English City Blog

By Gisela Kroll, Frizzael Deluxe, and Professor Pax

We were lost on an island.  Our boat was broken. Our boat sank. Then Professor Pax went crazy. She began to cry! Then we talked about our wishes. We wished for water to drink, cheesy bread (pao du queijo), a fire, beer, and a pizza! Pax wished for a bed.  Then Gisela wished for a handsome boyfriend and Pax turned into a boy.  Gisela changed her mind.  Then Frizzaer wished for a beautiful girlfriend and Pax turned into Princess Peach.  Then Gisela wished Pax back to normal.

Gisela wished for a picnic table for us to sit at. Frizzaer sat on the table. Then he fell off the table into the fire. Then Pax helped him and Pax went into the fire to save him. Pax saved Frizzaer but Pax caught on fire and her clothes burned.

She ran into the ocean. When she came back we could see she was a faerie and said she could grant us each a wish.  We wished that we could learn English.  She promised to grant our wish but said it would take time.

The Happiest Duck!

A Dada poem by Roseofsharon Overland, George 2011 Coy, and Professor Pax

This is a DADA poem we wrote in CREATIVE WRITING class!

The duck is very amazing and all the time he follows the boy
loud and squawking you dip in the water
I love your roundy beak
The duck, the duck, the happiest duck.

The water is very clear and so cold
The water is wet and cool and calm
jump into the water, splash and play in a funny way
The duck, the duck, the happiest duck

The littlest duckling has grown so fat!
soft and fuzzy, chirping sound , love you so much
The duckling is tired and wants to sleep
The duck, the duck, the happiest duck.

A Haiku written by Roseofsharon Overland, George2011 Coy, and Professor Pax

**

dew on pink petals
joy and pain in one body
the beautiful rose

**

English City Laundry (unedited)
by Leslie (Laci Coy)

When I arrived to laundry, there was a long queue. But I had to get washed my dirty T-shirt, so I decided to queue up. Before me was Pax with two big bags of dirty clothes. Her bags were horrible stink. :( The personal at laundry was too slow and they were arguing with anybody, so I had to wait for a long time.

After waiting some hours it was my turn. :) I picked up my washed and hand in my dirty T-shirt. They wanted $2.00 for it, but I saw a sign in store window that said it costs only $1.75. So I negotiated and the last price for washing my T-shirt was $1.50 and their apologies. :)

Next day:

I went to pick up my T-shirt. When I arrived, there was only one client before me. I heard that they exchanged some clothes for him at laundry. I just hoped, they didn’t give my expensive T-shirt to somebody else. I bought it last week and its price was around $70. ;)

YAY! I finally got my clear T-shirt! :) But when I looked at it closer, I can’t believe my eyes! My new, only one week old expensive T-shirt was torn. :( So, I started to complain about it and after arguing I said them they should pay me $70 or they should give me another T-shirt which looks like this, but isn’t torn. ;) They didn’t want to pay me $70, so I sit down at laundry and waited while they went to the nearby shop and buy the new T-shirt for me. :)

While I was waiting there, I heard other client’s complains. One of them got her dress smaller than it originally was; another one got her white pants dyed to pink. After hearing these complaints and my bad experience with this laundry I decided to wash my clothes rather myself next time. ;)

My visit to Languagelab office

I’ve been studying with Languagelab for over a year and during that time have seen many students improving so fast, which wouldn’t be possible in ‘real-life schools’.

Besides of the fact that we are able to learn and practice English like living in an English speaking country, we also easily socialize and make friends worldwide, which again helps to further develop our communication skills.

During my short stop-over in London I was able to visit Languagelab office. 

Finally I could put avatars to faces – and I was so excited!!

When I entered the office Jessie came to greet me like missed old friends, who haven’t seen each other for years!

Jessie is our Director of Education and looks after the teacher and makes sure that we students are happy and have fun learning.

A few minutes later Louise joined and we chatted for ages!  Louise is the Marketing Director of Languagelab – and we students love her cute accent and lovely voice!

Both Jessie and Louise are very lovely ladies and huge fun to be with!

Finally I also was able to meet Tom, the ‘big boss’ of the Languagelab team.

Tom is an expert in e-learning and his team loves him for being such a charming guy!

I was overwhelmed by meeting the Languagelab team, who really put huge efforts into English City – a community we all love so much.

See you next Year!

Andreas Franz

Bangkok

Blithe is really a great teacher, today at the time of the class when she was not able to log in English City, she went to starbuks immediately and in just 12 minutes we started through starbucks internet.

THANKS Blithe Abadi for such an enjoyable conversation and class.

so I think if you’re a student in English City that you’re lucky to learn english with such a great teacher who overcome the obstacles just to reach and teach you.   

On Tuesday, Izzy’s class discussed what the spring season represented to them. Then, everyone took their symbolic spring ideas and blended them together into the following creative poem.

Enjoy! 

A Springtime Poem

By: Marta2012 Kroll, Nepo Spot, Newton Ashland, Anaid Ashland, Jeong Asadar, Regina Kroll, Mimi Ashland, & Izzy

Springtime is a feeling

that just the heart is able to feel

in different ways

There or here 

rain or shower

easter or wester

Then you should know that 

your spirit spring is going to start

everybody will be affected

Every tree is to be

some flowers are not to be

although the real feeling is not to be seen

springtime is ment to be

but anyway nature prevails

because it’s mother…

Shiny sun shiny buny let my heart 

be brightened by the blossom of your flowers

I want to see the flowers above the rainbow

matching with its colors

and enriched by different smells

Windy sandy sunny rainy or golden

although it lasts a short time

it’s a marvelous and outstanding time

We talked about new ideas for process of education on the Jason’s activity 30/04/2012.
These are my ideas about possible activities in English city.

1.    Writing. In my opinion, all articles on the student’s blog should be corrected by teachers. We could be study from our mistakes. The best way is to public both: original variant our story and text after correction.

2.    Organization Communication centre. Firstly, it would be great to give English city’s residents possibility to watch video together. Important technical detail is using suitable TV player (which uses Quicktime program for demonstration YouTube’ clips, I saw this one on Pebble’s theatre). Secondly, it would be interesting to locate in this place presenter’s screens with information about interesting topics (history, traveling, etc.). The main point is to give the students opportunity for conversation. And students could manage separate parts of this centre and inform the audience about activity via Student’s blog and their own Google calendars.

3.    Creating thematic courses. Market Leader Life is an excellent example such sort of learning. If we can attend systematically Grammar course classes, it would be useful.

This post is open for a response, what is your opinion?

Anatoly Lyric

In the last English City News meeting held by Lane Jarman, we talked about flow.

But what is flow? It was a little bit difficult for students to understand at the beginning of the class.

Actually, flow is a way of life that everybody could practice every day. Flow happens when you are completely absorbed in an activity and time seems to fly by.

Flow can be summarize through two mains questions:

What makes me happy?

When am I happiest?

To give a more specific definition, Flow is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. That person has a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and a feeling of success in the process of the activity.

The following nine factors usually accompany an experience of flow:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are clear and goals are attainable, and they match one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high, but not too high.
2. Concentrating and focusing, a deep level of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to concentrate deeply).
3. Loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is naturally rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and their focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself (again, action awareness merging).

After reading these nine points, I’m sure that of lot of English City people will recognize them. Personally, when I read this explanation of flow, I thought: “Wow! This describes me when I’m studying in English City!.”

Unconsciously, each and every one of us applies at least one of these points in everyday life. But we often don’t notice it.

So, it was very interesting to talk about this topic and exchange thoughts about it. Even if it was a lot of psychology to understand, it is a fact!

In the real life, everybody wants to be happy. Nevertheless, our definition of happiness is different from one person to another. But the same thing motivates all people: the desire to reach our goal to be as happy as possible!

Maybe some students could share with us one of their experiences with flow… awaiting your reply.

Valerie1411 Deluxe