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Centre for English Language & Training Electronic Newsletter
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e-ne a* |
March 2008 Issue
*nea = Greek
for 'news'
(n. plural)
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This is an electronic newsletter intended to inform you of news,
activities and course dates at CELT Athens. In this way, we hope to keep
in touch with students past, present and future. Please send some
feedback about
this e-newsletter if you have a minute or send your own news. |
If you are thinking
about a course in
translation skills,
please click
here.
Visit our translation
links page
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Dear Readers, 
CELT goes to Facebook
F or a long time
I resisted this (or probably didn't understand it at
first!) but was
finally drawn in there by colleagues from
translatum.gr, this most excellent portal for
translators and, now, by my current CELTA trainees.
Suddenly, I
discovered that you are all in there! Well, most of you. After spending a
couple of pretty unproductive days trying to understand it
and trying to find 'friends', I am back to a more laid
back use which is great! It has meant that I can now get in touch
with a lot of past trainees and colleagues both in Greece
as well as in all their countries of residence or work.
This is a
great human directory and if it means we have to waste a
few minutes every day just keep in touch with friends,
well, surely, this cannot be a bad thing! Or can it?
You can
find the CELT Athens page in Facebook by clicking
here.
In the last issue, I
put up the link to
http://www.freerice.com/
which was hugely successful and, apart
from being useful, it became an addiction and a contest amongst all
the trainees at CELT to get the highest number of successful
vocabulary answers. Please go back and play. There is an additional
and very nice feature. You can now hear the pronunciation of all the
words - a great thing, as many of them are the rare type of vocabulary
you never get to hear spoken.
I felt I had an edge
in there (so did many of my Greek trainee teachers..) as many of the
rarer lexical items have a Greek root anyway. Remember the dad in 'My
Big Fat Greek Wedding'? Just goes to show you he was right......
Go play and encourage
your learners to do the same!
M arisa Constantinides
CELT Athens
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Many of our past trainees will remember
the RSA DOTE (Diploma for Overseas Teachers of English), a
very useful and popular Diploma in Greece and many other
countries where the bulk of the teaching focuses on
younger learners and adolescent learners rather than
adults. In 1996 we saw the end of this Diploma and, to our
chagrin, fewer and fewer teachers in Greece have been
following the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching
to Adults) which, since then, has been the sole Cambridge
ESOL Teaching Award option at Diploma level.
All this
is about to change very drastically.
Please
read the introduction from the following Cambridge ESOL
Bulletin:
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 DELTA
goes modular from September 2008!
A
decade after it was first introduced, the Diploma in
English Language Teaching to Adults (DELTA),
Cambridge ESOL’s flagship teaching qualification
continues to set the standard for the profession.
Following a comprehensive review, we are introducing
a modular DELTA syllabus, which will replace the
current syllabus from September 2008. This
development is part of Cambridge ESOL’s policy to
regularly review and evaluate all the awards and
qualifications we offer in order to ensure overall
relevance and fitness for their intended purpose. We
also use the review procedure to take stock of
developments in the world of language learning and
teaching, and as an opportunity to respond to
feedback from our candidates and
centres......
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Here is a summary of the changes:
- Flexible entry points for candidates.
- DELTA can be taken in stages over a period of time
that can fit with career and other commitments.
- Opportunity to focus on specialist teaching, e.g.
teaching young learners, business English.
teaching adult learners, teaching
teenagers, etc.
- More flexible delivery, e.g. blended learning
options.
- Individual modules can be taken as part of a
programme of continuous professional development.
- Certificates for partial achievement, e.g.
development as general English teacher.
This is, clearly, very good news to
all those teachers who have shied away from attending a
DELTA course, simply because their own teaching context
does not include adult learners, and the current DELTA is
very much focused on this age group.
Please follow the link
here
to view
some of the key issues answered by Cambridge ESOL:
The new
DELTA Diploma then seems to be a much more flexible and
viable option for those who prefer teaching younger
classes and it is hoped that more experienced teachers,
directors of studies and foreign language school owners
who are practising teachers or directors will be
interested in obtaining this qualification.
And do
please write to me with any further questions or issues
relating to this new way of delivering the DELTA Diploma.
I would really like to hear you views on a number of
issues of concern relating to this change, but at this
point I would prefer to hear your own initial reaction to
this news.
Please
send me any messages to
info@celt.edu.gr
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Learn Modern Greek this Summer
Immerse
yourself in a Greek experience this summer and begin or develop your
Modern Greek. The course takes place in Athens and the island of Paros,
one of the most beautiful Cycladic islands with clear blue sea and lots of
exciting night life!
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C hoose the
full 4-week course
in Athens
02-06-08 to 27-06-08 FT
30-06-08 to 25-07-08 FT
01-09-08 to 26-09-08 FT
.....more
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... or... Choose the
2-week
course
on Paros island & Athens
28-07-08 to 08-08-08
25-08-08 to 05-09-08
.....more
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Our Profession by
2010?
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Common European Principles
for Teacher
Competences
and Qualifications
Introduction
This text aims to support policy makers at a national or
regional level by setting out
common European principles for teacher competences and
qualifications. These have been
devised in response to the challenges laid down in the
Joint Interim Report by the
European Council and the European Commission on progress
towards
Education and
Training 2010 .
Background
Teachers play a crucial role in supporting the learning
experience of young people and
adult learners. They are key players in how
experience of young people and
adult learners. They are key players in how education
systems evolve and in the
implementation of the reforms which can make the European
Union the highest
performing
knowledge-driven economy in the world by 2010.
More.... (from the website of the EU)
Read the most recent progress
reports by clicking
here.
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Summary of the
Recommendations
More.... (from the website of the EU)
1. The teaching profession should be well qualified.
2. The teaching profession should be seen
as a continuum which includes initial
teacher education, induction and continuing
professional development.
3. Teacher mobility should be encouraged.
4. The teaching profession should work in partnership
with other stakeholders.
Making it work: the key
competences
Work with
knowledge, technology and information
Work with and in society
More.... (from the website of the EU)
Read the most recent progress
reports by clicking
here.
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Teacher Development at
your workplace
Teacher Development is not just about attending a course at an
institution such as CELT Athens.
What is Teacher Development like at your workplace? How often
does your school organise events or workshops to continue
helping you to improve while you are on the job? How many of
your staff meetings are about how to improve your classroom
practices and how many are just about administrative issues?
Take the
online poll on this topic by clicking
here. View the results and go
to the comments page to add comments about your own teaching
situation and institution.
Read the two
very interesting online articles which follow on. Whether you
are a practising teacher or an administrator responsible for
teacher development at your institution, it is always a very
good idea to review the options.
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Benefits and techniques of teacher
training and development,
by Lucy Pollard.
Teacher development - what, why and
how .
Pete
MacKichan, August 1999.
Teacher Development
programmes which are implemented with the aid of a teacher
training (or development perhaps?) centre such as CELT Athens,
follow the principles of Business Adult Training with the cycle
of going through a Needs Analysis stage, in order to design a programme that is
not simply a preset "product" but responds to real staff needs
and/or difficulties within a particular teaching context. If
you wish to find out more, please click
here.
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Volunteer Teaching at
CELT Athens
Thank you all for teaching our free classes!
Lily Mordechai
Sarah Charles
Hector Chatzigeorgiou
Emma Courtaigne
Emma Blakemore
Anna Mordechai
Dafni Gougla
Tanya Kritikou
This is by way of saying "Thank you"
to those ex-trainee teachers, recent and past, who have continued to offer their time to volunteer
teaching of the free adult classes at CELT. This is
particularly important at times in between courses when
the groups need teaching both because they are needed for the
next group of teachers coming in as well as because they
need to keep learning!
There is something very special
about these young trainee teachers. Despite the fact that they do
not have any further obligation to keep on teaching our
students, they keep coming back offering their time freely
and preparing lessons just as high in quality as when they
were being observed by their tutors or assessors.
It also shows that they have developed
relationships with their learners, that they care
about them as people and that they do not view them as a
convenience to be used and
discarded the moment they were done with their course or
obtained their CELTA
Certificates!
They are all highly recommended as
valued members in any teachers' staffroom anywhere in the
world.
If you want to meet them or hire
them (!) you can find them all in Facebook, the new human
directory. If you are a Facebook user/addict, send them a
heart, send them a gift, be their friend. If you are a
prospective employer, don't just pay them well. Allow them
to use what they have learnt as trainees at CELT and they
will
truly do you proud!
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Lesson Plan of the
Month
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Meet
the Parents & Teach the Present Perfect
I
always have
a very difficult time choosing which lesson plan
to showcase each time - I get to see so many good
lesson plans submitted by trainees that it is always
a real dilemma!
 But
I finally decided to choose one of the last lessons
taught by
Elizabeth Michailidis who recently completed the
DELTA course. Elizabeth's aim was to review &
highlight the Present Perfect Simple Tense to our
Pre-intermediate students by using a clip from the
well-known movie "Meet the Parents".
If you wish to
use the scene, in which Robert de Niro as the father
interrogates his future son-in-law using a lie
detector, you will have to rent the DVD or possibly
search for an on-line clip of the scene. In this lesson,
Elizabeth (first one left in snapshot from a Drama seminar at
CELT), attempts to combine enjoyable and funny
content with Grammar teaching with excellent
results. The lesson is suitable for adult learners
only but it's really worth looking as it may inspire
you to use movies & DVD's more in your lessons and
not just to keep your students busy!
Download the lesson plan by clicking
here.
In order to
read it, you will need Acrobat Reader which you can
get
here.
Lesson Plan and activities © Elizabeth Michailidis,
2007
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Profile of the Month
Olha Madylus
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Olha Madylus began her
teaching career in a secondary state school in the
UK teaching English and Drama. She has a Masters
degree in ELT and has been involved in YLELT*
for over 20 years, living, teaching and training in
Hong Kong, Venezuela and Greece with the British
Council in Thessaloniki where she served as Deputy
DIrector.
*YLELT=Young Learners English
Language Teaching
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For the past six years she has been a freelance Young
Learners Consultant
and teacher trainer and is involved in the training of local state and private
language school teachers in countries as diverse as Peru, Qatar and Taiwan.
Olha
does consultation and teacher training for the British
Council global teaching network and travels far
and wide for them as well as for Cambridge University Press for whom she is also
writing a book!
She is now (happily) based in Athens training teachers at
CELT Athens as a Cambridge ESOL CELTA,
CELTYL and DELTA trainer.
Olha writes regularly for
onestopenglish,
the Macmillan teachers' website where she is a regular contributor
on topics related to teaching
young learners and
teenagers.
At present she is doing so many
things it is sometimes dificult to know how she keeps up but she is well known
for her high energy levels and her excellent ability to inspire and motivate
teachers, so who would be better suited to give a talk at the forthcoming TESOL
Greece Convention (15-16 March) which has "Inspired Teachers, Motivated
Learners" as its theme?
Olha will be presenting a talk on
Exploiting Stories, an excellent opportunity to
listen to a truly great speaker! |
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Forthcoming
Events & Talks
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DATE |
LOCATION |
ORGANISER |
CONFERENCE THEME |
TALKS BY CELT TUTORS |
VENUE |
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March 15 - 16 |
Athens |
TESOL Greece
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Inspired
Teachers, Motivated Learners
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Creative
Teaching, Creative Learning - Marisa Constantinides
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Exploiting
Stories in the English Language Classroom - Olha
Madylus
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Awareness &
Feedback in Exam Preparation Classes - George
Vassilakis
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HAU,
22 Massalias Strreet - Entrance for Members only;
annual subscription is
€65
For a pre-programme with the
days & times of all talks, please click here. |
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April 12-13 |
Lamia |
PALSO (Panhellenic
Organisation of Language School Owners
Of Fthiotise) |
Teaching
Beginners
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Adult
Beginner Classes - Myths & Realities - Marisa
Constantinides
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Dealing with Literacy in Young
Learners & Adults – Similarities & Differences
- Marisa Constantinides
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For
further information on the venue and programme, please
contact the association at
palsofth@altenec.gr
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April 12-13 |
Thessaloniki |
International
Publishers' Exhibition |
Commercial Book Exhibition |
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Olha
Madylus
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Rose
Aravanis
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Macedonia Palace |
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For
more forthcoming events, do please visit this ELT News
link
and do not
forget to check out the forthcoming
5th Annual
Conference of the European
Association for Language Testing and Assessment
(EALTA) which has drawn important
speakers from all over the world.
Full information as well as registration (for
€35) can be obtained
here.
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Editors Christmas Message
