Group photograph taken at the Laos-Singapore Cooperation Centre during the Closing Ceremony of the Basic English Language and Communication Skills course

(KPL) The Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsored a three week training course on “Basic English Language and Communication Skills” for 26 Lao government officials from 20 Jan-7 Feb. 

The course, which was held at the Laos-Singapore Cooperation Centre, was conducted by Mr Steven TAN from SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, Singapore.

The course aimed to provide the participants with the basic for proficiency in the English language and by the end of which the participant should be able to understand frequently used expressions and respond to simple question about themselves, understand simple conversations with people around them and have a good basic level of English vocabulary, understand to read and speak the basic sentences with ideas and information clearly in contexts.

“This course has given us more confidence to use English for everyday communication. From this course, we learnt and practiced many useful skills for social interaction, email writing, telephoning, and participating in meetings. Though we have not mastered many of these skills yet, this course has given us the courage and motivation to continue our learning,” said Mr Vithayakhone Phimmavong, from Ministry of Home Affairs.

“We are grateful to our lecturer, Steven, for spending time teaching, sharing and encouraging us to use English for communication. We would also like to thank all the facilitators for their hard work to make this course a success,” added Mr Vithayakhone.

The course was conducted under the auspices of the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI). Under the IAI, Singapore conducts 20 to 30 courses a year at the Lao-Singapore Cooperation Centre, focusing on areas of public governance, trade facilitation, urban management, health and well-being, civil aviation and education such as English language training. About 600 Lao officials are trained each year; to-date, more than 14,000 Lao government officials have benefited from the Ministry’s various training programmes under the Singapore Cooperation Programme since 1993.

KPL