Plymouth Language Cafe - British Poetry Evening 19/02/2015

Many thanks to all who attended our last week's Language Cafe - British Poetry Evening. 

This special event was organised in collaboration with our partner PCQ Arts. Our guests were able to listen to Plymouth's Poet Laureate Michael Sullivan, Martin Perry and PCQ Art's Peter Davey. It was a wonderful evening, full of reflection as well as laughter.We would like to thank all who attended, we hope you enjoyed the evening as much as we did. Special thanks to all involved in organising this successful event. 

Please visit our website to see all the photos from this event 

Language Cafe - British Poetry Evening 

Language Cafe on Facebook 

Poetry Evening - Language Cafe

Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement. – Christopher Fry

Join us for our special Language Cafe Event - an evening of British Poetry. We invited some very special guests who would like to share some of their favourite pieces by British poets as well as introduce you to their own work. 

If you are a keen writer yourself, please don't be shy, we would love to hear your own poems too. For those of you who are looking for some guidance and poetry tips, there will be an opportunity to speak to Plymouth's famous - Martin Perry. This event is organised in collaboration with PCQ Arts 

Refreshments will be provided.
To book your spot, please contact Gabriele gabrielem@almondvoclink.co.uk

8th Anniversary of Almond Vocational Link Plymouth

This January we have a very good reason to celebrate, it has been just over 8 years since Almond Vocational Link opened it's doors for the first time.

Since then we have met hundreds of wonderful students, work placement providers and host families. We have also managed to gather a great team of individuals who work very hard every day to ensure that everything runs smoothly. You can find out more about them all here 

It has been a very successful 8 years for Almond, our Plymouth English Language School has grown and is now offering courses for local foreign speakers. We established a new Plymouth Language Cafe which helps foreign speakers to improve their English and enables them to integrate better. 

In the near future we are hoping to build on this experience and expand our English Language services even further with a new business venture coming in 2015. 

We would like to sincerely thank you all for supporting us over the years and continuing to name Almond Vocational Link your preffered KA1 and KA2 Erasmus+ project partner for the UK. 

If you are seeking UK partner to work with on your Erasmus+ KA1 or KA2 project, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Our European Project Manager Mrs Janet Wonnacott janetw@almondvoclink.co.uk  is always happy to answer your inquiries. Please take a look at some of the projects we took part in and don’t forget to read the Testimonials left by our project partners, students and University Erasmus+ Coordinators.

To find out more about our services please visit our website

Halloween Language Cafe

This week we decided to get you all into the spirit of Halloween!

Since the Language Cafe falls one day before, we thought it might be a good idea to carve some pumpkins and make your own Jack O'Lantern.

We know many of you don't really celebrate Halloween in your home countries, it's not a typically British tradition either, but certainly a fun one.

You can bring your own pumpkin or one to share with your friend, alternatively please get in touch with Gabi gabrielem@almondvoclink.co.uk and she will order one for you, that will be delivered to our office. 

PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

Oh and if you would like to join the Language Cafe Facebook group, email us with a request, we will happily add you  :) 

Hope to see many of you there, watch this space for the photos :) 

Bowling with our Language Cafe friends

This week we moved our Language Cafe to Wednesday, a very rare thing for us to do but certainly justified in this case. The group was very keen on going bowling and I'm not going to lie, we loved the idea too :) 

Language Cafe is all about learning English through experience and lively interaction and that's exactly what we did. Our lovely apprentice, Gabi took on her shoulders the task of organising the group. She booked 2 a track at the Tenpin Bowling located in the Barbican Leisure Centre. The access to this complex can be a bit tricky if you are not confident at moving around Plymouth but with a little help of Google maps and City Bus travel map you shouldn't have much trouble. 

If you choose to access the area via Barbican lock gates ( bridge leading to the Aquarium) please remember that the bridge shuts for the night at 9.30pm

Tenpin offers some really good deals throughout the week, please check their website to see which one suits you best.

The Language Cafe will go back to its usual format from next week, join our Facebook group to keep up to date. For more things to do and places to see whilst in Plymouth, please go to our website

Visit to the Royal William Yard

We love showing the students how beautiful our city really is. Plymouth is currently experiencing some lovely warm weather after a bit of a damp end of the summer, so we decided to make a good use out of it :) 

Usually on the first day we take our students to the Plymouth Hoe and the Barbican for their welcome tour, show off  the historical sights and the beauty of Sutton Harbour. Afterwards we briefly walk through the Plymouth City Centre, so that they know where to get all their essentials from. What we often do miss out is the stunning Royal William Yard! This area  is bursting with stunning architectural sights and breath taking views across the Plymouth Sound and River Tamar. We thought those were good enough reasons to visit and therefore invited our students for a little walk and a coffee stop. 

We all met in the Almond's office at City Business Park and took a brisk walk to the nearby bus stop in Stoke Village, to catch the number 34 bus :) After only a few minutes atop of a double-decker we could see the glistening waters of River Tamar and soon after the magnificent Royal William Yard 's entrance gate.

We had a fantastic time walking around, exploring the area and learning its history. Climbing up the famous Coastal Path Staircase comes highly recommended, the views are spectacular and it's an absolutely perfect spot for a picnic. To end our day, we watched the sun slowly sink under the horizon as we sat outside of Seco Lounge with a delicious cappuccino in hand.  We will definitely be back soon and more regularly :) 

Thank you

Many thanks to all who turned up to our Thursday Language Cafe at Tudor Rose Tea Rooms.

This event was very well attended and we all had a great time. Daniela Sonvakova did a fantastic job at delivering her Montessori English Language lesson to all the students present. 

If you would like read a bit more about what we were up to and see all the photos, please head to our website 

Language Cafe at the Tudor Rose Tea Rooms

Join us for some delicious, homemade scones and traditional English tea at the Tudor Rose Tea Rooms. Tudor Rose is located at the Barbican's famous New Street - the oldest street in Plymouth. The building's historical features, charming decor and delicious scones make it a perfect location to explore English culture and improve the language. 

This week one of our MMLT online training teachers - Daniela, will be delivering her Montessori Lesson to the group.

Please call our office 01752 224446 or email Gabriele gabrielem@almondvoclink.co.uk to book

MMLT online and face to face training for language teachers

In the recent months we put a lot of work and dedication in a project we are the UK partner for. Being a part of  the MMLT project, changed the way we visualize our company's  future of English language training courses. One of the most significant and sustainable results of the Montessori project is our recently opened Language Cafe. 

You have probably read quite a lot about it on here and on our website/social media platforms. We are extremely proud of this achievement and believe it genuinely improves the lifestyle of many local foreign nationals and also improves the quality of the service we can offer to our European students during their stay. 

During the piloting part of this project, Almond Vocational Link was to deliver teacher training sessions for language trainers in both face-to-face and online version. We received a tremendous amount of feedback, and those who managed to complete the training, admitted they will continue to use Montessori as their preferred method during language training. 

Two members of Almond's team participated in the training sessions delivered by Mrs Karen Corne. Valentina took part in the face-to-face training, Kamila participated in the online course. Both of them are actively involved in the running of our Montessori Language Cafe, therefore receiving training and giving invaluable feedback on the matter was very important to us. As a part of their training, they were asked to prepare lesson plans for a group of adult learners. Our trainees delivered their lesson plans to the students during our Language Cafe with great results.

We managed to capture some of the lessons on camera and we would love to share it with you. In addition to this, we also asked a local company to create a video documenting one of the lessons. Please take a look and feel free to share, its a fantastic opportunity to see how our students from Turkey and Portugal interacted and worked together during the class. 

               

                                     

Language Cafe - Jobs

Last night's topic for the Language Cafe was "jobs". We all talked about what we do at work and what would we like to do in the future. We had a great opportunity to listen to how different the rules and regulations are in schools and pre-schools across Denmark. Our Danish students are currently assisting in schools and pre-schools in Plymouth, so it was very interesting to listen to how the system works in their home country. 

We also had a couple of surprise hidden talents come out and found out, we have an aspiring young actress and a singer in our group! The group also got to know our new arrivals from Czech Republic who talked about the carrier path they'd like to follow after education.  We also played a little game of "Guess who I am"

"Guess who I am" 

Divide the participants into 2 groups. Every team member must come to the front and draw a card with a job title written down. Under the job title, there are 2 "banned" words. This means that when talking about your job, you are not allowed to use the banned words. You have 60 seconds to describe your job whilst others are guessing.  Both teams can guess and win points at the same time. The game ends, when all the participants take their turn. 

To see our previous games, follow the link 

Language Cafe in Plymouth Herald

Hope you all had a great Easter break, we most certainly did :) Just before Easter we had a little visit from local newspaper - Plymouth Herald. We sent an email to one of the reporters, explaining what our Language Cafe is all about and how it can improve the  Plymouth community and the relations between people of different nationalities with the locals. Sian Davis - the reporter, decided this was worthy of a news story and the ball went rolling from there.  Just before Easter we had a Plymouth Herald photographer joining us for the Language Cafe to take some pictures of our students, we had a great laugh :) Below you can find the news story itself, which appeared in Herald on Bank Holiday Monday 21/04/2014

Photo by Plymouth Herald

A LANGUAGE cafe is bringing together foreign speakers to help them integrate into the Plymouth community.The cafe, at City Business Park, Somerset Place, in Stoke runs on Thursdays from 5pm.

The free cafe brings English lessons into a social environment to help adult learners get to grips with the language more effectively – and give them a chance to get to know each other. Foreign students attend the classes, along with people who live and work in Plymouth and want to be able to integrate better into the community. 

Kamila Bielawska, who works for Almond Vocational Link in Plymouth said one of the main aims of the cafe is to help increase the learners’ confidence to practice their English outside the classroom. Kamila said: “The project aims at implementing the Montessori teaching style into an adult environment to help them learn language more effectively.

 “As a part of this project, we started our own language cafe. “The cafe is aimed at foreign language speakers from all backgrounds, who would like to improve their English. 

“During the meetings, we use Montessori teaching methods, meaning that the ‘classes’ are very interactive, fun and free-flowing but with a set goal to achieve each time. 

“The classes are becoming very popular with our European students but also with other foreign nationals who are living and working in Plymouth. “Many of them often mention to us that they feel too afraid to make a mistake and sound silly whilst speaking English. 

“This is often the reason why they stay silent and in fact avoid the opportunities to practice their English language. 

“Some of the participants even mentioned that the Language Cafe is one of not many opportunities they get to improve English, because they are too stressed to use it spontaneously. “

We are trying to boost their confidence, eliminate the stress, and convince that showing the will to communicate is always better than remaining silent.”Games and interactive activities help the learners get to grips with their language skills, according to Kamila. 

“We use a wide variety of resources, organise many fun activities and simple games in teams,” she said. “Because the participants are of mixed ability and of different nationalities, they have to use English in any way they can, to communicate and consult each other during the tasks and games. “The environment is very friendly and relaxed, which helps those with lower abilities to open up. 

“Many of our local participants believe that improving their language skills will help them to integrate better and get closer to the Plymouth community – and we are always looking for more people who we could help and who would like to join us every Thursday.”

  Source: Plymouth Herald 

Photo by Plymouth Herald

Photo by Plymouth Herald

"My personal experience in Plymouth" by Emilie

One of our students from Belgium, decided to write a few paragraphs about her experience in Plymouth. We were lucky enough to work with Emilie as she undertook her work placement with Almond Vocational Link in February 2014. It was a pleasure to work with this bright young lady and we wish her all the best in her future professional career.

Here is what Emilie had to say:

Emilie (far right) taking part in Language Cafe activities

My personal experience in Plymouth

 

My name is Emilie and I’m in my final year of studying to become a management assistant. I am from Libramont, a little town in the south of Belgium. To complete my studies, I decided to undertake training abroad. Other students from my school came to UK before and said they had good time. I decided to come to Plymouth with two friends, Fabienne and Virginie. We arrived here on 1st February 2014.

The beginning was rather difficult. I didn't know anything about this city, I didn't know if I would like it, if I would have fun, if my work placement would be nice... I just wanted to come back home, but after three or four days, everything was fine.

I came here for a work placement (as a student) at Almond Vocational Link Ltd. I found it a nice place to work. The people are very patient, smiling. During my work placement, I had the opportunity to improve my own skills (translation, page layout, letter writing) but also the opportunity to develop new skills I hadn't before like marketing, database, research.

Little by little, I discovered the lovely city of Plymouth. This city is a paradise for those who love shopping. The most amazing, for me, was the cosmetics. Anything you could dream, you have it. In the centre, you can find a lot of wonderful and amazing shops that don’t exist in Belgium. My favourite are Boots and Superdrug. Plymouth is also perfect for those who love going out late. In the city, you can find a lot of casino’s, night clubs, cafe’s, bars.

Everything here is very easy to find. Wherever you live around Plymouth, you have buses to go to the city centre every few minutes, even on Sundays! You just have to go to Royal Parade and then, everything is here: shops, nightclubs, restaurants... Whatever you want, you have it around Royal Parade!

My country is known to be the Chocolate’s Country but England is a chocolate’s country too! There are so many kinds of chocolate products that one month is not enough to taste all of them. Nevertheless, there are also a lot of other food products that you can’t find in Belgium and it’s just fun to taste them.

I really enjoyed my stay here. One month is a bit too short if you want to enjoy everything that Plymouth can offer you, but it was really nice to come here. People are very kind and helpful. They won’t blame you if you don’t understand what they say or if you don’t speak English very well. They have great qualities that a lot of people from big cities don’t have. All of this, is what makes Plymouth  amazing!

Emilie receiving her certificate from Janet