As part of our commitment to improving the learning environment at Languages International, Sally Logan (our Learning Centre Manager and part of the Teacher Training team) recently attended the ‘Autonomy and Language Learning: Maintaining Control’ Conference.
Held in Hong Kong and Hangzhou, China, the event focused on:
* Autonomy in the curriculum
* The experience of autonomy
* Teacher autonomy * Self access & advising
* IT & autonomy
Sally was selected to present research material on a series of lessons used here at Languages International to encourage independent learning. She also attended other presentations by leaders in research and development of Learning Autonomy.
“The conference was invaluable. Meeting with other academics from around the world allowed us to share ideas and see where other learning institutions were taking autonomous learning. We now have to sit down and decide which ideas are best suited to our students at Languages International. I am confident that we are offering an excellent service to our learners but we can always make it better - and that is what the conference was all about.”
For more information about the Learning Centre at Languages International, look under the ‘Our School’ section of our website.
06 July 2004
Autonomy and Language Learning Conference
05 July 2004
Popular TESOL Certificate Course
Our current TESOL Certificate course has proved to be very popular with students from all around the world.We are running two groups in July and there is a very good mix of people from many different countries: China, Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Korean, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Tahiti.
Dana Cablova is the first Czech English teacher to attend the TESOL Certificate course since it began 6 years ago. She has taught English and Czech for a total of 17 years, but has focused almost exclusively on teaching English in the last 8 years.She says there’s great demand for English teachers in the Czech Republic. “Most people want to speak a foreign language for their jobs, for travelling, for study abroad and so on.” This means she is often “overloaded” with work.
The TESOL Certificate course is the first methodology and language development course that Dana has studied overseas. “At home when there was ever anything interesting about methodology I always liked to go in the weekends, in my free time.
“Apart from teaching, Dana’s other great passion is travelling and so she saw the TESOL Certificate course as an ideal opportunity to visit New Zealand and get some new teaching ideas and think about her own teaching. “I do things automatically and it’s good to realise whether I do them well or should do them better, and what to improve“, she commented.
Dana is also keen to practise her listening skills while she is in New Zealand. She feels it is very useful for a teacher to be back in the student role again.
