The world is wonderful when we are surrounded by our cousins and best friends. Their favourite pets are ours too and we like to play the same games. It Is is so good when we know that they love us and are ready to help. The sky is the limit to our love too!
When thinking which famous people to present, we have all decided to choose singers and actors: Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez and Tom Holland. Our main criteria in selecting were our personal preferences, their recognized achievements in the worlds of music and film, but also their positive personal traits – all of them are independent, brave, hard-working and above all generous and ready to share part of their wealth with people in need.
Once again we learned how precious multimedia resource sharing is in learning English. In our latest English language activity titled News Story Tenses we used Wikinews website both to learn what’s going on in the world and to brush up on our use of English tenses. We have found out that Saudi women will finally be allowed to drive, how the US-based taxi booking company Uber was too relaxed about London transport regulations, that Star Trek enthusiasts can enjoy a new series after 12 years, and about different approaches of Facebook and Russia to the protection of personal data. In the process, we practiced all four language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, and as a result we created interactive grammar exercises focusing on tenses for everybody who is interested to have a try.
Marija Matić presenting at 26th Lingva In-house Workshop, 23/06/17
On 23 June, Lingva English teachers gathered for the 26th Lingva In-house seminar. The presenter this time was Marija Matić Grujić, who demonstrated some of her best teaching pieces done so far in her work with students of different age groups at Lingva Language School in Valjevo. All of the activities included a lot of multimedia resources, such as YouTube chants, Lego Education StoryStarter Set with software support, and Scattergories Card Sets. Marija’s skillful integration of varied and attractive activities, as well as the films she made to illustrate her students’ performance made an exceptionally favourable impression on her colleagues from Lingva, who will definitely include some of her ideas into their own teaching.
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:
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.”
“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.
It took less than a month since taking Cambridge Young Learners Exams, on 24 May this year, to receive the impatiently awaited results. On 19 June, Starters, Movers and Flyers gathered at Lingva again, for the 16th year in a row, for the Cambridge Young Learners of English Certificate Award ceremony. Our waiting was rewarded much better than we had expected! There was a much higher number of candidates winning the individual maximum of 15 little coats each for the skills of reading and writing, listening and speaking than in any of the previous years. Especially happy were the Flyers, whose group average was 14 coats. Once again we could see for ourselves that it pays off to work hard and at the end of the ceremony we proudly posed with our certificates for a group photo. This is good news to share through online social media with our friends who are currently on holiday away from Valjevo and were not able to attend the award ceremony.
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