English language students

As a former TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) English teacher I understand the importance of promoting Malta as a centre of excellence for learning English. I also strongly agree that any foreign student wishing to study and enhance his/her English skills through practice (either within a Maltese host family or among locals in our streets) would find Malta to be perfect for such needs. After all, there are not many Mediterranean countries that can boast to be almost entirely fluent in British English.

During my five-year tenure as a TEFL teacher, I found that the vast majority of teenagers and adolescents visiting Malta under the pretext of learning English were actually here to party or simply take advantage of government grants (such as the Spanish siege a couple of years back).

There is nothing wrong, of course, with mixing work with pleasure and blending into Maltese culture and traditions. However, as Swieqi and Pembroke residents have sadly witnessed in the past, pleasure does not equate to having fun with resorting to screaming, banging, harrassing or drunk and disorderly behaviour in the middle of the night or in the early hours of the morning.

To make way for the student invasion, especially during the summer months, smaller hotels and apartment owners earn attractive contracts with large English language schools to provide accomodation to students. In some cases, in central Sliema, within the space of a few kilometres, a language school is nested between two small hotels – the Carlton Hotel and the Patricia Hotel. Being a residential area and being asked discreetly to respect the residents living in that area (by means of signs erected outside these localities) does nothing to deter students from acting and sounding like animals (mostly late at night).

It would appear that the Malta Tourism Authority is ultimately responsible for the lucrative industry regulating the promotion of and the licensing of such schools and residences (including host families). It is common knowledge that nothing much in Malta is regulated and that the law of money and power is stronger than the sense of goodwill and reason.

It is about time the MTA starts flexing its muscles to protect not only the industry it actively promotes and manages but the local residents they have conveniently abandoned!