Collaboration is at the core of the Westchester Education Services model. By working together, we help customers achieve the goals of their ELT programs, whether they need a new product or an adaptation of an existing one.
Walter Henderson, Jr. leads our ELT team, a group of diverse and seasoned veterans who have developed programs for learners around the world. We employ an assemblage of highly skilled talent and rely upon solid infrastructure to fine-tune content that satisfies aptitude, motivation, learner differences, and program goals.
For new programs, we leverage shared skills and knowledge to plan and to create content that can be used within individual English language-learning and teaching programs. Our team, together with our customers, navigate through guided explorations of current issues and approaches in ELT to provide the best foundation for content building choices.
We also recognize the importance of national and regional interests and cultural values, and we fully embrace measures to incorporate notions of self-identity into our client’s content. For adaptations, we supplement extra-linguistic items and activities to compensate for the perceived inadequacy or insufficiency of currently used materials. With both new programs and adaptations, our client’s needs are at the forefront of the process, with opportunities to review and provide feedback embedded from program launch to final file delivery.
Westchester’s building blocks in ELT development include the following:
- Branding: perception and/or moniker of your educational product
- Key concepts and considerations: target program goals and expectations
- Authentication: content reflecting real-life contexts
- Skills: desired areas of English language-learning development
- Methodological: best practices and procedures that benefit language learners
- Assessment: evaluation devices and techniques
- Ancillaries: teacher’s guides, workbooks, activity books, readers, video, and audio components
Truly tailored, Westchester’s program development strategies also take into consideration:
- Individual course structure: duration, class length, number of sessions, and student number
- Learner identity: nationality, regions of origins, age, socio-economic background
- Proficiency level: English language level measured on a global scale
- 21st Century relevancy check: relevance and reliability of materials and approaches in today’s world.
