What day is it today?

Today has been a special day.  Not for me in particular, but for the world generally, a sequential date.  I'd never come across that term before - and I've lived through others, but just didn't realise!!

Last year, the 10th November was a sequential date - 10.11.12.  The year before, the 9th of October was too.  (9.10.11)  Today, for a second, we lived through 1/12/13 14:15.16.

http://heidiscottage.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/111213.html

Not that I was aware of this happening - I discovered the term sequential date just 20 minutes ago via a friend's Facebook post!

Apparently, dates like these are often chosen for special events - like getting married.  It will certainly help people remember their wedding date!  Apparently, wedding venues in Las Vegas were really busy when the USA celebrated this same date - back on the 12th of November (because of course there, they write the date with the month first and the day second).

There has been nothing particularly memorable in my day - the usual combination of work and sport.

Mind you, the sunrise this morning was pretty impressive ...

and the south wind meant that Santander was glowing all day!  

Christmas adverts

Today I've been working on some posts for another blog that I sometimes contribute  to (not as often as I'd like!)

Behind the Selfaccessgroup are some very dedicated teachers who want to help students and teachers in their strive to learn English, like English and do well at school and in the PAU.  I've been involved in the group for 6 years now (I've just realised now when I looked at my Documents file that it's been that long!), but the group has been meeting and preparing materials for a LOT longer than that!

One of the posts I'm working on is around the theme of Christmas.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that I really like the Inspiration Room.    When I was preparing that post, I watched the Royal Mail advert that was going to be shown in the lead-up to Christmas on the Inspiration Room website.

I then came across an article in Harpers Bazaar   The article runs through some of the adverts from the biggest firms in the UK, including John Lewis, Marks and Spencers and Debenhams.

For use in class, I'd suggest that you could contrast the Harvey Nichols advert  

'Sorry, I spent it on myself'

with the TK Maxx UK advert 

Our new Christmas '13 campaign is a celebration of that very special moment when you receive a unique gift you know has been chosen with great thought and care.

It'll be Christmas before we know it.  So let's start gearing up by watching some adverts created for this time of the year.

European Profiling Grid

Nearly 12 years ago, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment was launched.  

Since then, talking about levels of language competence seems to have become a lot easier and clearer. 

Parents and students, as well as teachers and language specialists, publishers, exam boards, seem to be speaking the same language!!  I overhear mothers and fathers saying 'He needs a B1' to get into university.  'She has to pass B2'.

And of course, the Cambridge English exams are all clearly aligned to the different levels.

Some time ago, I found out about another European project:  The European Profiling Grid.  

I signed up to receive information about the European Profiling Grid Project and last Friday, I got an email to tell me that the interactive grid is now available on the official Project Website.

I've copied the Objectives of the Grid from the official website:

Objective

The aim of the European Profiling Grid (EPG) project is to help improve the quality and effectiveness of language training thanks to an innovative instrument: the European Profiling Grid.

Designed for teachers working in Europe in language centres and schools, this tool aims to :

• help better identify training needs;
• provide a reliable means of evaluating and self-evaluating professional skills;
• facilitate recruitment thanks to a transparent evaluation system;
• foster mobility by enhancing professional skills.

The EPG Grid is not only a tool developed for the use of the language teachers but also for their trainers and employers.

The Grid was originally developed by EAQUALS and used in it inspections.  There are now more organisations involved:  

Partners

Centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP), France
Evaluation & Accreditation of Quality in Language Services (EAQUALS), UK
British Council, UK
Instituto Cervantes, Spain
Bulgarian Association for Quality Language Services (BAQLS OPTIMA), Bulgaria
Goethe-Institut e.V., Germany
Center für berufsbezogene Sprachen (CEBS), Austria
ELS-Bell Education Ltd (ELS Bell), Poland
Università oer Stranieri di Siena (UNISTRASI), Italy
Hogeschool van Amsterdam DOO (HvA), Netherlands
Sabanci Üniversitesi (SU), Turkey

I couldn't find the Grid on the EPG website, but I clicked on the link to the Webinar that took place last week and listened to it (watching it when the interesting bits I wanted to look at came on).

The webinar is quite long - an hour.  The first part is really an introduction to the Project and the actual Egrid that I wanted to find out about appears about half way through - 30 minutes into the webinar.

As I write this post, the Egrid does not seem to be online, but I did find a pdf document on the EAQUALS website here.

From what I can see, this could be a useful training and development tool.  

And if you didn't read my post back in July about the ELT Snapshot Survey, you might like to read it now because it's very thematically related!