Happy Christmas to everyone!

Thats' it! We're finished! Goodbye 2007!

It was an interesting year for the school with alot of new things happening; Online classes, new programmes, lots of new students, new members joing the team but we got there and now we're all ready to close the door behind us and take a bit of a break to recharge our batteries and brace ourselves for 2008.

We finished off the year with a table quiz and a few drinks for the students which was alot of fun! in between rounds of testing the students general knowledge, grammar knowledge, geographical knowledge etc.. the student had do to games; such as getting drseed up as a reindeer or a Santa Clause. I'm not sure how impressed Father Christmas would have been with the standard of the imitations.

So, look forward to seeing everyone in 2008 and of course, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a peaceful, fun, friendly New Year!

Kevin

Who are we?

Last week, we had Brian, a local photographer out to take a few shots of the school and of the staff.

The idea is that, becuase we are all so good looking, we'll attract lots of students Dublin and to the school.

However since putting up the photos, no students have registered, Google won't list our website anymore and all the Pc's in the school have stopped working.

No-one can understand why!

Is "bad" language really "bad"?

I wanted to write about something that comes up quite a bit in the Annalivia staff room when teaching adult students. It usually goes something like this:

Teacher A: "Oh god! Guess what Student X asked me today?"
Teacher B: "What?"
Teacher A: "He asked me what does (insert bad language here) mean?"
Teacher B: "So what did you say?"

And so starts the debate on teaching "bad" language...

I think we all agree that language is a tool used to communicate. It is the means we use to express our thoughts, desires, emotions, hopes and frustrations. Swearing is part of expressive language and so if you are learning a language, you presumably want to improve your communication skills. The reality is that people DO use bad language (also known as to swear, to curse, to cuss, to blaspheme).

Swear words are everywhere they are used in films, books (Shakespeare used curse words!), on the street, everywhere! They are in dictionares and in school playgrounds. But why do we swear?

Well, let's face it, swearing is an outlet for emotions, it allows you to intensify what you are saying. Also, it supposedly relieves pain! When you curse after hitting your head and it hurts, apparently is it the adult equivalent of crying. There are lots of others reasons too... but for the sake of brevity i'll let you Google those reasons for yourself!

So the question is why would you put a language learner at a disadvantage by not teaching them bad language? The obvious answer is that by teaching bad language, you, as a teacher, run the risk of offending another student. As a teacher you have to take into consideration ALL the students in your class. More often than not, you will have different nationalities, different cultures, different ages and different religions in your class. See the problem?

As a teacher you think to yourself "I'm telling these students to go out and use the language I am teaching them in class in the real world, to practise the English I am teaching them." and so there is a contradiction in not teaching them the bad language. See the dilemma?

So what do we do in Annalivia? Answer: We let the teacher decide. Teachers know the class and have a sense of how to handle the situation. I think it would be inappropriate to put "bad language" on the sylabus, but then it would be equally wrong to pretend it doesn't exist!

Thoughts?

A cold busy, winter week!

It seems like the mild weather has left us and replaced us with an icy, windy winter! It's not all bad as it means we can start using the fireplace again and there is more of a Christmas feel to the place!

The cold weather aside, we had a computer genius from a fellow Tandem school in Bremen (http://www.casa-bremen.de) who was setting up a new computer system for us.

We then went over to London for the annual Tandem conference - you can check out some pictures on Stuart's website (englishschoollondon.blogspot.com)

In other news, Diane (our social coordinator) is gone off and holidays leaving her friend Kim to look after our lovely students. As I type they are all in the Wishing Well pub listening to Irish music. Barry (one of our teachers) is taking a group of them out to a surprise visit. Diane is back at the weekend and I'm sure will be fully charged and ready to go!

I've got some nice photos of the Christmas lights in Dun Laoghaire but unfortunately there's something wrong with my laptop and I can't paste any of them into the blog. I'll try it again tomorrow!

A new Arrival!!!!

"Old arrival” may be more apt, but at least I have arrived! Some of you may remember me from my days at Bluefeather in Monkstown (1983-2006). Annalivia has now taken up the Tandem International member school baton where Bluefeather left off. You can see more about TI at http://www.tandem-school.com/
Kevin has kindly presented me with the honour of being Annalivia’s Director of Studies and I hope to be able to do all I can to live up to everybody’s expectations of me. I’m at my desk here in the main office at Annalivia from 09.00 -13.00.
From the outset, I would like to reassure the reader that Annalivia continues to enhance its reputation as one of the best schools for adults in Ireland. To date, the feedback I am receiving is that a course at Annalivia has proven to be a hugely rewarding, enjoyable, and one of the most memorable experiences of students’ lives. I hope to be part of this success in the future and to do whatever I can to ensure that students can reap the maximum benefit from their stay.
You can contact me at greg@annaliviaschool.com if you are a student who might like to know more about us or if you have already been with us and would like to stay in touch with the target language after you have returned home, or if you are a teacher who would like to work in the one of the best schools in these islands, or if you are an agent who would like to know how your students are getting on, or if you need some more info on what we do here for prospective students you would like to send us!

A Rainy Rainy July!

This has been one of the worst weeks for rain in a very long time! It feels as though it has been raining non-stop for 2 weeks. Despite the wet weather, things are stil motoring here... the students went to Riverdance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverdance during the week and they managed to find a sunny few hours to go to visit Howth for the fistival out there. Diane was able to convince a lighthouse keeper to let the student visit his lighthouse and there were some pretty stunning photos, taken by Shin (Again - many thanks!)



Also, this is great; a few weeks ago some of the students were out in Sandycove and bumped into Mary Hanafin. So who is Mary Hanafin I can hear you al ask! She's only the current Minister for Education in Ireland. The students had a chat with her, she asked them a few questions about how they found education in Ireland and it all culminated in a group photo, Mary Hanafin is the lady in the middle, theonly one that looks like a politician :-) When i heard about it, I got quite excited but the students didn't seem to care too much. I am sure there is a sarky comment to be made there about students and education and there disinterest - but I won't say a word ;-)

Thats all for now,

Kevin

Quick update

The busy Summer is upon us at this stage and I am happy to repost that the school is nice and full... Classes are still at a nice number of students, but we're using all the rooms now and there is a really nice buzz of activity around the place...

Diane is organising her usual activities but some of our long term students have also taken on the role as social coordinators! For some reason they are not quite as cultural as Dianes outings, and seem to be centred around house parties, pub outings etc... :-) BUT...as a result, we've had to change the school rules slightly this week and now students are not allowed be more than 5 minutes late for class (it used to be 15 minutes).

Anyone know the expression "to burn the candle at both ends"? http://esl.about.com/library/glossary/bldef_100.htm It was interesting, I went around the class rooms announcing the new (stricter) rule to the students and there was almost a sigh of relief from students. It was as though they now have an excuse to go out LESS often now that they have to be in class at 9am and I think they are happier as a result!

Kevin

What a week!

This was a funny week... We had roasting hot weather, then really cold windy and wet days - it's completely unpredictable...

So, this week what's been happening;

We had an intersting incident on Tuesday morning with our fire alarm deciding to ring throughout the school. It was being childish and stubborn and wouldn't let anyone reset it! Luckily, Tuesday morning was one of the warmer morning and so the students and teachers all went across the road to "English in the Park". Acutually, we had the alarm silenced by 09H00 but I tink the students were more than happy to be in the park for a few hours.

Nothing to do with the school, but our Taoiseacht (the Irish Prime Minister) was re-elected yesterday for the 3rd time and starts running the country again today. He has been our Taoiseacht for the past 10 years and will quite possibly be here for another 5 years. I'm not going say anything more about that other than there are more important things to be worrying aboout like for example the big nexs of the week which is that

Hari's Leaving! Hari Gupta, our favorite Australian Teacher is leaving us to go to like with his lovely little family in Mexico! Hari has been an absolutely great addition to the Annalivia Family and everyone will be sad to see him leave. Today is his last official day but he'll be in and out of the school for the next few weeks. We took a few pictures of him today which you can check out on http://www.annaliviaschool.com/annaliviaschool/Main/photo.htm (The t-shirt was a present for him)

Last thing that might be of interest is that tomorrow is Blooms Day. which is an annual celebration among Joyce fans throughout the world. It is celebrated in at least sixty countries worldwide, but nowhere so imaginatively, of course, as in Dublin and specifically in Sandycove and Dun laoghaire. There the events of Leopold Bloom's day are reenacted by anyone who cares to participate, and his itinerary is followed all across Dublin. Diane has arranged a social outing to participate in the events and has a BBQ arranged afterways in the beach...

Let's see what the weather has in store for us...

Summer is here!

The sun is shinning in Dublin and the weather is hot! (well for Dublin anyway...)

The school is nice and full with a really good mix of students at the moment and as I type the students are out with Diane (our social coordinator) visiting an old Georgian house ( http://www.esb.ie/main/about_esb/numbertwentynine/default.htm ) followed by a walking tour of Dublin and (probably) finishing up with a pint or two of Guinness, and practising their English of course ;-)

It was a busy week this week as we said goodbye (for a week or so anyway) to most of all our Cambridge Exam classes who, at this stage have sat the Speaking and listening papers and will be getting ready for the reading, writing and english in use sections. So good luck to you all!

By the by, I found a nice website for anyone interested in a few new words... http://www.word-detective.com the URL is self explanatory but there are some intersting articles, particularly for English students.

I've been keeping an eye on the statistics and there are quite a few people checking out the blog, which is great to see, but please DON'T BE SHY, leave me a little comment, question or suggestion!

All the best,

Kevin

Dear Diary :-)

So, we've been dragged kicking and screaming into the "Technoage" and we've finally managed to put up an Annalivia Blog!The idea with this is that it will allow students of the past, present and future to, in some way, keep in touch with Annalivia and their time in Dublin.

I'll be posting up little bits of news, interesting stories and maybe even a few photos. I'm hoping to be able to do this at least on a weekly basis, but we'll see how things go!

Please feel free to use this blog to keep in touch and please post do comments, even just to say hello. I will be correcting your mistakes though :-)

Kevin
http://www.annaliviaschool.com