Program Rationale

ESL for Early Learners - English for Life

After much careful research into all aspects of the ESL teaching business, VIEW was developed to take the traditional “in classroom” teaching situation seamlessly to the virtual teaching world. VIEW- A solution that is better for the schools, the students and parents.

Here are some other reasons behind the rationale of creating the VIEW program:

Shortage of ESL teachers worldwide, as global demand intensifies.
Teacher shortages are becoming a problem world-wide, even in native speaking countries like Canada and the U.K. Some don’t call it a shortage anymore but a crisis. More and more developed and developing countries see the importance of English and the competition to get quality teachers is intensifying.

Recruiting Teachers to travel to new countries is becoming more difficult.
As mentioned above, the stress of finding teachers in English speaking countries is increasing and offering them large incentives to stay at home. Many new teachers are finding that they are more comfortable at home as opposed to changing and adapting to a new country. In many areas almost all teachers are hired immediately after they graduate which is leaving very few teachers to go abroad.

Present ESL teaching methods largely have not kept up with technology.
In many schools across the world they are using the same materials that they have used for years. Other places have just used new books repackaged and re-branded with the same tired material. As popular and important as English instruction is, it is surprising that very few have shown innovation and tried to use the full power of the technological age that we live in.

Teacher standards in emerging markets tend to be mediocre.
In some countries and rural areas financial resources to compete with more developed countries or larger cities are not available. They have to settle for a teacher that may have no experience and their only qualification is that they were born in an English speaking nation.

Live teachers are cost prohibitive for some education sectors
Many studies have shown that children acquire a second language more easily than older students. The problem is that many early aged schools have been neglected. Many schools have trouble justifying paying a foreign teacher for only a few hours of work, while some teachers get burnt out because of the high energy levels needed to teach small children. So unfortunately when the children are very easily motivated to learn English and their minds are at the most receptive, they are being neglected by most of the industry. VIEW solves this problem by having a teacher always ready to teach. Not just one teacher, but a whole team prepared to teach and are available to any school regardless of their size or resources.

Using Avatars overcomes the problems of bias and stereotyping.
One part of VIEW that makes it so revolutionary is that the children are able to talk and interact with an animated character that can show an entire spectrum of human emotions. No student will ever be distracted by a teacher’s race, appearance, if they are overweight, skinny, bald, have tattoos, body piercings or any other aspects of stereotyping or bias. Children (and some adults!) accept Mickey Mouse as a real person but until now they have not had the opportunity to be taught by the characters that they know and love.

There is no other product like this available today.
The people at Miller James have been teaching in and working with the ESL industry long enough to recognize that a product like this was needed. With a global perspective in mind we sought to create a program that was educational, entertaining and a rewarding experience for the student.