Embassy of the United States

I am delighted to be here today to recognize ninteen English-teacher trainers for completing a special two-week English Teaching Methodology course sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and conducted in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and its Department of Teacher Training.

The participants in this workshop have come from Battambang, Kandal, Prey Veng, Takeo, and Kompong Cham provinces as well as from Phnom Penh.  The fact that they were willing to be away from their families for two-weeks to attend a workshop attests to their professionalism and dedication, so I would like to begin by paying tribute to their work training English teachers around the country.  Teaching English is all about opening doors to participate in a larger outside world.  We are global citizens, and we recognize that your job training English teachers is crucial in preparing young Cambodians for our global society.

English is quickly becoming a near-universal basic skill.  All over the world -- from China to Chile, from Japan to Thailand -- governments are investing significant amounts of money to encourage their citizens to learn English.  Currently there are more than 500 million native English-speaking people in the world, and within a decade, two billion more people will speak English as a second language, making English the most widely spoken language in the world.

Obviously, if you want to succeed in the world, English will be an important tool.  It is the language of commerce, of technology, and of the Internet.  For Cambodia, a country that has suffered isolation, English language is a tool that will help open doors for this nation and its people.  It will help Cambodia join the main stream of economic activity, grow more prosperous and succeed.

Americans are not excessively proud about the role of English in the world today.  Like Australia, the United States is Anglophone almost by accident.  When our country was founded over 200 years ago, many people in what is now the United States spoke German or French or other languages.  It is a bit of a coincidence that English became our national language.

The point is that there is nothing unpatriotic about Cambodians learning English.  Cambodians do not learn English because they want to be like Americans or British or Australians.  They learn English as a tool that will permit them to speak with people from other countries, to learn, to participate in academic exchanges, and to grow.  English will make Cambodia stronger so that it can defend its own cultural heritage and so that Cambodians can teach others about Cambodian culture and history and art.

We at the U.S. Embassy are honored to support English education in Cambodia.  We have a diverse range of programs, which includes not only working with the Regional Teacher Training Centers, but providing scholarships for high school students to study English; conducting English classes for journalists; providing experts to assist with curriculum design and faculty development at the university level, and support for the annual CamTESOL conference.

To conclude, I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Alan Klein, the State Department's English Language Fellow in Cambodia, for coordinating this workshop and conducting much of the training.  I would also like to thank Ms. Alexandria Hadden, the English Language Fellow in Vietnam for coming to Cambodia to assist with the training, and to the State Department's Regional English Language Officer in Bangkok, Mr. George Wilcox, for developing much of the curriculum used during this workshop.  Of course, I would also like to thank everyone at the Ministry of Education for their support and cooperation in arranging this workshop.  And finally I would like to offer my congratulations to the English-teacher trainers who successfully completed this course.  I sincerely hope that this workshop will help you strengthen English education in this country.

Thank you.