Who goes to the island?

We know we've got some incredibly talented students here at A+, but it's time we shared them with the world so everyone else can see how amazing they are. Silver class have been begging to do more acting since their debuts in the A+ soap so this week they worked on their own auditions for a reality TV show. I'm hoping that a director one day stumbles upon these gems and whisks them off to Hollywood. You can vote for your favourite in the comments section and we'll make sure they get through to the next round of auditions.

A+ go on safari!

On Saturday, A+ staff and students went on safari! We didn't have to take a plane to Africa, though, it turns out we can see animals from all over the world just up the road at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster.

A+ English: My experience so far

Hi, my name’s Christine and I’m a placement student here at A-plus.  I’m an English and Education studies student at Sheffield Hallam University currently in my third year. Part of my degree requires me to take undertake a placement in an educational environment for seven weeks each year. This time I decided to self organise and was lucky enough for the people at A-plus to offer me the opportunity to do my placement here! I have a special interest in English as a foreign language and I am doing my third year research project on second language acquisition so this is the perfect place for me to find out everything I need to know!

I’m on my fourth week here and

Modals, gerunds and second conditional, oh my!

So, I've been a TESOL trainee for a few weeks now, and I have to say I like it! I admit to a lot of grammar avoidance when I first started studying. Being faced with seemingly incomprehensible sentences such as, "A dependent clause always contains a past participle in non-finite sentence," would have sent me running for the hills just last month. To be honest, it leaves me feeling a bit wobbly now, but at least I've got the confidence to stand my ground and attempt to work it out instead of my brain just turning to mush and dribbling out of my ear! 

We've done much more than learn grammar on this course, I'm very pleased to report. On Tuesday night,

From The Director's Desk

Hello again readers
Just took a few days off on holiday, a nice break and now back with the team at A Plus Centres.  Our latest CertTESOL trainees are a week and more into their 4-week course and are doing really well.  I have observed some of the teaching and am very impressed with their resourcefulness and the amount of energy and enthusiasm they have.  I also caught up with our part-time CertTESOL course members who turn up on Tuesdays and some Saturdays and brave the dark nights and our lovely November weather come rain or shine to take in sessions on inductive and deductive teaching, modals, passives and conditionals amongst others, with a smile.  Well done to all and keep up the good work. 

First things first

So, you left me last time sitting at a desk in a room a few doors down from where I spend my working day and feeling the trepidation of a new chapter of my life opening up. I had insider knowledge that we were expecting three others and I couldn't help being the hostess and offering each person a cup of tea or coffee when they arrived. Nerves got the better of me, though, and I ended up getting a couple of the orders wrong. I think the others were confused when I finally joined the lesson; with the way I met them at the door and made sure they were comfortable, they probably thought I was just there to make the tea and sweep up at the end!

My Cert TESOL journey

Hi,
It's Tom here and I've got a confession. Many of you know me as the online coordinator for A+English, but what you may not realise is that one night a week I turn from mild-mannered A+ employee into my alter-ego. Yes, I'm revealing to the world that I'm a secret part-time TESOL trainee!

It all started a few years ago when I was living in Peru. I knew of a local English language school that desperately needed a substitute teacher to fill a gap before a new teacher arrived and I volunteered.

The A+ Soap

Our Silver class were set a project to write, produce and direct their own soap. They all did fantastic work and we thought the results were too good not to share!

So, watch our talented students in their first production! There are some real stars of the future here - expect to see more of them on a screen near you soon!

Task Based Learning

Hello, my name’s Neil and I’m the DOS (Director of Studies – we English teachers love our acronyms!) here at A+. I’ve lived in Sheffield for nine years and worked here for four and a half years, but originally I’m from Buxton in Derbyshire. I’ve been a teacher for five years (I taught in Peru for a few months in 2007) and I’ve just recently trained to become an IELTS examiner. Being DOS can be pretty busy at times – I’m in charge of timetabling staff, organising classes, observing teachers, writing and reviewing our syllabus, running our teacher training course, writing lessons for our online course and a few more things! But I love it really....

Anyway, one aspect of teacher methodology I’m quite interested in is Task Based Learning (TBL), a theory that was best developed by Jane Willis in the 90s. In her book, A Framework for Task-Based Learning, she identified the main stages of a TBL lesson as: