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ELTAA Language Improvement Course

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Welcome to unit 5

Welcome to unit 5

Well done on getting to the end of the course, we know it’s been hard work but we hope it’s been worth it. Still continue to share ideas and experiences via the Telegram group! 

Unit 5 of the course will be available from Wednesday 23rd March at 09:00 (Cuban time)

Angharad Vernon-Hunt, Course Tutor

Welcome video

Please watch the video below giving an introduction to the course. If you have any problems playing the video, there is a version on YouTube at this link and below the video you can view the script for the video. 

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Hi there, my name’s David Read and I work at the English Language Teaching Centre at the University of Sheffield in UK.  Along with my colleagues Erin, Linda, Carrie, Will and Laurie I’ll be one of the tutors on this online language improvement course organised with ELTAA and funded by the British Council. 

In this short welcome video I’ll go over the main objectives of the course, explain a little about how the course is organised and give you information about this site you will use to access the course. 

Ok, let’s talk about the main objectives of the course. The main objective is to help you improve your language skills and increase your confidence when using English, particularly the classroom language you use in the lessons with your learners. On the course you will work through a lot of interesting and interactive content to help you achieve that.  

But there are other objectives as well. We want you to be able to connect and communicate with other teachers in your country as well as the course tutors, so there will be chances for you to use apps such as Whatsapp and Google Docs to discuss language and work in small groups. 

In Whatsapp you will be together with a group of around 10-12 teachers and a tutor and each week there will be several topics to discuss based on that week’s content. Each week you will practise and think about the language you use in your normal classes with your learners and share ideas and progress with each other and the tutors. 

Each week you will have a one to one 15 minute conversation through Whatsapp with one of the course tutors.  You will have a chance to discuss some of the topics from the course and get feedback on your progress. 

Ok, but how do you access all this? 

Ok, at the moment you’re on the course homepage and this is the starting point to access all the information about the course. But how do you get here? Well, whenever you come to our site, make sure you login on the front page, then click My Foundry, you should then see the button to take you to the ELTAA Language Improvement Course. And here we are back again on the course homepage. 

Please remember that you can access this course using either a computer or a mobile device, so please use whatever is best for you.  

On this homepage there are different sections.

You can see any course news or updates at the top here. Moving down, you can see a section giving information about the Whatsapp one to one meetings with your tutor.  Under that you can see a Frequently Asked Question section about the course and you can click on them to find answers to common questions about the course. 

Now, it’s at the bottom where you can find the course itself. The course is six weeks long and a new unit will be released each week. Each course unit will be available on Thursday at 2pm Kabul time. It does tell you on the unit when it is available, but this is show in UK time, which is 9.30 am.   

To get started, you click on the title of the unit. This now goes into a slightly different view where only information about the course is visible. You can see an overview of the topics on the page and you can click on the first one to get started. You can now work through the topics by working through the content on the page and then using the buttons at the top or bottom to navigate between them, 

You will also see a menu on the left here. You can use this to quickly move between topics. You can also use to move back to the course homepage by clicking on the blue button. This can be hidden by clicking the arrow to give you a bit more space on the screen. 

Ok, well, I think that’s enough for you to get started. We look forward to virtually meeting you on the course. If you have any problems, please contact our support team on eltc.tel@sheffield.ac.uk and they will do everything they can to help you. 

Frequently Asked Questions

The course officially starts on Monday 8th February at 14.00 (Kabul time). The first unit is an introductory unit checking that you can access the course and there are not any technical problems. The first learning unit will start on Thursday 11th February at 14.00 (Kabul time).

The course lasts for 6 weeks

There are six units – one for each week of the course – and they will be available every Thursday at 14.00 (Kabul time)

You need to be online once a week for an individual 15-minute talk with your tutor. The day and time of this chat will be sent to you by email shortly after the course begins. 

We think you will need around 10 – 12 hours a week to complete each unit. This includes the time communicating in the Whatsapp group and the individual meetings with your tutor via Whatsapp video/audio. 

On the course homepage at the top and on the My Foundry page you will see a Complete percentage for the course. This means how much of the whole course you have completed (e.g. what percent of all six units). So this number will increase at the end of each unit and will be 100% when you complete all six units. 

Yes, you will. However, to get it, you need to make sure you complete all 6 units on the website. This means making sure there is a tick next to each page and you have 100% completion. 

Yes, you can. You can use the browser to access the course on your mobile phone or tablet. We recommend you use the Chrome browser but you can use other browsers if you want. 

In the top right of the page click on Profile>Settings. Enter the current (old) password, click Generate Password and write your new password. Click Save Changes to save your new password. 

Please contact our technical support team on eltc.tel@sheffield.ac.uk and we will do our best to help you as quickly as possible. 

Course units

Please access each week’s content from the menu below: