News

Hello! Today’s our news letter topic is “Pronunciation training”. A few days ago, we introduced lecture trainings for teachers in another news letter. This time we will show you how teachers get pronunciation lecture skills and teach students good pronunciation.

When it comes to pronunciation, many Japanese have strong accents, which hinder students from improving their English skills. Therefore we put a special emphasis on pronunciation trainings both for teachers and students.
Especially for teachers, we provide

1.1 week special trainings for new teachers
2. Every day teachers’ training
We provide teachers how to teach pronunciation effectively so that they can use those methods in classes.

For example, there is [ə] : sound in English pronunciation, which is called “schwa”. This is a very obscure sound, but by using it effectually, your pronunciation becomes more native-like.To achieve this pronunciation, teachers are trained to pronounce it with their mouths closed, which makes their Philippine accents into native accents. They can also teach students that method.

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Hello! Our topics for today’s news letter is…
1. Daily training for teachers
2. The ratio of nationalities

１.Daily training for teachers

We provide teachers two types of training, which are
a.Lecture style
b.”Peer teaching” style

a.Lecture training
Experienced teachers will be trainers and teach other teachers, especially focusing on pronunciation and grammar. This training is very common among language academies in the philippines.

b.”Peer teaching”
“Peer” means people who are the same age as you, or who have the same type of job, social class etc.

In “Peer teaching” training,teachers make groups of 4-5 people (usually the members of groups are close friends), and teach their strong subjects each other. It is just like a combination of lectures and discussions. For instance, one teacher share his or her teaching methods with other teachers. After that, other teachers ask questions and they start discussions. As they are “peers”, the duscussions would be more active and effective to find the best way of teaching.

WALES maintains high quality of education by doing daily training for teachers.

Hi! Today’s topic for our news letter is “Presentation Activity”.

１.Presentation Activity

We conducted a presentation activity at the end of September,2016.
We made groups depending on students’ nationalities and students presented about cutures of their countries. They had prepared for one week and practiced enthusiastically.

a. Our purposes of this presentation activity are
・To learn and understand other cultures each other
・To understand the difference of languages and gestures between cultures and prevent misunderstandings.

b. The contents of students’ presentations are
・Tabbo manners
・Unique bahaviours and cultures in theie countries
・Foods
・Sightseeing spots
・History
・Family cultures etc.

c. Time Table
9:00-9:30 Taiwan (including questions)
9:30-10:00 Japan
10:00-10:30 Saudi Arabia
10:30-11:00 Korea
11:00-11:30 Comments

Many students asked questions and we had good debates together. By answering questions, we also found new aspeccts of our cultures.
After the presentation activity, students got feedbacks on their grammar, pronunciation and presentation structures in the afternoon classes, which led students to enhance their speaking skills.

TOPIC: Presentation Contest

１. Presentation Contest

In WALES, we have a presentation training for teachers, which is called “Mini Toast Masters”. All teachers are required to present in front of four evaluators and other teachers. But of course, students can join if they want! It hepls them a lot to find their weaknesses.

Process
　1. Two teachers are selected randomly.
　2. Topics are determined by drawing lots.
　3. 1 min preparation
　4. 3 min speech
　5. Feedback (time keeping, pronunciation, grammar etc.)

I also joined onece, and it was challenging ^^; My topic was “What is the difference between happiness and happyness?”. Humm… it was difficult.
This practice is very effective not only for grammar and pronunciation skills but also presentation skills.