue to engage in mother tongue language and literature.
Temporary Substitute/Supply Cover Language A & B
- In one case, the IB has granted permission for an IB World School to engage ILLTC consultants to support (remotely) the students whose full-time Language A & B teacher has gone on maternity leave and where no other local specialist was available on a short-term, temporary basis. We have recently stepped in to fill a one-month gap to help another school whose IB teacher left early,
Paper Marking for SSST Literature A
- Some schools have engaged ILLTC consultants to mark the papers of all of their first year SSST Literature students participating in mock IB assessments.
The ILLTC is proud of these initiatives and we are happy to work with schools to find suitable solutions for the language needs of their students.
Click on the link to find out more about our professional standards and services.
LIEC International Language and Literature Teachers’ Cooperative (ILLTC):-
Commitment to Students and Families
Commitment to Sponsoring Organisations
Whe supporting the SSST Lit A (SL) programme, ILLTC works in full collaboration with the host school and will not proceed without the agreement of the school’s IBDP Coordinator or SSST Lit A Language Coordinator.
** The LIEC International Language and Literature Teachers’ Cooperative is an independent company that has no affiliation with the International Baccalaureate Organisation.