Why a Summer Course?

 

Merry Christmas!!!

 

CTS´s IX Summer course (online)

 SMART is an acronym that is often used in business as a guide for setting business objectives, but can be applied to language outcomes. The "new normal" in our country is something blurred and although we were the last country in Latin America to resume in-person classes, we are not sure the conditions are the best to support teaching to a group of students who have been affected both emotionally and academically by the pandemic. 

However, I believe we can learn from our mistakes, improve the strategies we learned and used and get ready for whatever situation may come up. This is the rationale behind this summer course where we expect to exchange ideas and enrich our repertoire with what our colleagues have to share. 

XXIX CTS Academic Event

Paradigms, mindsets and tools have changed now that most of us are teaching online. The "new normal" is being planned as hybrid teaching (online and in person) and that brings about its own challenges. We´ll discuss some of these and we´ll all try to work out solutions to overcome them in the two workshops of this session.

XXVIII CTS Academic Event

 This is the topic of our XXVIII CTS Academic event, a moment to enjoy and share knowledge and experience. 

I am looking forward to that. 

Happy Teacher´s Day

 

Getting REady for FCE

Cambridge has changed the name of the B2 Upper Intermediate level Certificate they issue after sitting for the exam. It used to be called FCE (First Certificate in English), Cambridge English First and now B2 First; however, it has been FCE for so long that the name stuck.

What is important is what you can do once you reach this level of proficiency in English and it is a lot, read, write, listen and understand, speak, you can go around in any English speaking environment with confidence. This is why we, in Customized Training Services, the training company I work for, were asked to design a course to help teachers prepare for this examination. 

Since due to Covid 19, there are no openings for this exam in Peru, we thought of preparing modules of the different papers while waiting for exam dates. This is the first and it is on one of the hardest papers: Use of English. But we also wanted to support our teachers who already have the Certificate or are not interested in it but do want to improve their communicative abilities and so we are covering certain aspects that not only help with this exam paper but also support their communicative skills. 

Inspiring quote

 This quote inspired me to study hard to become a true teacher and a real support for my students. 

B2 level of proficiency

 In this competitive world, we need to demonstrate qualities that make us better than other candidates whether we want to live, study or work in an English speaking environment or improve our academic skills. Knowing a foreign language, particularly English is, besides being computer literate, a very important asset.

To demonstrate the ability to understand the main ideas of complex texts, to interact fluently with native speakers and produce clear texts on a wide range of subjects we need to get at least a B2 level of proficiency.

In this chart we can see how useful it is to achieve this Independent level =Upper Intermediate (B2First) for the above reasons and also if you are interested in pursuing a good IELTS score. 

Getting a B2 level

 

Why is it important to get a B2 level and demonstrate it by obtaining the Cambridge English First Certificate?

Because achieving this level allows you to interact fluently with native speakers, explaining your point of view on topical issues,  understand the main ideas of different kinds of complex texts and produce detailed texts on a wide range of subjects. 

Besides, it is a good extra point if you are applying for a job not only in teaching but in any field of specialization. 

This course places special emphasis on issues such as Idioms and Collocations, Phrasal Verbs and Sentence Transformation. 

 

 With a world changing so quickly in terms of technology, climate and- these days- health safety, our students, particularly teens, will need more than intellectual subject knowledge. They have lost their social peers near them and they cannot do regular “teen” things like sports, clubs, cinemas, they also  had to learn to adapt to a new kind of instructional format. How can we teachers help our students to acquire and develop skills for them to thrive in this context?

 Life competencies are now an integral part of education; our students need to develop emotional reasoning and critical thinking but we also need to know how they feel, what they want and how to face the future. We´ll try to provide some insights into this in this academic event.

Use of English Review Courses

If you need to write, speak to people, work in English, learn another language, communicate ideas, prepare reports, manage people, study and especially teach English then learning about how English is put together and how you can put it together more effectively is an invaluable skill. Grammar describes how a language works and, since you are teaching that language, you should be able to describe what you are teaching. Grammar is a massive subject but as an English teacher you should be familiar with the basics For learning the Basics at the different CEFR levels, in CTS we have prepared these courses where we are presenting the grammatical contents suggested for the levels through different input material and we provide personalized feedback for the evaluations so participants will know what went wrong and why.

Earth Day Bali

 

Earth Day 2021

 

Summer Summary

 

Classes have started in Peru and in CTS we are happy to know that this time our teachers are better prepared to deal with the challenges that online teaching brings along. As we like to keep in touch with our CTS family and friends, we started 2021 with activities (courses and seminars) aiming at supporting teachers with closing the gap for those students who could not reach the same level of progress as their peers. Here is what we did from January to March.

Getting Ready for the Future

 Worldwide, lives are stressed and strained by COVID-19. The toll of the virus, isolation, increased workloads and other associated effects are rising among many students and teachers. Social and Emotional Learning is as important as any other curriculum subject and not only for our students but for teachers as well and so is wellbeing, soft skills for the future.

This time of year can be a good moment to check out how you’re feeling after 2020, a very different educational experience. In this event, we’ll look at ways that you can help yourself and, in turn, help your learners to achieve wellbeing and keep our mental health.

Use of English Review Courses

 In Customized Training Services we believe teachers of English need to be knowledgeable in both knowing the language we teach as well as learning how to teach it whether it is face-to-face or online.

The aim of these review courses is to refresh some Use of English issues at different levels addressing each participant´s strengths and weaknesses in personalized tutoring sessions with personalized feedback using web tools for that purpose.

We are sure you´ll find these courses useful.

VIII Summer Course

 Differentiation and learning gaps

While preparing my sessions for the VIII Summer Course, I came across this tool which I think is very useful for students to use to practise their language.

 

VIII Summer Course (2021)

 

We teachers are facing uncertainty around how we will deliver learning in the months to come, will it be in a classroom, will it continue online or will it be some mixture of the two? 

We need to be prepared for situations where we find that previous levels of use of the language have not been maintained and where some learners have made better progress than others. 

The purpose of this summer course is to provide strategies teachers can use to support the learning process whatever the transition to school learning is, strategies that could also apply to other learning contexts.