An English summer?

London in the summer

A student asked me recently if he should go to the UK this summer to study English. I answered that yes of course he should go, if he had the time and the money. However, he then asked me which language school he should go to. This is a much more difficult question to answer and it's one that I've been asked before by students.

When you choose an English language school, you need to think about what type of experience you want. Some of the things to think about are:

• Do you want to be in a city, a town, or in the countryside?
• Would you like a big school with lots of students, or a smaller school where you can get to know everyone personally?
• What type of course do you want e.g. general English, business English, academic English or exam preparation, such as FCE, or IELTS?
• How many hours a day do you want to study and be in classes?
• What type of activity programmes does the school offer e.g. discos, day trips, or excursions?
• What type of accommodation does the school offer?

Whichever school you choose, check the details carefully before you decide e.g. does the cost include accommodation, meals and social activites, or are they extra? Also, if the school is in the UK, check that it is accredited by the British Council. You can get a list of their accredited schools here.

Wherever you go, have a great summer and enjoy the experience!

We all make mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes and they are often a positive part of learning. As James Joyce once said, Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

However, in this year's A level papers in the UK, an increasing number of mistakes have been found in the exam papers. As reported in The Telegraph:

the OCR exam board was forced to apologise after a rogue question was inserted into an AS-level maths exam sat by almost 6,800 students.

The question – worth 11 per cent of the total mark – asked students to find the shortest route along a network of tracks in a forest. The route was supposed to be equal to an equation set out in the test paper – but the exam board failed to calculate the length properly.

An AS-level business studies exam set by the AQA and taken by 41,400 students asked about a fictitious chocolate company’s profits. But the company’s adjoining profile information failed to show what its profits actually were – making it impossible for students to answer.

The Telegraph also says, It is feared that the blunders may affect sixth-formers’ chances of gaining university places.

What exactly is a rogue question? A disobedient one? Also, if mistakes are 'the portals of discovery', what can we 'discover' from these mistakes?

Good luck to all the students that sat exams this year as they wait for their results to be announced in August.

Language Learning

After the success of the IELTS and Study Skills guides, we are now working on producing a guide to langauge learning. Hopefully we can have it published soon. In the meantime, have a look at our website, SuperFastGuides, for examples of how to keep vocabulary records.

IELTS and Study Skills Guide

The Super Fast Guides to IELTS and Study Skills have now been published on Amazon as ebooks and we were really excited yesterday to see that they had received some reviews.   Glad that the reviews are positive - it's always good to hear that people find the guides helpful.