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June 2021 - Year 23 - Issue 3

ISSN 1755-9715

To the Editor

Letter 1

Dear Hania,
Chief Editor of HLT

Please also allow me to share the recent publications of  TEFLIN (The Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia) Teacher Development Series.

The Publication Division of TEFLIN has published the TEFLIN Teacher Development Series, which is a series of short practical resource booklets for English language teachers.  The editors of the series are Dr. Willy Renandya from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Ms. Nur Hayati from Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia.

Most of the books are available to download for free on the TEFLIN’s website.

Please feel free to forward this message on to your colleagues or students who may be interested in using/reading these e-books.

Thank you for your support.

 

Best regards,  

Flora Debora Floris (Ms.)

Lecturer

English Department

Petra Christian University, Indonesia

 

Letter 2

Announcing this year's finalists

We are delighted to announce The PIEoneer Awards 2021 finalists - celebrating innovation and achievement in global education. 

2021 has been the most competitive year in the awards' five year history. We received 50% more entries than in 2020, which had been a record year! The quality of entries across all categories was extremely high, reflecting the ongoing innovative and quality work being carried out across the sector.

Click here to see the finalists across our 19 categories. 

Tickets 
Tickets to our hybrid awards ceremony are now on sale. We are planning an in-person event on Friday 3rd September at London's historic Guildhall, plus a live stream of the ceremony via our virtual awards platform for those who can't make it to London.  

Our virtual awards platform will facilitate networking for all attendees before and after the awards ceremony - it will be open from Weds 1st - Tues 7th Sept, so everyone can make the most of the strong community that comes together each year to celebrate our finalists and winners.

Benefit from our early bird tickets - only available on a limited number of tickets. Once they're gone, they're gone!

Buy tickets now

"The PIEoneer Awards bring together the best in the industry from across the world and provide practitioners with a unique opportunity to meet, learn and be inspired by these industry leaders in the International Education sector." 

"Thanks to The PIE for running the awards. The room on the night was full of people running amazing processes for the wider good of humanity and not themselves. Spectacular and exhilarating."

 

Letter 3

By Francisco Gomes de Matos

ABA Global Education, Recife

 

I' m 87 so the time is ripe to ask myself :

Have I served my family, my country, the local community? How?

Have I humbly contributed to Global Peace/Nonviolence/Nonkilling? How?

Have I helped spread the concept of Dignity? How?

Have I been making a case for Peace Linguistics? How?

Have I been  creative as a poster author? How?

Have I learned from friends about interconnecting Health and Spirituality? How ?

Have I made a humble case for a Pedagogy of Positiveness? How?

Have I asked for forgiveness every time I make a mistake?

Have I thanked God for giving me longevity?

 

Letter 4

Dear Hania

here is an article that would be a great starting point for a lesson

Best

XXX

 

It's okay, not to be okay.Follow

November 23, 2017 · 

This 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coiffed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home yesterday. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an  eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room …. just wait.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged, it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice;

I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away, just for this time in my life.”

She went on to explain, “Old age is like a bank account, you withdraw from what you’ve put in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still depositing.”

And with a smile, she said: “Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less, & enjoy every moment.

Photograph by Karsten Thormaehlen

 

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM CUSTOMER SERVICE?
[Considering the ‘experience’ aspect of the lesson]
I remember when I first started reading ‘The 10 Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences’ by Matt Watkinson. I was like a born-again Christian! It suddenly dawned on me that what our students are actually buying is the total learning experience of which the learning aspect is only a small part. Think: is food and cost the only thing you consider when going to a restaurant?
So what are these 10 Principles? And can they help us craft better lessons? Here is the full list. The principles are Watkinson’s (pp. 35-36) – the comments are mine.
Great customer experiences…
1. …reflect the customers’ identity. Think about how our learners think of themselves. For instance, it would be a mistake to stress a native-like accent if your learners are ‘Greek – and proud of it’.
2. …satisfy our higher objectives. Your students may be asking for Grammar, when actually they need communication skills. 'People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole!'
3. …leave nothing to chance. So pay attention to detail. Seating arrangements. Lighting. Temperature. Decoration. Background music. Your own appearance. Every single thing matters.
4. …set and then meet expectations. Tell students what your aims are. ‘By the end of the lesson, you’ll be able to manage a short interaction on the phone’. Set goals – and then make sure you deliver.
5. …are effortless. Sure, we want students to push themselves when it comes to practicing, but the rest of the experience should be smooth. Routines help. It also helps if everything is ready and readily available – both in class and online.
6. …are stress-free. Confusion and uncertainty are the two enemies here. Give clear instructions – and check them. Inform students about assignments and exams – and make sure they get feedback and results as soon as possible.
7. …indulge the senses. Sure, a school is not a restaurant, but what about soft background music? And what about smell? Nightclub patrons danced longer in a scented nightclub – and later reported they liked the music more!
8. …are socially engaging. This single aspect can completely transform the lesson. Think: do your students really interact with each other at a personal level? Do the students feel as part of a group? Would they want to go out together after class?
9. …put the customer in control. How much autonomy do students have? Are they given choices? Do they get to work on projects where they get to organise themselves and take all the decisions?
10. …consider the emotions. If you want your lessons to be memorable think about the emotional aspect. A poem or a song perhaps; a film clip; a moving ad or a story. It need not be long: ‘For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn’ (E. Hemingway).
Of course, for EL teachers not all of these elements are equally important. Now go through the list and see if you can identify the ones that really matter. Oh – and read that book too.
The Moral: Look at the lesson from the ‘customer experience’ angle.

 

Letter 5

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As you’ve seen over the past few months, DELTA Publishing has brought you lots of online resources and seminars to help you with the new digital world including the DELTA Augmented app and BlinkLearning.


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