4 July 2009, 12:06 pm
We have some new material on Study Zone! I like to think good things take a little longer. It’s been a bit of a wait, but we have new lessons and exercises for you to try out. We’ll be very interested in hearing your feedback on them.
To understand why it takes time to create new material, you have to know our process. The teachers at the English Language Centre who create all the Study Zone material do the work when they are not teaching classes. This means they only have a few weeks, scattered over the year, to work on Study Zone lessons. First they identify specific grammar or skills for development. There are two ways to identify topics – either through your suggestions, such as a request for lessons on participles, or based on what their classroom students need extra practice on, such as modals for the lower intermediate students. Then they develop the lessons and exercises, working with Byron Crossley and using Hot Potatoes software. After that the curriculum coordinator – that was me, soon it will be Cathy. Welcome Cathy! – the curriculum coordinator reviews the material. At this point, the teachers may do some major revisions before giving it to Byron, who then puts the material on a ‘working’ Study Zone site. That’s a duplicate site where we try out new things before we put them on the real, live site. Then the curriculum coordinator goes through all the lessons and exercises again with a fine tooth comb, hoping to catch any mistakes and to make sure everything is clear and correct. Finally, Byron makes any remaining minor revisions that are necessary and then puts it all up on the live Study Zone site. So you can see why this all takes time!
Hope you enjoy going through the lessons. Let us know what’s working and what’s not! As always, we love hearing from you.
At the Lower Intermediate (330) level we’ve added 5 whole sections on modals:
At the Intermediate (410) level, we’ve added 2 sections on prepostions:
At the Upper Intermediate (490) level, we’ve got 5 new readings and we’ve begun to work on a higher level grammar section, starting with Adjectives:
7 April 2009, 5:46 pm
Language learning has taken on a new twist these days here at the English Language Centre. Many of our teachers are multi-lingual, never mind bilingual, but this year there seems to be a renewed interest among some teachers to learn another language. French, Mandarin, and Spanish are the popular choices. This is a great thing for a language teacher to do. I’m taking French classes, and it’s very interesting what you notice as a student as opposed to what you think as a teacher. For example, I have a new appreciation for the kind of exercises we have on Study Zone: specific grammar points, clear and simple lessons, quick and easy exercises, immediate feedback on answers. As a teacher in class, I prefer lots of group activities and I am a strong believer in communicative methodologies, where students are talking to each other and using the language as much as possible. But as a student, I really like drill exercises which help me memorize grammar forms and which I can do by myself. Also, I’d forgotten how much fun it is to learn a language! I think that as teachers, sometimes we take language teaching too seriously. It’s good to remember to have fun with it too. So, with my new student awareness, I hope that Study Zone meets some of those other learning needs teachers sometimes forget: the need for simplicity, the need for ‘do it yourself’ learning, and the need for a bit of fun!
Random Study Zone Facts:
- New address, for simplicity sake: simply go to StudyZone.ca
- Number of hits to Study Zone last week: 182,479! I don’t imagine that all those people were working on their English skills, but still, that’s a lot of hits and we’re grateful.
- Most popular pages are the 330 level grammar exercises and the perfect tenses section.
Keep up the comments. They’re great and keep us thinking!
2 February 2009, 6:12 pm
Last year was the Year of the Rat, with characteristics such as confidence and optimism. No wonder we started our project to revise and improve Study Zone! Now we have begun the Year of the Ox, and reading or listening to the international news one knows it is a time for diligence and patience – also very appropriate for Study Zone, as we see how much we have done and how much more work there is still to do.
We want to take a moment to thank all Study Zone users, both long-standing and new, for your continued support and great feedback on what you like and would like more of! It’s great to hear from you all. Your comments have been very helpful. We’ve taken note of all your suggestions and you will be seeing some of the new exercises soon, as we finish the revisions to level 330.
Also, we’re interested in hearing your suggestions for how to make the best use of this blog. What would you like to see here? How can we support each other better, as teachers and as learners? Let us know your ideas, and we’ll see what we can do.
So, again, THANK YOU and best wishes for the coming year.
8 October 2008, 11:43 am
Have you checked out the new look for the 200 level Grammar on Study Zone? We’ve gone through all the 200 Grammar lessons and exercises, corrected errors, revamped (one of my favourite words; it means “to renovate”) the navigation, and updated the code. We hope you agree that these pages have a fresh, clean look.
We also hope you will let us know if there are any grammar points you would like us to ADD. We can’t promise that we will get to all your suggestions for new material, but your suggestions will help us determine which grammar items would be most helpful.
Let us know what you think of the updates so far. We’ve added a Feedback page to this blog where you can put comments about specific Study Zone pages. That way, we can keep track of all the suggestions. But continue to post your general comments or questions here. We love to hear from you!
31 July 2008, 5:19 pm
Hi there!
Well, the wonderful thing is that we are receiving your comments. Thank you! They’re great. The unfortunate part is that the technology got the better of us for a while. Until this morning, comments have been going into an internet limbo: a storage place for comments waiting to be approved. We’ve corrected the error, and now your messages will go directly to the blog.
It is one of the ironies of technology that while it lets us do amazing things, such as communicating across the globe in an instant, those things which seem simple are actually quite complex. It’s like language, it takes a lot of behind the scenes work to be able to communicate in a simple and clear way.
And busy ‘behind the scenes’ is where we are these days. I’ll let you know in my next post what we’re working on. Meanwhile, thanks again for your comments – this will sound corny, but it was a real thrill to read such positive feedback after years of very limited opportunities for connection. And please, feel free to offer suggestions!
Cheers, Charlotte
10 June 2008, 9:18 am
Hello! Study Zone has entered the Age of the Blog and we want to hear from you! A long time has passed since we made any changes or improvements to Study Zone; now, finally, we are doing just that. But we need your help. We – the English Language Centre, in general and the Study Zone “work crew”, in particular: Byron, techno-wizard extraordinaire, and Charlotte (that’s me), curriculum and grammar nerd – want and need your input on how to rebuild and revise Study Zone.
We’re going through all the reading and grammar lessons and exercises to correct errors and make explanations clearer. And we have a few ideas for new things, such as this blog, new material, and links to other sites. But you use the material, and you know what is working, what’s not, and what’s missing.
You know how Study Zone can best serve your needs. We’d like to get a conversation going about Study Zone – to hear how and why you are using it; to share ideas for how to improve it; and to develop a community of support for those of us who are connected to it – English language learners and teachers.
Study Zone gets an average number of 25,000 hits a day, Monday to Friday. That’s a whole lot of interest in things like the present perfect and the first conditional! So, please – send in a comment; tell us your ideas for how we can make Study Zone better.
Thanks!
Charlotte
