Saturday night’s all right for…….

June 16, 2007 · Filed Under Work · Comment 

….working!  Yes, that’s right.  I’m working.  Other half and little one have gone off down to Genova.  This means that I can get on with preparing for a meeting on Monday.   The meeting will be about a new course I’m cooking up with another guy.  This other guy is an expert on certain things financial - so he can deal with the vocational stuff, while yours truly will concentrate on the best way of getting people to talk about certain aspects of financial data in English.  I’m not going to be any more specific than that.

Anyway, while listening to a bit of Yes and downing a drop or two of red wine, I’m trying to persuade those old creative juices to flow - which, I’m happy to say they are doing.  At least I’ve got some experience at planning workshop type courses now.  Another course which I planned and ran is to be held for the third time down in Rome.  The first time I ran this course it went better than I had hoped for and the second time was even better.  The course participants were most complimentary, or so I heard from my colleague.

I begin my course planning process by thinking about the objective, then I’ll spend some time hopping around the world wide web hunting for information and potential material.  Once I’ve got this, I’ll start drafting a structure which will provide a route towards the final objective.  The activities I’ll come up with could be thought of as being feeding stops on the way towards the destination.   Once I’ve fed all the information  I think is necessary to those doing the course, then I can start them on the final exercise which attempts to tie everything together and thus hits the objective.  That is the theory anyway.

My oh my, this process sounds quite straightforward when put down on ‘digital’ paper, but it can be quite testing.  Once I’m happy with the road and the stops, I can start to build a presentation.  These presentations buck the trend of presentations generally, seeing as I’ll include rather more on my slides than I would if I were presenting to mother tongue speakers.  I find this aids comprehension, which keeps everything going where I need it to go.

Right, back onto the road.  I’m not quite there yet in terms of direction and stops,  but I want to have a reasonable idea before Monday’s meeting.

Just in case you think I’m a work-o-holic, I should add that I spent some of the afternoon wandering around with my camera taking a few pics.  I have not reviewed them yet, some I’m not sure whether I’ve got anything that I really like.

OK, I’m signing off for now.  Back to the grindstone.  Enjoy your Saturday evening!

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Italians and language learning.

May 31, 2007 · Filed Under Italians · 2 Comments 

I’ve heard this comment many times from my Italian students. It basically goes ‘Italians are not very good at/incapable of learning other languages’. Well, I have an appropriate response to this oft made comment: ‘bollocks’ (si equivala approssimante a ‘palle’ in italiano, credo).

Sorry about the slight vulgarity, but sometimes it is one of the best ways to get your message across.

Italians are just as capable as anyone else of learning other languages, indeed, Italy has quite a multi-lingual population.

In Italy, as opposed to the UK, I’ve met loads of people who speak a second or a third language. French and Spanish are common second languages, as are English and German, and that is without mentioning all the various dialects which exist here, some of which are considered to be genuine languages separate from Italian, I should point out.

So come on all you Italian language students, basta negatività, as the Nike ad goes ‘just do it’. All you need is some motivation and application and it can be done. Yes, I know some are more ‘portati’ (gifted/naturally able) than others, but ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’, to coin an old English saying.

To see what Italian’s are capable of take a look at Rob’s blog Wind Rose Hotel and you will see just how well an Italian can write in English. And Rob is by no means alone, I can assure you.  There is a young lady I know called Caterina who speaks English fantastically well.  There are many others too.

So, saying Italians cannot learn other languages is absolute, total, and utter bollocks.

Climbs down from soap box.

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Creative juices

July 19, 2005 · Filed Under Work · Comment 

Trying to design activities for teaching people how to use English in meetings and discussions situations. Coming up with something original, enjoyable and effective is not at all easy, I can tell you. Thinking of using football as a theme in some way. It’s difficult to find an Italian who does not like the game, so you can play on this at times to get, all male, classes talking for hours. And they do do all the talking. I know sweet nothing about the game, apart from the fact that you use a ball and that people quite like fighting about it. Bit like religon in some ways, is football. Good excuse for a bust up. I digress. Anyway using footy as a subject is just about a dead cert in terms of gererating interest. Think I will explore this avenue. Puts thinking cap on.

Then there is the fact that my mind seems to grind to a halt once the temperature soars over 35°c, which means the interface between the thinking cap and my dear old grey matter gets all sweaty and all those creative impulses disappear down the waterfall that is my forehead.

Time to entertain the baby. Must go.

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