ACTET has gone through many phases of business development. Originally, Director Brian Ursich wanted to start a school for international English students in Canberra. As a way of starting, ACTET invited groups of Chinese students to Australia, as the Chinese government provided funds to companies to travel abroad for business observation. ACTET facilitated seminars for business groups at Australian government agencies and organisations in different cities, such as Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. ACTET also delivered a professional development course in Canberra for Chinese English teachers from the Mi-yun District of the Beijing Municipal Education Commission in partnership with the Beijing International Education Exchange.
As government funds for business observation groups were cut back by the Chinese central government, ACTET took on the logistics and seminar facilitation of short courses, in partnership with GHD Pty Ltd, for Chinese delegations from the private and public sectors studying various aspects of governance through the China Australia Governance Program (CAGP) funded by AusAID. The groups had a wide range of focus, from Australian approaches to administering to unemployed workers to the balanced scorecard business management system. These seminars and short courses were conducted in multiple Australian cities. The CAGP finished in 2010.
In addition to the delivery of short courses for inbound international groups, ACTET facilitated meetings between many Australian and Chinese organisations in the education and business sectors. ACTET represented Charles Darwin University, Canberra Institute of Technology, Northwest Resources Ltd, among others. On its journey of being a specialist education facilitator, and at times a business facilitator, ACTET was ‘punching above its weight’ to try to establish itself as an education specialist with only a shoe-string budget and only two company members. Times were challenging but there were many lessons learned and significant contacts made.
It was at this time that Director Brian Ursich decided that ACTET had to have its own product or service to focus its activity and manage its own revenue based on its knowledge and experience. A decade of involvement with international education revealed that education had become a ubiquitous commodity. Everything was in some way involved with education. Every organisation was constantly in the process of training up its members. Millions of YouTube videos also meant that anyone could become a teacher on everything from setting up a solar grid to applying a woman’s cosmetic makeup. Instruction was becoming more and more downloadable. Furthermore, education had become even more linked to qualifications and job opportunities.
Amidst this wave of information transmission, it also became apparent that the importance of the teacher or the educator was becoming diminished, or extremely commodified. ACTET had always been involved with English language education and now at least two billion people around the world were learning English. All kinds of language schools were proliferating. Free materials were also abundant on the internet. Surprisingly, with all this focus on learning English, it was noted by Brian Ursich that international English students were not necessarily taught effectively or taught how to learn effectively. They were simply customers on the assembly line of English language instruction, something that was nonetheless still felt to be necessary by non-English speakers if they wanted to lead a productive life in almost any context on the planet.
It was then decided that ACTET would once again take on English language education in a new, concentrated and fun way. It seemed that superior teaching of English was still something that was needed globally, especially if it was in a flexible delivery format. This time ACTET would traverse the boundaries of traditional education and go online in a way that would respect even more the special nexus between teacher and student, the individualised transmission that can only be delivered one-on-one. ACTET would establish an integrated social media learning platform that encouraged teachers to utilise their own methodology and technique to the fullest in dynamically constructed lessons. It was a return to pure learning.
ACTET’s platform—MAKO ENGLISH—has been designed to address the central deficiency in the assembly line of international students’ language learning experience, that of actually learning how to speak the language. Students from all over the world, especially Asia, have been made to conform to the grammar translation method of learning, a traditional approach that emphasises grammar over communication, structure over substance. MAKO ENGLISH utilises the ‘First Learner’ approach, which facilitates direct communication with a professional teacher. The substance is undiluted and dynamic. Each lesson is booked on a free and flexible basis and each lesson has a dynamic structure that the student can depend upon each time. Each lesson is a mini-course in English. By removing the barriers of administration, heavy fees and useless course structure, students can learn faster and more effectively. And they can navigate their own learning process.
ACTET invites students and educators to investigate its evolving language learning platform, MAKO ENGLISH, as it makes its contribution to international discourse in the most direct way possible.