Author: Mirjana Ljiljak-Vukajlović

Multimedia English Projects by Lingva Students from Gorenje 2016/2017

We have recently completed this year’s cycle of Business and Technical English courses for students from the Gorenje d.o.o. company. The cooperation between Gorenje and Lingva in the area of language education has been going on for many years and is maximally based on meeting the individual students’ needs and developing their communicative skills.   Since the syllabuses included practice of oral presentation skills, students have jointly made a series of attractive multimedia projects,  which have been published on our web site www.lingva.com/cafe:

YALS REINSPECTION OF LINGVA 2017 – SECOND STAGE

YALS reinspection of Lingva 2017 – 2nd stage

We haven’t wavered in our commitment to quality! The maximum number of points awarded by YALS inspectors proved once again that we continue to work with the same professionalism and dedication, as shown before in numerous previous regular inspections ever since 2000. During the second stage of YALS inspection for the purpose of accreditation renewal inspectors Maja Gavrilović from Livingston School, Belgrade, and Biljana Barna from New English School, Pančevo, inspected and assessed implementation of professional standards, school management, as well as school premises and equipment. They held separate interviews with students, parents and teachers, and were able to see for themselves that all the participants were extremely satisfied with Lingva services and attitude. This practice offers a good opportunity for any language school to review the status of its work procedures and processes and to update and improve them in accordance with the latest developments in the field of education.

Lingva In-house Workshop No. 25: Our Perky Lessons 1

Writing in CLass Lesson Plan by Marija Milovanović

On Saturday 18 of March 2017, English teachers gathered at Lingva for the 25th round of in-house workshops. The presenters this time were Danijela Bojanić and Marija Milovanović. While Danijela’s workshop, titled Humour Is No Laughing Matter, explored ways of practising different language skills through different forms of humour and using diverse multimedia resources at A2-B1 levels , Marija’s session called “Writing in Class” was dedicated to finding attractive ways of encouraging students of all ages practise this skill, which we more often than not tend to leave aside and assign for homework in order to save precious class time for speaking although we are aware that most of our students do no homework at all. It has been a long time since we last had our in-house workshop and we were all eager to learn and share some new teaching and learning ideas and ready-made activities. Our impressions of the activities presented in both workshops were extremely positive:

Feedback for Writing in Class by Marija Milovanović
“Great, interesting, useful ideas for classes!”
“Great!”
“You’re ready to present at higher levels – at YALS or ELTA seminars and conferences.”
“On the second thought, I’ll use all of your activities. Well done!!!”
“Keep up with the good work!”

Feedback for Humour Is No Laughing Matter by Danijela Bojanić
“I loved it. We haven’t had any workshops so far related to this, what is great is that you could use everything in the classroom (I know I will). Thanks for the ideas!”
“It was very exciting, I liked it pretty much, a lot of interesting ideas and activities. Great job!”
“Great ideas!”
“The song is great! Students could write their own version and practice vocabulary (fruit/vegetables).Tnx”
“I enjoyed it and you encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone! Thanks!”
“A lot of fun! I would actually use the teacher prank list with the worst students and ask them to add their own.”

YALS REINSPECTION OF TEACHING AT LINGVA 2017

Teaching inspection at Lingva, Valjevo, 2017

“Is the inspector coming to observe us too? Why not to our group as well?“ sighed some of Lingva‘s students on Wednesday, 1 March 2017. They were bypassed by the regular teaching reinspection for the purpose of YALS accreditation renewal. It is not customary that students are not afraid of inpectors, but this time it happened that inspector Ana Djordjević, Teaching Fellow in Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology of Belgrade University, engaged by YALS Association of Language Schools of Serbia as an external inspector, dispelled all the fears with her professional and unobtrusive approach to the observation of lessons held by 6 teachers in 12 groups, from preschool to adult levels. Teachers did their best to show that all their work is of exceptionally high quality and students responded with utmost interest and cooperation. A lot of enthusiasm and positive energy filled all Lingva classrooms, as well as an all-pervasive feeling that hard work always pays off in the end.

HERE WE ARE! Absolutely SPARKY!

 lingva sparks-01

GERMAN AND ENGLISH COURSES FOR ALL AGES!

PREPARATION FOR INTERNATIONAL CERTIFICATES: CAMBRIDGE, IELTS, TOEFL, GOETHE

PREPARATION FOR UNIVERSITY LANGUAGE STUDIES

REGISTER EVERY WORK DAY FROM 5.00 TO 8.00 PM

This year again on the Right Course with Lingva you are going to learn languages through live communication in class and via the Internet. Enrol in our school and join SpArKy groups for multimedia language learning!

SAVE THE WALLNUT TREE DRIVE CONTINUED WITH LEGO BRICKS

We proudly announce that we have saved two more walnut trees – the seventh and the eighth –  from cutting, together with their scops owlets, which kept hooting for help in our lush green, so fully walnut-and-linden-scented Valjevo! Look at our latest news reports illustrated with LEGO bricks, and published with LEGO StoryStarter program, with the little help from our teacher Katarina Vićentijević.

Save the Walnut Tree 7 by Dunja Jezdić, Andrea Rakić, Isidora Prokić and Nikolina Mitić

Save the Walnut Tree 8 by Ljubica Dimitrić, Teodora Rakić, Marsel Maša, Andreja Živanović and Viktor Simović

MORE CREATIONS WITH LEGO STORYSTARTER BRICKS

What more can you wish for than have a sunny day to walk your dog or play volleyball, and finish the day feeding your pet and having a round of the mobile phone games. Or have a fantastic day at the seaside spoiled by and ugly witch and her sister to be saved by the most handsome prince in the world and to be kissed by him at the end only to wake up and realise it was just a dream … Or have another dream in which you fight a terrible battle against some soldiers to, it’s hard to believe, actually save a witch who has just treated you with a lunch, but again your dream gets interrupted; this time by the rattle of breakfast plates. We presented all of this with Lego bricks and turned into comic strips with LEGO StoryStarter program and a little help from our teacher Ivana Lazić.

24th Lingva In-house Workshop: Speaking Assessment Standardisation

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Immediately before summer holiday, as planned in the Lingva’s Annual Teacher Training and Development plan, the topic of our 24th in-house workshop, held by Director-of-Studies Mirjana Ljiljak-Vukajlović on 24th June, was Speaking Assessment Standardisation, as a sequel to earlier workshops on the same topic held on 15 October and 14 december 2010.

As in the previous workshops, the first part of our session was dedicated to familiarizing with CEFR speaking overviews and descriptors. In contrast to the event in 2010, when the second part included watching and discussing filmed samples of CEFR-calibrated oral production as part of a CoE-EAQUALS project, this time video clips of Cambridge English Examples of Speaking Tests were used first to identify the CEFR levels on the basis of the given speaking criteria and then to analyse which particular features of students performance indicate each specified level. The third stage involved studying the examiners’ commentaries on students performances and comparing them with our own.

The workshop proved to be very useful, especially in providing a much clearer picture of the performance required of students at each particular level and clarifying what each of five speaking assessment criteria – Range, Accuracy, Fluency, Interaction, Coherence – actually implies. Once again it was concluded that we have to be very careful not to be overly demanding when assessing lower level students and that students should not be penalized too much for mistakes as long as they do not impede understanding.

17th Cambridge YLE Certificate Award Ceremony at Lingva

odela Kembridž diploma u Lingvi
17th Cambridge YLE Certificate Award at Lingva

Here is one more beautiful day in this month full of certificates and awards! 19 of us, plus buddies, sisters, brothers, mums, dads, grannies, grandpas, auntie and uncles, as well as our teachers, have gathered at the big Lingva’s classroom to celebrate excellent results of Cambridge English Young Learners’ Exams on the Starters, Movers and Flyers levels. Starters were the best this year, with almost all winning 14 or 15 out of the total 15 Cambridge shields. Movers and Flyers almost reached them, earning 5 shields each in most of the language skills. Our best skill is speaking and we are ready to chat with friends from all over the world, in Valjevo, other places in Serbia, and other countries and show them how well we can use our English.

Spring News from Serbia, Valjevo & Lingva

Our adult students Natasa Simjanovska, Jelena Davidovic, Natasa Damnjanovic, Stanko Markovic and Radisa Jovanovic, from General English group B1+/a, supported by teacher Ivana Lazic, prepared some interesting news for us about topical events this spring in our country, town and language school Lingva. We can read about some good and some not-so-good events, such as a case of mugging in Valjevo and a traffic accident in Pirot, paying homage to actor Dragan Nikolić, but also about a wine festival in Valjevo, and especially about how finely tuned and cooperative their language group is, especially when they discuss varous issues, and how fond they are of their teacher Ivana.

News from Serbia, Valjevo and Lingva 1

by Nataša Damnjanovic, Stanko Markovic and Radisa Jovanovic

News from Serbia, Valjevo and Lingva 2

by Nataša Simjanovska and Jelena Davidovic