The modern English language teacher

March 20, 2012 followenglish admin Business, Culture, ELT, Social networks, Technology

Nowadays with all the technological tools that we have around us, it is hard to imagine how English language teaching (ELT) used to be back in the 80s – when I was a teenager. I actually started teaching in the early 90s and saw all the changes taking place. Lots of things were very different back then. In this blog post I intend to give a brief overview of some of the changes I have seen going through along my ELT career and discuss some of the best qualities language teachers ideally can have.

I remember that the very first book I used was “Interchange”. It was supposed to be a  modern book with interactive activities and lots of roleplays. Nowadays when I browse through its pages (I still have it!), I see how limited and naive some of the activities were. I am not trying to say that textbooks have changed much, in fact I think they haven’t. Of course today we have textbooks with multimedia content, the audio files come in a CD, but still, the way the contents are organized and the contents themselves are pretty much the same.

On the other hand, one thing I think that has changed a lot is how we deal with learners and their needs. Back when I started teaching, this idea of learner-centered approach was no more than a sketch or an idealized fabrication of what would be the best scenario for learners. People talked about that, but all you could see was a standardized practice in the classroom. Presentation, practice, production. Certainly I have to consider the fact that I was a newbie in the teaching profession and perhaps I had nothing but a very shallow perception of how the teaching, or yet, the learning process takes place. However, I still hold true that learner-centered approaches were no more than an idealized conception of the best teaching/learning scenario. » Read more..

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Installation of LMS completed successfully

January 16, 2012 followenglish admin followenglish, Technology, Virtual

At the moment we are testing the new system that has been successfully installed on the server. Hopefully in a few weeks we will be offering this service to our clients. The LMS (Learning Management System) we chose has a user-friendly interface and enables course participants to interact with each other through  forum, chat or messages. We believe technology can provide learners with the missing linchpin between our busy routines and the contact we all need to have in order to establish more solid grounds for learning to take place.

Virtual followenglish is intended to be a tool that provides learners with interesting and varied materials, and above all, a tool that offers them the opportunity to interact a bit more outside the classroom.

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Oral assessment in English

December 28, 2011 followenglish admin Business, followenglish, Proficiency

Nowadays, many people overstate their English proficiency level in their résumés in order to get a job. Candidates say they are fluent in English when in fact they can barely communicate in a very basic level. Obviously this happens because of the competitive market we have out there. In many cases applicants first try to get the position they were aiming for and then they join a training program (sometimes subsidized by the company) so as to improve their skills and reach a level of consolidated fluency. So, many companies are now looking for ways to know exactly what kind of employee they are hiring and what tasks they can carry out effectively in a foreign language. » Read more..

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Virtual followenglish

November 30, 2011 followenglish admin Blog news, followenglish, Technology, Virtual

“Virtual followenglish” is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that we will be offering to our clients so as to provide them with an opportunity to have contact with English outside the classroom. At the moment we are doing some research about the best Learning Management Systems (LMS) in order to provide our learners with a top quality VLE.

A Learning Management System is basically a software that you can install on your server to deliver content and interact with learners in a collaborative environment. Learning Management Systems can provide learners with opportunities to interact and practice their English at any time from anywhere they are. Nowadays most LMSs are integrated with social networks engaging learners in their learning process 24/7.

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Business English speakers around the world

October 31, 2011 followenglish admin Business, Culture, followenglish, Proficiency

English is the language of business around the world. Not only in Europe and North America, but also in all four corners of the world there are people doing business in English nowadays. Roughly we could say that nowadays the number of speakers of English is around 2 billion people and many of these are business people who need to use English on an everyday basis. In fact, this is due to the fact that many multinational company have been cutting costs both by sending their jobs overseas and by bringing in immigrants who work on visas for short periods of time and then return home. The truth is English has become a global language and more and more companies depend on competent users to carry out their business operations throughout the world.

This reality has been drawing thousands of graduate students from several countries to US and UK to study business and management. Most of them look for MBAs or post-graduate programs to enhance their résumés and get a kickstart in their careers. But in order to find a good program, they need to demonstrate good language skills and therefore language schools have been designing programs for proficiency exams, such as IELTS, TOEFL and TOEIC not to mention tests like GMAT and GRE.

Watch the video below to learn more about the figures related to this phenomenon.

At followenglish we provide preparation for several proficiency exams. Click on the followenglish link to see the list of exams we work with.

http://www.followenglish.com/index.php/en/courses/proficiency-preparation.html

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Corporate Business English training programs

September 16, 2011 followenglish admin Business, followenglish

bizlapchart

The advantages of implementing a corporate Business English training program in your organization are plenty as you can monitor your employees’ development along the course as well as set clear individual goals in accordance with their roles and duties.

The first step is to implement a training program is to establish a company language policy, which in turn, will set the grounds on which to create clear objectives and milestones. Companies with clear language policies are better able to identify their needs and plan their language training budgets.

In the implementation stage it is important to map out the skills that each participant of the program needs to develop and set individual goals. Then, as the training program starts off, it is necessary to monitor the performance of each participant and readjust the goals in case it is necessary.

At followenglish, we provide language consultancy for companies that want to follow their employees’ performance in the language training programs. The language consultancy involves a close follow-up which can be carried out with the human resources department of medium-size and large corporations so as to keep track of the performance of each participant of the program.

Click on the link below to read more..

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Proficiency exams

August 15, 2011 followenglish admin Business, followenglish, Proficiency

prof_exam

Proficiency exams are becoming more and more popular and widespread around the world. They can surely add flavor to your résumé and either help to get a better job or a vacancy in a post-graduate program at a fine university abroad. Nowadays there are specific proficiency exams for many different professional fields, such as: business, finance and law. Besides that, large corporations have started to see the value of standardized testing and are now using some of the proficiency exams in their in-company language training programs.

Each exam has a specific format and measures your competence in all four skills – speaking, listening, writing and reading. Many multinational companies around the world are using proficiency exams to measure their employees performance and learning progress in language training programs uniformly, i.e. this way corporations can measure performance using the same standards and scores in their different units around the world.

followenglish works with 13 internationally recognized proficiency exams. Check out the full list by clicking on the link below:

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Working on the structure of the site

July 1, 2011 followenglish admin Blog news, followenglish

At the moment I am working on the structure of the followenglish site. The site will have seven sections which will be subdivided into several categories. Learning Joomla! proved to be a lot harder than I initially thought, therefore the site definitely will not be ready that fast. Anyway, I intend to start working on the content of the site soon. So, hopefully it will be up and running in about two or three months.

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followenglish to have Joomla site

June 5, 2011 followenglish admin Blog news, Business, followenglish, Technology

At the moment I am learning how to use Artisteer and Joomla in order to build a Joomla site for followenglish. Artisteer is a software used for creating Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Blogger and even HTML templates. It’s pretty user-friendly and very self-explanatory. The great challenge for me will be to understand Joomla better.

As far as I can see now Joomla is also a CMS (Content Management System), like WordPress, a lot more complex, though. Apparently, it is very complete and there are plenty of online tutorials as well. Hopefully, I can get through the basics in a couple of weeks and put up the site before August.

 

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The very first post

May 25, 2011 followenglish admin Blog news, ELT, followenglish

Exactly two years ago, I made up my mind to open a company. Initially I thought about opening a language school, but I knew that I had to come up with something different, something more specific. In fact I was not in a hurry as I didn’t have the money to start the business, and on top of that the ideas were still a bit cloudy. So I decided to let my ideas rest for a while and take my time to think about all the details so that I could make the move at the right moment. Two years went by – time does fly, and every now and then amidst my chaotic routine, I devoted some time to preparing the terrain to plant the seed.

Now that I have chosen a name for the company and I have even created a logo, and most importantly, I have established the basis (set of ideas I mean) upon which to set up the company, I am ready to start this blog and announce the foundation of followenglish. By doing that I feel ready to share some thoughts and beliefs I have about how we learn a foreign language and on which grounds the company is going to stand upon.

followenglish is intended not only to be a company providing language programs for learners of English, but also one that can offer a more personal and customized language experience to them. There are several language schools and companies that offer language programs and they all claim to use some revolutionary approach through which learners will magically learn a foreign language without making any effort. I really don’t want followenglish to be one more of those. But on the other hand, I do have my own beliefs about teaching and learning a foreign language and I strongly believe that they work, even though they are far from revolutionary or miraculous.

» Read more..

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