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Summer
language courses for children Page 2
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Our
English teaching
A college that's a family
A large family
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Afternoon/evening
events
Other events
Clothes/equipment recommended
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What's
included
Payment etc.
Journey to England/Yorkshire
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Lessons
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Lessons
take place in the mornings for 3 hours. Students are divided
into small groups of 8-12, so that the daily lessons may
encourage their personal oral expression. Prospect Courses
provide all study material: exercise books, biros, pencils,
rubbers, folders. Our fundamental principle is to give great
variety of teaching ideas for the practice, repetition and
creative use of English, so that the language can develop
more lasting and deeper roots than the school curriculum
may be able to allow. |
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The
kind of activities we employ in Middlesmoor are part of
the teaching experience that went into the making of *The
Teacher's Kaleidoscope (distributed by Eurelle Edizioni,
Turin, Italy). The Kaleidoscope is a resource book for
language teachers as well as handbook for teacher training
courses held by Anthony Bamber in Germany, Spain and Italy.
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The
tests
The
sets of language material assigned to each group/level is part
of the initial test, and later of the final test, so that the
students may gauge their progress. People learn easily when
the goal is clear, reasonable and limited. The basic course
material, that is vocabulary, verbs and set phrases, recurs
in the lessons in various activities, and in the plays. All
the students take part in the plays that are put on at the end
of the course.
The final test is very useful to convince the students of the
need for reasonable concentration and effort, as well as making
them realise their improvement in English.. Since in Middlesmoor
we are privileged in being able to teach one subject without
interruption, our students are often able to say that they learnt
more in 3 weeks in Middlesmoor than in a year at school.
The "star"
system
We
also encourage the students to put their English to use during
the day by means of the G4star system". Every evening we award
one or more stars on a big poster which bears the students'
names, to those students who have made particular effort to
use their English with the teachers/helpers etc: throughout
the day. At the end of the course we award prizes to the students
who have most stars.
Theatre
and music: memory-motivation-fun = learning
 Our
theatre work, with roles learned by heart and real costumes on
the stage, is of great importance. Its results, which the parents
can see on the video cassette, are often excellent.
With
the more advanced students we put on some Shakespeare plays: we
either edit or carefully shorten them, or we distribute the bigger
roles (for example Lady Macbeth) between different students. We
also put on easier plays which we write ourselves on the basis
of our Middlesmoor Grammar Book.
In
this book the plays and mini plays contain the structures of particular
grammar units, so even the beginners have plays that reinforce
the material of the lessons.
The
children are expected to learn a reasonable number of the exemplary
sentences that illustrate the grammar book and companion vocabulary.
All the students who love English pop music take part in Middlesmoor
Rocks - a rock concert on our stage in which the students themselves
sing an English pop song that they have learnt and rehearsed.
The
results
We
are very pleased to hear from our students and their parents that
their school marks in English are often extremely improved. Since
about one third of participants in Prospect Courses return to
Middlesmoor as many as 3 times (in a few cases, 6 times), obviously
serious study doesn't spoil the holiday!
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