Study Abroad Programs for Spanish

Spanish for Success is a great site to find information and courses where you can learn Spanish.

Learning English with Click English

For helpful tips and useful information on learning and improving your English, take a look at Click English.

Tefl Scotland - Tefl courses in Scotland

This is a lovely looking site I found through Twitter today.
They offer TEFL courses throughout Scotland, a list of possible job vacancies and the option of an online course if you can't get to one of their Scottish courses.



If you have taken one of TEFL Scotland's courses, please let us hear your feedback.

Learning English with educaingles.com

Nice tidy site for learning English with absolutely loads of value.
I love the worksheets for learning English here; easy to print out or download.

Anne Hodgson's EFL blog

Anne Hodgson is originally from the USA but now resides in Germany.

When I looked last, she had written about Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater. I quote from Anne's blog which is aimed at EFL teaching, and a whole lot more; The Island Weekly





"Jonathan started out as a natural scientist and has reworked his travels into a very interesting concept album (and media package) on remote islands. He says he first thought he should become a scientist. “But I kept noticing that the questions that most interested me are things you can’t really investigate with science, like why the fragments of an older, wilder world I’d glimpsed seemed so full of a strange meaning and energy that’s completely foreign to the technolopolis where we mostly live now, or why islands seem to have such a great hold on our imaginations, whether we’re talking about Lost or Homer.” One album review (link) compares Shearwater with Brian Ferry. Most of the tracks are quietly intense, but from time to time they produce interesting loud dissonances that keep things from getting too melancholy. Pretentious or great? Shearwater is in Munich on 2 March."

Video Jonathan Shearwater

One of our host families, the Northey's, who live in Canada, also enjoy nature and wildlife.
Quoting from their host family profile, "we love to be outdoors, in the summer we go for hikes, we love horses, swimming, camping, water sports. In the winter we stake, ski and do some snomobile riding. We love to read. We don't have TV Cable, only 2 channels, so we rent family appropriate movies and have family time (eating popcorn, hot chocolate) and play board games."

Sounds wonderful!

Learning English website in Germany

I came across this nicely presented website for learning English. Its a German domain; .de. A very interesting and informative site, even for English natives!
Spotline-online

20 things you ought to know about host families

While clearing out my emails this morning, I found this. I wrote it to myself back in November and promptly forgot about it!

1 Host families are generally not classed as 'normal'. They open their house to a foreigner, whats more, often to a person from another country they haven't ever heard of, let alone can pin point on a map and usually they haven't met or spoken to this 'foreign' person before they arrive on the doorstep complete with portable meals (in case they have to eat spinach every day).

2 Host families don't, (contrary to popular myth) only serve baked beans on white toast as a main meal. Some specialise in large quantities of home cooked, gorgeously presented food. Few host families serve boiled spinach every night as is the terror of many French boys.

3 Host families are not all single, poor or desperate. Many offer a beautiful home in a wonderful location. Some even offer an en-suite and posh soap.

4 Host families do not classify a single level of xxxxxxxx. Income, careers, mental stability, location and status all vary immensely. You cannot pigeon hole a host family.

5 Host families have fun. Yes they do. Occasionally at the expense of the student but usually with the student. Working out what a foreign student means when he or she cannot speak English and has a sore throat, hungry or has a 'time of the month' can be interesting, and entertaining.

6 Host families have a sense of humour. Host families need a sense of humour on occasion. Faced with a bathroom which has just entertained a student washing his hair while standing outside of the bath, (and host noticing this because water is coming from the light in the hall ceiling), a host family is well placed to be able to make use of a robust sense of humour.

7 Host families are loving and giving. No two students are the same; one month you will have a student who eats so little and is so thin you fear they might fall down dead at any moment. The following month you will be entertained with the same sized student who puts away a whole lasagne before your family gets to it, and then clears the carrots, greens and almost everything else going before declaring they are still hungry and "what is for pudding". A true host will just smile lovingly and tell the rest of the family to eat the rice he/she didn't eat.

To be continued......!