Posty

REFLECTIONS ON LESSON LEARNT AND FUTURE PRACTICE

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Water photo created by wirestock - www.freepik.com What are the most important things that you have learnt through your engagement in the ONL course? Why? If asked whether or not to join the course my answer would definitely be that it is worth spending the time on. There are numerous benefits. First of all, it is a great opportunity to meet open and skillful people from all over the world. Thanks to the meetings we had a chance to share information about the latest teaching trends and methods. Secondly, I have learnt about cross-cultural openness and ideas how to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously. The third point is connected with the practical knowledge about using numerous tools and methods to implement into our daily teaching practice. Above all, the course gives time to reflect on routines and breaking them. In result changing teaching into more effective and inspiring practice. How will your learning influence your practice?   Development of blended learning will
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POWER OF NON-COGNITIVE ABILITIES

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  Banner vector created by macrovector - www.freepik.com Teachers are usually committed professionals whose challenge is to plan learning process so that it makes the biggest possible difference to students’ learning and progress. There are numerous issues that have to be taken into consideration, like structure of the course, goals to achieve, scientific content, assessment or the planned workload. However, success in the world of employment is strongly connected with so called soft skills , by which we understand social and emotional abilities. Unfortunately, they are often forgotten in syllabuses and curriculums. In fact, the sooner they are presented and trained, the more profitable it will be for our students. Soft skills will help to open mind, become ready to adapt to new environments and overcome obstacles. One of the first people dealing with soft skills was Dale Carnegie in 1930’s in his book How to win friends and influence people? (Carnegie,1936). It was a self-help book
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COLLABORATION IN INTERNATIONAL TEAMS

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Designed by rawpixel.com / Freepik Many universities gather students from different corners of the world. However, geographically diverse and sometimes dispersed teams face many challenges.  Cultural differences which can create social distance pose one of the biggest problems. They can result in lack of emotional connection, that leads to misunderstandings and mistrust. For a few years I have been teaching international teams: those connected only by the internet and those which meet in the classroom. I have noticed that when team members come from different backgrounds or nations communication can decline, misunderstandings appear and cooperation weakens. My students are united by a common goal - developing their knowledge of business English. However, because more and more companies today rely on international workforce to succeed in the work market and at the same time draw benefits of international diversity, my students have to be prepared to operate internationally. And it is
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OPPENNESS AND ASKING QUESTIONS

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Openness and asking questions School photo created by master1305 - www.freepik.com "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein I have been teaching for many years and observe my students struggling to be successful. I equip them with numerous learning tools, support them and do my best to develop good relations inside student groups. However, no matter how much I believe myself to be approachable and open to help students, few take advantage of this opportunity. I started to wonder not only what obstacles exist between me and my students but also what makes them closed to asking questions in and out of the classroom. There are numerous reasons, some psychological in nature. Definitely shyness is one of the most obvious. Some students feel uncomfortable because they are naturally inhibited and reserved. They often have no courage to participate and ask questions. It also goes together with two more fears: the fear of peers and the fear of appe
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DIGITAL OR SOCIAL LITERACY

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  DIGITAL OR SOCIAL LITERACY Almost two years ago people all over the world got stuck at home due to pandemic problems. On-line teaching and learning posed a challenge. Most of teachers felt like thrown at the deep end. We knew little about both technology and methodology of on-line courses. Initially digital literacy was the biggest concern. First of all, I thought about my skills and qualifications which were rather shallow. My institution equipped me with MS Teams – a skillful device to handle online meetings as well as Moodle – a complicated but comprehensive system to support asynchronous teaching and learning. I spend a lot of time studying functions and exploring the unknown depth of virtual reality. Here important questions arose: What about students? How will they manage to feel at home in virtual space? What should I do or prepare to support them with basic functionalities of the systems? The answer appeared to be quite simple. They are computer natives and I am only an
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Nice to meet you!

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  Nice to meet you! I am Ela, a teacher of Business and Legal English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. In this post I enclose a photo of my hometown and the main building of my university. This is my first attempt at creating a blog. I have to admit that it was a challenging task. But here I am, with my small success. I have been teaching for a long time. The last three semesters I spent in front of the computer, like many of us, teaching remotely via a screen. Online teaching was quite a challenge for me but with time I was improving, learning new tools and skills. I believe that an online network course like this, may be exactly the challenge I need to turn routine into something creative and adopt all the skills in reality of classroom teaching. I hope my students will enjoy the fact that our face-to-face classes will be extended and developed in virtual reality.
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