First, I want to wish all HLT Magazine readers a very successful 2025: may all your New Year resolutions  projects come to fruition!

At Pilgrims, our ambition for this year is to consolidate our presence in the new wonderful venue for our courses within the EU:  Segovia!

We are relishing this huge challenge to relocate all Teacher Training courses to Segovia: the ambience of the city matches perfectly that of Canterbury where Pilgrims was based until the UK chose to leave the European Union. Both cities are roughly the same size and both are steeped in history going back to Roman times although far more prevalent and magnificently preserved in Segovia. Both cities are within a high speed train distance from the capital city, although Segovia is only a 30 minute train journey from Madrid. Finally both locations have a strong international identity.

For Pilgrims who has always thrived on disrupting pedagogic assumption, the choice of Segovia as its base in the EU signals its decision to be at the vanguard of the crucial shift in language training exigencies rendered crucial by the changes in status of the English language in the world. Indeed, the language has witnessed a massive appropriation of its use away from its natural cultural base: the English that’s spoken around the world by non native speakers is now shaping the English that is spoken in the UK. A perfect  example is the use of less and fewer, the rules of which are no longer observed by native speakers.

The choice of Segovia, a university city that attracts students from all over the world lecturing through the medium of English provides Pilgrims with an environment conducive to delivering teacher training that captures the necessity of switching the trainees focus towards international English as it now frames the global culture in which children around the world are growing up.

We encounter resistance from some teachers who would still prefer to be trained in an English speaking country: we can understand why but, since brexit, Segovia has proved a remarkable alternative: a city the same size and feel as Canterbury, but within the European Union and with the silver lining of being in a location where international English is the lingua franca.

In early March, the opportunities afforded by this environment will be enjoyed by a large group of primary school teachers from Rotterdam: this is an exciting project to start the new year given the significance of early exposure to a second language. Pilgrims has always been pionneers in this field, but this feels like an opportunity to continue developing the tapestry of pedagogical tools.  

Please check the Pilgrims in Segovia Teacher Training courses 2025 at Pilgrims website.

Please check the Pilgrims f2f courses at Pilgrims website.