 Well, I don't know how I'm going to follow a green parrot on a genie, so I'm going to try it. I said, well, okay, my name is John Kelly, I'm here from Atlantic Language, and we're going to talk about our experience with the Brazilian CAPIS program, and also the topic course that we had to put together for these. Before I go any further, I'd like to say that this was a... Well, it wasn't just myself to put this talk together. There was Gigi Rousseau, who's our academic manager, who's here today. Okay, she was involved in this as well. And also, Rogine Walsh, who's our director of studies, who is dying to be here today. And unfortunately, we have the... Well, fortunately, we have the Cambridge exams today, so she's not here. But anyway, so, just to give you an idea, my presentation is basically... Well, organizers follow us. First of all, we're going to have a look at the background of what is the CAPIS program from Brazil, but a very quick look at that. We're going to have a look at an overview of the TOEFL course that we had to put together for these students. Then we're going to have a look at the challenges and solutions. What was the outcomes for this, for Atlantic Language and Galway? And it has been a significant project for us over the last year. And then we're going to have a look at, again, some of the reflections and conclusions from this. First of all, the CAPIS program was set up at the end of the 1950s, early 1960s in Brazil. It's basically... Well, I'd say a training betterment program for professionals from Brazil. The part we're looking at is the Science Without Borders program, which I'm sure some of you have heard about. It's basically a mobility program for people from within the sciences community in Brazil to go overseas, have experience and go back home and be able to implement new ideas and maybe fresh forms of thinking back home in Brazil. So, let's have a look at the profile of a typical CAPIS student. At the moment, there are about 1,400 CAPIS program students, or Science Without Borders students, here in Ireland. I have one of them. You've actually got one here. We weren't expecting that actually. So we actually have a live one here. So let's have a look now. Let's hope this is good. So the profile of a typical CAPIS student. Now, this again is from our interpretation from this. Well, let's have a look. So we have a science engineering background, also medicine and mathematics in the results of medicines, also includes dentistry. Twenty to thirty years old, usually. At least the ones we've had in Atlantic language anyway. Middle-class, usually. Mostly from large cities and quite large towns in comparison to Ireland. Again, from all over Brazil. One of the first exercises we do with the students is just to call up a map of Brazil on the interactive whiteboards and we asked them to show us where they're from. Absolutely. Just flabbergasting sometimes the distances that are between students. We've had 3,000 kilometers between one of our courses in January. It was 3,000 kilometers between two of our students. From right up in the north eastern corner to right down to the border with our students. It was incredible. Now, the English level in A2 to B1, initially English level when they come in, actually quite high for students. In comparison, we found with the European students, they hadn't really studied for three or four years while at university and when they come in, it is actually incredible how fast they improve. It's one of the things that really surprised us when the students come in. Now, react positively to challenges, extremely positively actually. One of the few things that you will never hear as any complaints and we have loaded these students with work as part of the course. Again, conscientious, extremely conscientious in how the work is done. We've actually learned quite a lot as regards sometimes how underachieving sometimes some students are in comparison to these students. Also, balanced, amenable and appreciative. Our end-of-course parties or end-of-course classes are probably some of the most memorable that I've ever had from the students. Be perfectly honest with you. You are genuinely sorry when these courses finish. The good news is that there's another group waiting to come in, so it's actually great. Then, sense of humour is incredibly important in many classes and in these classes especially so. Now, the Irish connection to all of this was started about three years ago with trade missions to Brazil. The agreements were signed to bring students over here. Then there were partnerships were set up with institutions here in Ireland. We've got the University of Limerick here. We have INUI Galway, DIT RSI and UCC and amongst others. To basically cater for these students in the sense of they come in for three, six months, nine months or a year of actual study in the University. They're mostly under-graduates although there have been Masters and Doctors people have come over as well but they've gone directly into their programs and they haven't come through any of the language courses. Our connection with this is through INUI. We were approached by INUI Galway too. They felt that some of their students needed language support so they came to us at Atlantic Language Galway to see what could we implement a tuffle course. That's what they had specified and we said yes and then the students started to come to us. Now I'd just like to add that this came as a hell of a surprise. If somebody said to me this time, exactly this date last year that I'd be standing here in front of you talking about tuffle I would say there's no way because we had never done tuffle at Atlantic Language before. Never. And suddenly we had four weeks, literally four weeks warning or notice to get this up and running we were expecting 20 students to come in and we had to get a brochure. We had to get literally a curriculum and materials to get the books and everything together and we knew that we had 20 students coming on the Monday and we had to get moving on this really, really quickly. So it really was one of the most intensive projects that we worked on. That of course right in the middle of our normal summer curriculum as I'm sure you all know yourselves this was right in the middle of July and this was the middle of June. We were all expecting a typical intensive CAE's, SC's and then suddenly here you go guys, off you go and see what you can do with that. So let's have a look then. I'm talking about the tuffle exam. The tuffle exam was specified by in UIG because through the CAHPS program that's how the students are selected to come over here as regards their English level. So they wanted a program that involved tuffle in some way so that they could basically, for equivalency scores through IELTS so that they could know exactly what level the students had. So that's what we ended up then using basically what was the IBT, the tuffle IBT which was an internet based exam but without the component of actually doing the exam online for lots of different logistical and technical reasons as well. So let's have a look at the tuffle exam for maybe for people who are not familiar with what the tuffle exam is. It's basically an American exam. First of all it's based around American English and American vocabulary which is a little bit unusual for us then here because we're so used to the Cambridge exams and then suddenly we have to make this switch over. But it didn't prove to be such a challenge really. When you think about it there are certain vocabulary. It was more the layout of the exam itself that was challenging for us. So basically it's the idea of the exam. It's actually a very practical exam in the sense of it tests the effect of communication of ideas. Focuses on use of language as opposed to knowledge. Not really interested in the exam. It's not really interested in how much you know. It's basically what you know and how you're able to apply that. It simulates academic and student life communication. All the elements of the exam are based on campus. You have interactions with lectures. You have interactions between students and then you have tutorials, things like that. Now, what were our objectives then? Our objectives were obviously to increase the learner's general language skills. This was what EUI had requested. And our focus on this was yes. EUIG had said, OK, right, we do the talk like that. But when we sat down to talk about this and we're trying to get this together, we said, well look, that's not really the main objective here at all. It is in the sense that the students have the taste for EUIG. But we were thinking, hold on for a second here. What's going to happen to these guys in September when they are suddenly, they have like two months with us and suddenly they're into classes with Irish people, Irish lecturers. So when we put the course together, we looked at this, not just getting them to pass the tough exam, but to see how helpful could we be, what tools could we give them to really, you know, this wasn't abstract. It wasn't like a Cambridge exam, so maybe somebody's going to use this in the future. We knew that these students were going to be sitting down at lectures in EUIG in September. So that made it a hell of a lot more real to us. And so we incorporated that into the program. We had to prepare the learners for the Tuffle IBT, OK, which was a modified version of it, as I said in the sense that they had to do an exam. We had to put the exam together ourselves also. And basing it on the Tuffle IBT exam, which we said was a computer-based exam, but modified in the sense that it was going to be on paper. In short, learners obtain a minimum of 80 out of 120 Tuffle IBT scores. That's what EUIG was basically asked to do. Now, we have been very successful at that. All of our students have passed at what EUIG, they have been incredibly happy with that. One or two barbed lines, but most of them actually with excellent results. Surprisingly good results in some cases. For the Tuffle IBT exam. It is quite a challenging exam. Provided, there was also the cultural exchange element in the sense of here we have, literally, people getting off an airplane on a Saturday and coming in their first contact with Ireland is probably through the teacher. And this was actually, we sort of realized this very quickly, that we had a hell of a responsibility here that they were going to be three, they literally arrive on the Saturday, you know, go to their host families on the Sunday, and this is their first real contact with Ireland, any English-speaking country in lots of cases, with us. So there was that cultural exchange element and we sort of realized that very quickly that what we were doing was incredibly important to the students themselves. Now, so let's have a look then. This was our July 2013 trial run. These were, I think, 19 students in total, I've got Gigi here with and myself. These were mostly doctors, dentists, we had three physicists, really good students, and very clever and very challenging. Probably one of the most challenging groups of people that I've ever had to be in there with or even Gigi as well, in the sense of these guys didn't let you get away with anything. I remember one day making a mistake of just saying something as an offhand comment, okay, out came the phones, and next minute I was being quoted a Danish research paper on something. Right guys, thanks. That's how challenging it was and they were really good people and very formative experience for us in the sense that we realized, oh my god, these are the people we're dealing with now. One of the things that we realized very early was that we really had to up our game, really had to do it because we were dealing with very, very special students here. Now, okay, so this was the first influx of over 100 students into NUIG in September. Okay, we'll be coming back to this a little bit later. Now, so challenges for learners. Now, so in the sense that it's okay talking about us, but what about the students? What was their challenges were they facing? Well, obviously enhanced speaking skills was incredibly important. A lot of the students did not have contact with English as spoken English. Reading, yes, but spoken English, no. Maybe for two or three or maybe four years before they came to Ireland. So, they were good, they had a really good level, but they were missing some of the flexibility sometimes with higher level structures and things like that. Now, next one, we obviously increased academic vocabulary, a huge academic loading of vocabulary on this. As part of the TOEFL itself, just the nature of the exam, the very American based college type exam, but also just for general we had to make sure that we were filling in all of the spaces for the students. As I said, our approach to this was the TOEFL on one side, but the students first on this. We had to make sure that they were completely covered as regards to their vocab, and a very intensive part of our program was the focus on the vocab. Now, improved writing skills, again writing skills, pretty obvious, these guys were going to be not just for note-taking but they were going to have to produce papers in the new IG, or even in the future as well. Essays, you name it so they needed quite a lot of work on that. Fine-tune and listening comprehension, again they needed those reflexes for listening obviously for lectures, can you just have the lectures and then note-taking connected in with that as well. Now, how about the challenges for the tutors? Let's go back, what did we face? This was the interesting bit as well. Well, first one, we had to adapt the TOEFL IBD exam to in-UIG's requirements. That was the first thing we had to do. We had to make sure that the students passed the in-UIG requirements. All the time we were expecting an inquiry. Well, one of the things was we assumed we were going to be inspected in some way. So we were expecting somebody to arrive in at the school someday from, the Brazilian, let's say the Constance and Dublin or the embassy, whatever, and say, okay, I'm here from CACA, so we're here to see what you're doing. So that was one of the first things we decided, okay, what happens if we're going to be inspected by somebody from Brazil or even from in-UIG? So we always said, in the sense of, okay, let's make sure we're doing a really good job on this. Developed TOEFL specific work practices. Now, I'll come back to that a little bit later. One of the things we discovered was this was not the CAA and this was not the FC. This was not take a book and walk into the classroom and have a nice cushy 12 weeks. All right? That didn't happen. We had no material. We had to put the course together ourselves and this was one of the most intensive parts of this. We had to invent, put this whole course together ourselves. There was nothing there for us in a very short time. Now, as I said, we had been working on this over a year and now we have a really solid course on this but it did take a hell of a lot of work. Deal with single nationality class. This was something unusual for us as well. We have quite a diverse student that's a population at Atlantic Language Galway. But suddenly you went from having two or three Saudis, Spanish, Italians, whatever in the class and then suddenly you have 12 Brazilians. And, oh, hold on. This was changed. That was quite unusual when we saw that first. Now, not unusual in the bad way but it was in the sense that you didn't have this sort of diversity sometimes inside of the class. Now, continuously challenged and motivated. We were talking about really, really good people here. Quite brilliant in some cases. We had three of our physicists, okay, mathematicians who kept us on our toes on the first one. We had, for example, Jefferson, for example, was one of the, from Salvador who was probably one of the most brilliant people that I've ever come across in the class. And, I mean, he mentioned the mathematics or astronomy or something, okay. You had to be absolutely sure you were, you know, because he was able to hold a conversation with almost anybody on this. Now, keep it interesting. This was another thing as well. We had these guys for three hours every morning and we had to make sure that they were in there, that they were working, they were challenged all the time and also in a very interesting way. Also, we had the personal crisis. We were talking about groups of young people a long way from home and as the course progressed, we began to see, you know, the little problems began to arise. Long-term relationships. Some people had left, were trying to continue relationships that they'd left to back home. Boyfriends, girlfriends, were left at home. There were breakups. There were medical emergencies. There were financial emergencies. There were, there are. What am I saying? They're silly. There were all sorts of these things. One of the most interesting cases, again, is when a woman rode in Galway one night, gets sideswiped by a taxi, gets thrown about, literally, 15 metres through the air and lands up in the forecourt of the G Hotel. On his head. Ends up in hospital. Two days later, he's back on crutches in class. Black and blue on one side of his body. Not seriously hurt. Lost his bike, lost his bag, lost his phone, of course. But he's back in class two days later. So just to show you the sort of people and these were just some of the things that we've come across. Nothing but nothing major. Now, let's see, what sorts of solutions? This is probably something that might be useful to you guys. The rest of the story, okay, but let's see if you can take some of this away with you. First of all is an extensive in-depth grammar revision, which I'm sure you could all have more or less predicted in the sense that they needed higher level structures that they didn't really have. We had to work quite a lot on those. Mapping of persistence. The challenges we had. We discovered in the first one or two courses we ran, we had trouble trying to basically correct errors. They didn't seem, there was a very simple little errors that were repeated again and again and again. We had to basically stop and look at this and say, what can we do about this? We had to make out specific correction sheets for each exercise. We had to note down their errors. We had to photocopy these, get them back to the students, get them in class every single day of reading. It was probably the most intensive corrections that I've ever had to do. I've never had to, even for Ed Cambridge Advanced, I've never had to do this in the sense we had to go through all of these to try to improve their writing levels. Intensive real-world reading from a variety of sources. We had to use real material. Now the advantage of this was that they were actually reading real material back home and textbooks in some cases in English. This example from Wired Magazine, new scientist. Full articles from this. These guys were going home, reading these over the weekends, producing summaries, vocabulary reports, and back in on Monday morning. On the rare occasion, this wasn't done. Now I'm talking about seven or eight page articles from Wired Magazine which would be challenging even for any of us to do the same amount of work. There was no complaining. They were back in on the Monday morning and every single thing you asked these people to do. The first course, we were sort of surprised people were doing this. The next course, then we began to realize, hold on, we can actually start loading these guys with more and more. It was always dark. It was incredible. Some of the work I would have sort of said to myself, oh my God, if I had to do this for the weekend, they were able to do it. Extensive use of mind mapping note taking. We had to go back through our experience to the EAP. We had experience with mind mapping. This proved to be incredibly useful again, to tell them how to do this and go back to an extremely organized note taking for summaries. Every time they read something, they had to produce a summary on this. Again, why? One of the writing questions is what's called an integrated question in the TOEFL, which involves listening, okay, reading, and then you have to summarize all the points and synthesize the points together. Now, focus on summarizing effective linking. We'll go back again, in linking incredibly important. Extended group discussions based on course takes. This is something that we hadn't really used before. I hadn't really used this before as intensively, but if there's something about a large class, when you get 12 students from the same country together, they react differently. There's nobody there pussing, saying, oh, I'm not interested in this. They were. And we divided them up into six and six groups. This worked incredibly well. You take your article and then we would say to them, okay, why is this important? Why is this important today? How will this be important in the future? Also, for example, as regards Brazil, how could this be adapted? How could this be brought back to Brazil? Where could you see this industry in Brazil in 10, 15 years time? And they worked away with that. And it was incredible. They could spend 20, half an hour, 45 minutes on this. We just let them run with it. And it was incredible. The enthusiasm that they were ever put into this was really incredible. Now, so bridging techniques connecting course topics to Brazil, Brazil's future. This was something we found incredibly useful. We had experience doing this before with the Chinese about seven, eight years ago. Now, we used extensive bridging techniques. And again, we were able to apply that again, and it worked. Also, then there was the CPD, the Continuous Professional Development Element because it was okay for, let's say, Gigi and myself coming in first. But we knew we were going to have more and more groups coming in. So we had to start training other teachers. Now, I was lucky because I came from a science background. I'm not from an arts background or a languages background. Okay, I'm actually a marine biologist. So I was able to, okay, the first time around it was easier for me. And that's when I was like, okay, I knew where these guys were coming from. But we knew, okay, that we were going to have to try and extend this into other, let's say, teachers who are not from the science field. So one of the major things that we had to do, well, basically, I had to do it from January to March, was to set up a course, a day-by-day course, where it was all laid down, all the materials in the sense that, and depending on the situation, that it would not be challenging for the new tutors coming in. It would be acceptable to the students in the sense that teachers, coming in on the course, that they would be able to just transition from a general language class into a tougher class on a Monday morning and there would be no tears and everything would work. Now, it takes about a two-week transition, three-week transition, but it actually worked. Now, for reflections on this then, what did we learn from this? Now, it's taken from, again, from Atlantic language and what did we learn from this? Well, first of all, expect the unexpected. That's one of the things. I'm sure it's all, but definitely for us now. We've begun to notice that we're getting a lot of different courses in and with very short lead times on the courses. Be flexible and innovative. We have to be very flexible as guys who's coming in. We have to be very innovative as to how we're actually using new techniques and it's definitely this title has shown us that really we have to work extremely hard and come up with very innovative solutions with new people being and new students coming in. But I'm sure that's the same across the board for everybody. Practical course design. It's okay being theoretical, but when you know your students are going to be sitting inside in a lecture, that focuses your mind incredibly. As I said before, not like a Cambridge exam where you hope students will be using this in the future. We know that they're going to be using this in a very short period of time. Market requirements are placing different demands of language that we've sort of realized that we're going to be getting a lot more of these courses. Courses with very short lead times. Intensive courses. One of the courses that's growing as well are the Intensive SCs, Intensive CAs for us as well. They put in a program of that as well. The word seems to be Intensive. We have an Intensive Isles course coming on again in a week or two. So everything seems to be Intensive these days and short term and then new courses coming in. You don't even know that they're coming in. Now, so that's basically the Atlantic TOEFL program. Now, it's okay talking about all these students, but what we're going to do apart from Vera, I'm going to give you just a very short video clip of some of the faces here. Some of these people that I've been talking about. These were students from our first intake here. It's only short, it's only about a minute long now from our first intake and this was shot around the end of August early September last year. First to come to Ireland because it's a country really different from Brazil. The weather, the people and I am feeling really welcome here. I like the pubs that are really different from what we have in Brazil and the university, the buildings are really different too. It's really old and beautiful and it's a smaller city in contrast with the big city in which I live. So I love to walk to everywhere and people are really cool and they help us a lot in the city's rich and I really love this country.