Lesson on 14 May 2014

We met for the last actual lesson on 14 May, and devoted a lot of the meeting to fun and games! We had a Kahoot! quiz, which is an interactive quiz application that participants play with PCs, tablets or smartphones.


We also had group discussions about everybody's experiences on this course.  The discussions were taped for future reference.


The participants also made their own Kahoot! quizzes. If you want to learn more about Kahoot!, go to https://getkahoot.com/

Lesson on 16 April

We met on April 16 and our main topic was the use of the YouTube video management tool. We learned how to make videos using photos, music, text etc.

We also talked about Easter and made a Quizlet exercise with Easter words.

The groups discussed their working plans for the final period of the course.

See you in May!

Lesson on 26 March

We met again just after the trip to Turkey. We spent some time on discussing the trip, the meeting and the workshops and what everybody had learned during the trip.  We also looked at the exercises created in Quizlet.

The topics for the lesson included
1) sharing photos using Picasa web albums, and
2) uploading and editing videos on YouTube.

We have inserted the basic instructions for YouTube on the Instructions page of this blog. We will continue to work on YouTube in our next meeting in April.

Homework for next lesson: do the new Quizlet exercises, try out some of the listening activities on http://esl-lab.com, and experiment with videos on YouTube.

Lesson 22 January 2014

Happy New Year to everyone! This was our first lesson this year, so it took some time to talk about what we did during the Christmas holidays and how our studies are going.

All the groups had been working on their Google presentations, and they presented the drafts to the rest of the class. We heard presentations about English studies, hobbies, Finnish seasons and Finnish culture. All the presentations were really interesting, and it would be great if all participants could present something when we travel to Turkey in March.

We also devoted some time to language problems, especially the use of prepositions in English, which is one of the hardest things for a Finnish speaker to learn. I'll make a separate posting about the prepositions of time, which was one of the problems we discussed.

During the next period, the groups will continue to study English according to their plan and work on their presentations.

Remember to keep your blogs updated!

Class on 27 November

We met for the last time this year on Wednesday, 27 November. The topics were:

• Group discussions: What was your plan during the past four weeks? What did you do and what did you learn? Which tools have you used and how do you feel about them? Each group selected a "secretary" who wrote down the group's opinions and reported back to the class.
• We learned to use Skype for group discussions
• Reeta told us how to make a joint presentation using Google Drive.
• Groups made a working plan for the next two months.  One of the tasks for all groups is to start a joint presentation about their chosen topic.  Next time we will hopefully see some of them.
• Next lesson will be on January 22, 2014.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everybody!

Meeting on 30 October

The course met again yesterday, 30 October.  We discussed what the participants had done in the four-week period between meetings. The groups made learning plans for the next four weeks and posted them in their group blogs. Some work needed to be done on the blogs, so groups concentrated on that for a while.

There were requests to discuss the use of Skype and Google Drive for group meetings and collaboration, so we briefly looked at those.  Johanna and Reeta also presented a free online tool for vocabulary work: http://quizlet.com.

Homework:

• Continue studying according to your group's plan
• Study the use of Quizlet and try to make a vocabulary exercise. Add your exercise to the "Improve Your English with PEOPLE" class. The instructions for Quizlet are on the "Instructions" page in the course blog.

Third lesson

We met again on 2 October.  The lesson contained
- short reports from our study visit to Poland
- a discussion about some words and expressions in English
- a discussion about copyright regulations and adding material to your blog
- Blogger workshop: adding links to articles, structuring your blog, pages and posts, tagging
- a discussion about useful links to study English
- making a plan for the next four weeks of independent study

Second meeting

The second meeting of the Improve Your English course took place today, September 18. The four groups created blogs for themselves. You can access the blogs via the links in the side bar. The learners also detailed their learning plans.

We went over the support material that is collected in this blog: dictionaries, news websites, exercises etc. The groups looked at the material and made plans on how and what to work on for the next two weeks. And of course eight members of the group will be travelling to Poland this Saturday!

First meeting of the group

Two teachers and 14 course participants met for the first time on Wednesday, September 11.  The aim of the meeting was to discuss how we have learned foreign languages in the past, what helps us to learn, and what prevents learning from taking place.

We also discussed each participant's learning goals for our course and their level of English. The learners divided themselves into groups according to their language skills and areas of interest. So, after the first session we have four groups who are going to start building PLEs around a common topic.