XXXVIII CTS Academic Event

The integration of Technology in English Language Learning is of paramount importance for both teachers and students. It provides students with access to an incredible variety of online resources at their own place and pace allowing them to become more independent, promoting collaboration and making concepts more accessible (using instructional videos, for example). For teachers, the use of technology helps them motivate students through engaging activities, which enhance the learning experience.

 

XXI CTS academic event

 

 

 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.

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.

Summary of VII Summer Blended learning Course

Dear CTS friends and family

We are going through difficult times where reaching the end of the tunnel is everybody´s responsibility so we need to abide by the rules and stay home.

In these times of lockdown, we teachers have even more responsibilities than before since we are expected to help our students learn in a virtual context they are not so familiar with because they use it more for entertainment and pleasure.

We need to prepare online teaching material that is – of course- different from the material we use for face-to-face lessons and we also need to use platforms and tools we are not so familiar with and with little time to master their use.

We know that little by little we will gain more skills at doing this and will manage to reduce preparation time while mastering the use of the Internet tools. It is at times like this when approaches such as Gamification , Flipped Learning, ICT and Web tools  can help us pass on knowledge, consolidate or even assess it.

At CTS we feel we have contributed  to support our teachers by having chosen the above approaches as modules for our last summer course both in its face-to-face as well as online modality. 

We are committed to keeping on offering practical courses and workshops (online modality) about tools and strategies for online context not only for teachers of English but for teachers of any subject. Thus, we can help our teachers in their virtual teaching practice until the time comes for meeting our students face to face without any health risk.

Please keep posted, we are working hard to support you and meanwhile take care and stay home. 

Below you can see some highlights of our VII Summer blended learning course.

Communication Skills for Cambridge Exams

Thank you friends and colleagues. We know there are lots of offers of workshops, seminars and courses all around so thanks for choosing Customized Training Services to contribute to your professional development. 

Some other institutions and even some of our former students run courses using the same name and characteristics of ours and even the material we provided them with. This instead of bothering us makes us happy since it contributes to reaching more people who need this knowledge and also because it reassures us. We are certainly doing a good job in CTS.

Thanks very much to all those who attended our XIV Facebook event and made it such a great success. Photos have been posted in our Facebook page and soon a video on the highlights of the event will be posted here.

XII Facebook event

Each of these Facebook events is special but this last one was even more so because we had a new presenter, Ms Laura Marsh, the Academic Coordinator of Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya and also because it was the last event in NUTESA premises. NUTESA is a very old friend of ours and have always supported our academic initiatives providing not only the premises but also the coffee breaks, book exhibitions and prizes. We will be forever in debt with them.

The video below shows a summary of our XII Facebook event, get ready because there is more to come.!

CTS Courses  2017-0

At work (Customized Training Services), we believe that we never cease learning and that we cannot give out what we don´t have. Because of this, we try hard to provide other teachers of English courses that are going to help  them improve their language level and get an International Certificate as well.

I am lucky because I have two friends who share this goal: Liliana and Emma. Emma has so much patience and knows exactly what her students need to improve that has become a decisive element in the company.

One of the courses she teaches is Pre-FCE, a very important course since it helps students improve their language level by revising the grammatical structures the FCE (Cambridge English First) exam demands.

She also teaches the FCE Course preparation and Developing Writing Skills, she is a real expert in helping students go from understanding the writing process beginning from sentence connection to writing texts. Everything she does, she does it so well that I cannot think of a better academic partner.

Below we have some of the activities our current FCE students developed when they were in their pre-FCE course in the summer.

And in the Developing Writing course:

Our next event is our XI Facebook event, we expect it to be as useful for our colleagues as the previous ten.

End of 2016

And 2016 is gone and we had a wonderful farewell with our colleagues participation in our Ninth Academic Event.

This is a summary of the event, good to see old and new faces but above all, good to see people involved in all the activities.

Thank you 2016 !!!

Closing event 2016

Our IX Facebook event will also be our closing event of the year. We have done quite a lot along this year and would like to take advantage of this event to thank you because you are the ones who inspire us to be better.

As usual, attending your requests, we have prepared an interesting workshop on the skills needed for the 21st century so as to finish the year with some reflections on what we have done and some expectations of what we should be looking forward to next year.

On Saturday 5th, we will  also thank the teachers who attended all Facebook events during this year, we will hand out the last TKT Certificates  and will give a little token of our appreciation to all attendees.

I prepared a short video on some of the topics we presented this year and while choosing the photos to accompany the topics, I could see that many of you have accompanied us almost all year long.

Thanks very much for your trust, your company and for helping us to pursue our goal of contributing to the professional development of our friends.

Ninth Academic Facebook Event

I cannot believe it is that time of the year again!!!

The end of our Academic year and our last Facebook event. To close this year and get ready for the new one, we had been requested to present something on the skills needed for the 21st century and so we are going to do.

We look forward to seeing you all there.

CTS VIII Facebook event was held last August 13th at Centro Empresarial Pardo. It was delightful to see so many people interested in knowing about the new trends. We developed Mindsets, Creativity and Innovation and the Flipped Classroom as some of the latest trends in ELT.

We also worked in stations and some team leaders were chosen from the audience. It was great to see participants involved in all the activities and looking forward to meeting in the next event.

Enjoy the video of the event!