Often, when students enter a new room, there is an intense feeling of the unknown, as starting a course is always scary for different reasons. You don’t know who your mates are, you don’t know the space and the room where the lecture will take place and finally, you don’t know who your teacher is… Read More »The Importance of Warm-up Activities
The Culture Map. “When interacting with someone from another culture, try to watch more, listen more, and speak less. Listen before you speak and learn before you act.” Erin Meyer, The Culture Map, p. 27. Europass Berlin usually hosts international training courses, with participants, mostly teachers and school staff, coming from different EU countries. Managing… Read More »The challenges of International training courses
If someone, twenty years ago, someone had said Criostoir, “As a language teacher, what socio-emotional skills are you using in class?” I would have had to pause, think and say, “well, I’m not sure. I teach grammar, vocabulary, and subconsciously, I try to avoid pronunciation,” but today is different; after more than twenty years of… Read More »The Challenges that adult trainers face regarding socio-emotional skills
According to CASEL, social-emotional learning (SEL) is “the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” (Fundamentals of SEL, 2022), and is a crucial part of any human’s development. Adults with the emotional… Read More »Teaching social-emotional Intelligence to adults in Ireland