OISE - Young Learners in 2008

Language courses for Young Learners in 2008

- Spaces available for this summer -

OISE offers young learners the ultimate language programme designed for maximum language learning, stimulating entertainment and specifically tailored to give teenagers a productive learning experience.

Extra places for this summer are now available in some of OISE's most popular locations! Please contact OISE now to book a place.

Contact OISE Central Reservations on +44 (0)1865 258333 or info@oise.com

OISE Website

Frances King - Summer School

Frances King School of English
Location: Central London
Accommodation: Residential and homestay
Age Range: Family summer 9+, adult 16+
Summer Courses: These are just some of the quality courses we are offering this summer:

Standard Courses
> A choice of 15, 20 or 25-hour General English courses.
> We also offer courses at a lower price for students who study in the afternoon.

Family Summer in London
> A study holiday for parents and their children in our superb central London centre in Belgravia (Hyde Park underground station).

Email: info@francesking.co.uk
Website: www.francesking.co.uk

English in the UK Guides 2008

Choose a language … and get a guide in PDF format

Arabic

Chinese

English

French

Greek

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Polish

Portuguese

Russian

Spanish

Turkish

Vietnamese

The Language Tree [Origin of Languages Diagram]

A fun little diagram of the history of Indo-Eupropean Languages

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Resource for EFL teachers: online games for kids

This is a small environment to help supplement skills learned in the EFL elementary level classroom.

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A (Mostly) Complete Glossary for ESL EFL Teaching

A pretty comprehensive glossary of teaching terms. Good ESL reference.

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Lower-Intermediate English Students

Information on the skills of Lower-Intermediate ESL EFL students.

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In this school 850 pupils speak 41 different languages

Children there learn key phrases in more than 40 languages - all spoken fluently by one or more pupils at the school.By the time they leave for secondary school, they boast far more than a mere smattering of French or Cantonese.

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Learn English

Learn English with this English speaking tutorial on a variety of English subjects.

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TEFL Courses

Comparison of TEFL courses for both weekend and online study. Welcome to the world of teaching English abroad.

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If you want to Teach English - Start Here

Great video to inspire you to learn how to Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). There is great demand for English teachers throughout the world. No matter your age or experience, TEFL can transform your life.

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Private schools net more pupils

The number of pupils at independent schools in England has risen slightly, despite increasing fees.Some 511,677 pupils are at the 1,300 schools represented by the Independent Schools Council this year. This is a rise of 0.8% on 2007.

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Buffer Overrun in Office 2000 2003

On 27 October SP3 for Office 2003 was released.

If, since that time, you have had problems spell-checking files in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or FrontPage with the program shutting down due to a "buffer overrun", then you should consider removing Office 2003 (to remove SP3) and then reinstalling Office 2003 but without updating to SP3. This is especially true if the file you are spell checking contains more than one language.

Even if you have a mixed set of programs such as Word 2000 and FrontPage 2003, you will find that Office 2003 SP3 is probably causing the problem and therefore needs to be uninstalled.

An alternative solution that MIGHT work is as follows:

(1) Search for msgres32.dll (this is the MS GRammer check in ESpanish) and rename it to msgres32.dll.old

(2) Control Panel - Add Remove Programs - and repair your Office 2003 progs (Word, Excel, FrontPage, etc)

(3) Restart Word and spell check your document - you MIGHT be asked for the Word disk for the spell checking element to be reinstalled.

Apple Time Capsule Review

Walt Mossberg's review of the Apple Time Capsule

Technology of Teaching

Excellent article here on the future of technology in teaching by Bill Thompson. Money quote:

"Grasping the likely technological shifts is one thing, but what do they imply for education? This is a much harder question, since once you start looking at the way schools operate then you start to question teaching methods, assessment, exams and even the very existence of "schools" and "classrooms".

If every student has a powerful network device that plugs them into the network, and work on digitising every book and other forms of knowledge has been successful, then what is the point of teaching "facts"?

If Wikipedia has been replaced as the destination of choice by the entire contents of the British Library, suitably tagged and indexed, then can we really tell children not to look things up?

The challenge, I think, is to find a way to justify the sort of rote learning of facts and techniques that takes place in school, of finding a reason why knowing times tables, spelling and even the list of kings and queens of England might be considered a worthwhile investment of time and resources."

Convert Outlook Contacts to Mac Mail

As a company of Mac switchers, one problem we've faced is moving contacts from Outlook (not Outlook Express) to Mac mail.

We searched the net and then came up with this simple solution.

(1) The Outlook addresses should show up in the Windows Address Book (WAB)

(2) Open the Windows Address Book (Start - Programs - Accessories - Address Book)

(3) Create a new folder on your desktop

(4) Drag the address cards from the WAB to the folder you created - they will be in the vCard format

(5) Copy this folder to your Mac (via a network, email, iPod, USB drive) etc

(6) On the Mac, drag the vCards from the folder to the Address Book

(7) You're done - only takes a few minutes.

Pupils learn which cutlery to use

From DIGG an interesting interpretation of a BBC news article:

"Look at how insecure people in UK society cannot cope unless they force other people to behave exactly as they do - a form of racism and classism that is sadly still prevalent in UK society amongst people of low intelligence who need to hold on to social symbolism to hide their own ineptitude and lack of independent thought and behaviour patterns."

To read the BBC original, click here.

Is France a country? Is Europe a country?

This will help to reassure all you people about where Europe is headed politically ;-)

Lord of Misrule - Chrismas Guide

The Lord of Misrule's Christmas Guide has been revamped and extended this year, so that it offer readers even more info about Christmas traditions in the UK.

Thousands of visitors surf the site each day, so it is well worth taking a look. If there are pages you'd like to see added, then leave a comment on the blog and The Lord of Misrule will take a look at your request for you.

British launch toilet locator

The Westminster City Council lunched a mobile phone toilet-finding service.

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TEFL Website - Aim for the largest online collection of TEFL Material

A wiki style site aiming to create the largest online collection of TEFL material. Useful if you're a Teacher or a student learning English.Maybe worth hitting the front page just to see how popular English really is as a world wide language.

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Green Business Tourism Scheme awarded to New Forest

Green Business Tourism Scheme awarded to New Forest Business in The New Forest, Hampshire, England UK. New Forest is the Greenest Car Free destination in the UK, Alternative Travel in The New Forest. Black Cab that uses recycled cooking oil as fuel.

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England Rocks gets voted among the Best England Tourism Campaign in the UK

A great musical map mashup using google maps that shows the history of Britpop in the UK, really a cool site for anyone interested in the last 50years or so of rock and indie music!http://www.tourismtrade.org.uk/corporatepress/englandawards.asp

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Enjoy England

Looking for things to do in England this winter, then Enjoy England has a whole host of ideas.

Click here.

Another brick in the MS wall?