On 6th November we held the fifth MEC clinic. Vilson Coimbra of CISP, São Paulo, Brazil presented his ideas for integrating Campus activities into your lesson plan.

Vilson Coimbra

Click on the links below to see a downloadable PDF of Vilson's clinic presentation:

Integrating Campus activities into your lesson plan.pdf (871.92 KB) 

Vilson has been working with Campus for over three years and was able to provide some really useful examples of how to use MEC in class. At CISP Campus is used as part of the general curriculum and also for remedial work and distance courses. They previously used Campus with data projectors for class work but they have now successfully moved on to interactive whiteboards for all their MEC classroom activities. You can find out more about Vilson and CISP by clicking here and here.

The clinic participants were:

Marc Pillich-Wright - EAQUALS, Romania

Katia Lotte - FL&C, France

Sandra Brady - FL&C, France  

Karen Thompson - FL&C, France

Astrid Krake - VHS, Germany

Donna Liersch - VHS, Germany

Thank you very much to Vilson and everyone who took part. Don't hesitate to contact us with your questions and comments.

November word games

The MEC word games for November are available now!

This month's Witch's Pot topics are 'places in or around the house' (Easy), 'camping' (Average) and 'adjectives describing build' (Difficult).

The Swamp Disaster topics are 'words related to shopping' (Easy), 'words related to money' (Average) and 'materials' (Difficult).

The Wordsearch topics are 'office items' (Easy), 'travelling by plane' (Average) and 'words meaning '"miserable"' (Difficult).

As usual, there are new Crosswords and Bridge Builders at all levels too.

Visit the Word Games area to find them all.

India outsources outsourcing

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about Indian technology companies setting up global networks of offices to offer services to multinational companies. Go to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen to find out why they are doing this.

Infosys, Wipro and Tata are three major software and technology companies in India. You may wish to ask your students to look at the following websites for more information.

Infosys

Wipro

Tata

On 29th October we held the fourth MEC clinic. Simone Sucupira of CISP, Campinas, Brazil presented her ideas on using MEC for distance learning.

Simone Sucupira

Click on the links below to see Simone's ideas for using MEC for distance learning:

1. A downloadable PDF of Simone's clinic presentation: MEC for distance learning.ppt (3.87 MB)

2. Simone’s example of a study guide for low level students. This covers the Present Simple and telling the time using MEC Listening and Vocabulary Activities, plus extra MEC Grammar Reference Units and Listening Activities for further practice: STUDY GUIDE.doc (490.5 KB) 

3. Simone’s example of a discussion guide for advanced level students. This uses a MEC News Item and a MEC listening activity: CAMPUS DISCUSSION GUIDE.doc (30.5 KB)

By using online resources alongside her own worksheets Simone has created some really useful examples of distance learning lessons with MEC. You are very welcome to download these and adapt them for your own students.

The clinic participants were:

Olga Nikulina - Talisman, Russia

Natalya Sorokina - Talisman, Russia

Anna Sheshenina - Talisman, Russia

Ekaterina Savitcheva - Talisman, Russia

Thank you very much to Simone and everyone who took part. Don't hesitate to contact us with your questions and comments.

Our next clinic will be held on Tuesday November 6th 2007 at 11.00 GMT.

Presenter: Vilson Coimbra, CISP, Brazil

Subject: Integrating Campus activities into your lesson plan

If you are interested in attending this event or you require any further information, please let us know through the contact us section of this site or by emailing s.earnshaw@macmillan.com.

New CEF course pathways now available!

We are delighted to announce the publication of five new courses built to correspond to the levels of the Common European Framework (CEF) as well as 100 additional examination resources.

The CEF is recognized as a standard framework for language teaching around the world. Five new courses have been published to the English Campus, at levels A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. These will make it much easier for new and existing users to align English Campus content with their existing language programmes, by providing a truly global basis for comparison.

British English users can also access six new courses structured to correspond to the Macmillan Inside Out and New Inside Out coursebook series. These join the existing In Company courses.

100 new exam preparation exercises for the Cambridge suite of examinations are now also available.

Combined with the existing database of 300 exam exercises, the Macmillan English Campus now offers an even more comprehensive resource for students working towards the BEC, CAE, CPE, FCE, KET and PET qualifications.

This new update brings the number of resources available within the English Campus to over 3,000.

Do you still use tapes in class (when you're not using MEC!) and have you ever wished you could convert them to play from your computer or from a CD?

Perhaps your school has completely switched to CDs and you can no longer use some of your favourite tapes (and all the lessons you planned around them).

If you answered yes to either of the above then have a look this article on using a free online programme called Audacity to convert cassette tapes to MP3 files.

Do know that if you use Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser you will be able to download foreign language dictionaries with spell-checking features here.

It could be a useful tool for your learners, as this article will explain.