January 1, 2019
AOK Workshops, Quito
E: johnbkirk49@protonmail.com
W: www.aokefle-learning.com
Re: Workshop – “How to Use the Internet to Improve your and your Family’s English – with the CEFR, an easy to understand self-assessment” (The CEFR is part of the European Language Portfolio (ELP), which is the official study system of the EU for foreign languages.)
Dear Director of the Institution:
I am a semi-retired English teacher over 65 and am the presenter of the AOK Workshops. Recently, I have been working on an English learning presentation that I hope to share with Ecuadorian families, and I am writing to see if you might be interested. As the language study materials I use are for non-commercial purposes, I do not charge for the presentation. I also present it in support of ONU’s World Goal No. 4 – Quality Education. The workshop lasts 45 minutes. This workshop is mainly for beginners and advanced beginners, but people with higher levels of English are welcome to attend.
Workshop summary
The immediate purpose of the workshop is to provide families with a better understanding of how they can take advantage of the Internet to improve their English learning. It is for family members who are mostly beginners or advanced beginners and wish to study English together and/or separately. I will give suggestions on how they can help their children with their English homework. In addition, I will provide a summary of how to use the CEFR, a very popular language curriculum that can be used for self-assessment. The CEFR can be part of an “Independent Language Learning (ILL)” strategy.
The Internet has many websites for studying English, but they are not well indexed. In the workshop, I will distribute two files totaling over 250 free websites in total, one for children and one for teens and adults, as well as a series of handouts to support the presentation. With this information, families will have a new starting point for their studies.
The Long-term Purpose of the Workshop
An option for my presentation would be to ask the participants if they would like to complete an anonymous evaluation about it. The evaluation would in part ask them if they are in favor of the United Nations providing updated website devoted to international English studies without cost.
The website could have a table of contents and an index to accommodate the large amount of available material and sites. It might also be organized by English levels and the four basic skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking, as is the CEFR. The website archive that I distribute would only be a small example of what a major website devoted to this topic could provide.
If the students think the website would be a good idea, I would send in the evaluations to ONU along with the request for an English language learning website as described above in support of their World Goal No. 4: Quality Education. ONU has 17 World Goals that they hope to meet by 2030. If your organization would prefer not to use the evaluation form, I would still appreciate the opportunity to present the workshop to your group.
Official registration
I am registered with SRI to provide ‘Complementary Professional Services’. Please visit our website (above) for more information about AOK Workshops and contact me by email if interested.
Sincerely,
John B. Kirk
AOK Workshops
* Please click on the link ‘Advertisement (for the students) ‘Families & Internet’ right below the link for this page to see the workshop objectives.