Cambridge Proficiency Exam Writing - A report Dissatisfaction at the ABC Languages, department of Guipuzcoa Recently, the dissatisfaction at the Guipuzcoan department of the ABC Languages has risen to a level that cannot be unseen anymore. This report aims to list the causes of unhappiness, to illustrate them and to suggest ways to rectify the problems. Old material The company workers are facing several problems, the most significant of which is the lack of modern teaching material in the office. 80 % of the teachers admit to be using study books more than 15 years old. For instance, one of our German teachers constantly has to explain to their students that the current currency of Germany is not German Mark but Euro, contrary to what the study book from the year 1998 claims. Distances between classrooms Another issue, according to every second teacher, is the commute between classroom locations. To give an illustration of the problematic situation I will refer to a usual work day of one of our French teachers. Her weeks are packed full with driving from town to town. During a typical day she drives more than 100 km in order to teach merely four lessons. A more balanced distribution of the locations would provide her more free time and thus increase her quality of work. Solutions The obvious solution to the problem with old study books is the purchase of new ones. The staff of ABC Languages are aware of the fact that this can't be done without sufficient financial means, which are rather scarce, as the company is still suffering from the economical crisis which reached the Spanish Basque Country several years ago. Nevertheless, only investing in suitable, modern study material will attract new customers to the school. The uneven distribution of the classroom is a problem more difficult to rectify, as the vast majority of the classes have already started and the customers are not willing to change the teachers nor the location. The only solution to be found to this problem seems to be to provide some of the classes online. Many compeating companies are already using the possibility of skype classes. I think that the organisation of skype lessons should be on our agenda as well in the next academic year.

Cambridge Proficiency Exam Writing - Article A restaurant for people with a cold When we think of restaurant visits, it usually doesn't cross our minds that a customer could be offered something more than foods and drinks, or that excellent customer service could include something else than friendliness, food-expertise and fast waitering. But a visit to a German restaurant during an un-expected weather spectacle changed my mind and my whole way of thinking of a restaurant. Last May, a friend of mine invited me to a new restaurant in her home town, Frankfurt. At that time, I was based in Munic, and so I took a day off from work in order to visit my friend. Usually, the weather is sunny and rather warm in Germany in May, but this day it was snowing! Huge flakes were flying in the air and blown against our faces by the wind, as we walked towards the old part of the city, wearing light spring clothing and feeling our socks getting wet because of the 10-cm-layer of sleet on the streets. Upon arriving the restaurant, we were cold, tired and felt quite disappointed by the weather gods, and I must admit that I showed quite a grumpy face to the waiter who welcomed us to the restaurant. However, he remained extremely polite and placed us at a free table. I noticed that all the customers were sitting far away from the door, where the cold breeze wouldn't disturb their culinary experience. It was warm in the restaurant, but so cold had it been outside, that I didn't want to take my jacket off any time soon. We sat down and decided to order a large cup of hot tea to warm up. To our great surprise, the waiter brought us a special winter menu: It included items such as warm socks, Norwegian wollen pullovers, blankets and heating pads - all to borrow free of charge! In addition there were warm drinks with extra vitamin C on the list and it was even possible to order a can of freshly-made a chicken broth delivered to your home door without additional costs. Thinking back to that experience I always wish there was a restaurant like this in my home town too. Getting sick would be a lot less annoying!

Cambridge Proficiency Exam - A report Job fair in Oulu, Finland As Finland still struggles with the economical crisis which started as early as 2008, a huge number of university students are afraid of not finding a suitable job after their graduation. This is one of the reasons why an international job fair was organised at the university campus in Oulu on May 1st 2016. The aim of this report is to describe the job fair and to evaluate it's ability to encourage young people and enable them to find a source of employment. Widely international The fair consisted of 52 international companies and research funding programs from 23 different countries. Even though the vast majority of them were European, also some from more exotic home countries could be found, e. g. Honduras, Namibia and New Zealand. Different university faculties A very positive thing was that all of the faculties of the University of Oulu were considered in the job fair. Finnish language and literature students were offered jobs at German universities, and members of the Department of Biochemistry were being informed about working possibilities in the Netherlands. Since two major faculties of the University of Oulu are not located at the university campus, there was a shuttle bus service from the Department of Architecture and the Faculty of Medicine to the campus during the job fair. Combining new technologies with traditional professions I was positively surprised by the ease by which new technologies were combined with traditional professions. The representatives of many companies reassured that, thanks to the internet, the jobs could be done even from Finland. So, Finnish university graduates can work for an international company without moving abroad. This often brings the possibility to open a branch in Finland, employing more Finnish people. Conclusion The fair was very well organised and included many companies of different fields. I was very satisfied with it's ability to increase the students' career opportunities and to make them consider working abroad.

Cambridge Proficiency Exam Writing - A Letter Dear Mr Jenkins, I'm writing to you to thank you for the excellent training course Motivating teenagers in foreign language studies, which I had the opportunity to visit in Madrid on May the 2nd and the 3rd. The theoretical part of the training course enabled me to refresh my theoretical knowledge about adolescent learning patterns and the structure and development of teenagers' brains. Having learnt about the newest currents of this field of studies, I reckon that every teacher should be avare of the psycological fundaments of our foreign language didactics. As a new teacher in a secondary school, and previously having worked in a private language academy, I want to do something more than dull grammar drills. Thus, I was more than delighted to attend the seminar Games and Fun, where the participants were loaded with practical, easy-to-prepare, and educative games. However, I also have to follow the programme of my study book and prepare my students for the final exams. That's why I particularly enjoyed the workshop Assessment and Evaluation, in which we were provided with a method to give individual feedback to the students. In addition to that I appreciated the talk about teaching self-evaluation to teens. Now, three weeks after the training course, I have tried out various ideas, and they work! I can observe highly motivated students working in groups and concentrating on rather difficult tasks. I also enjoy seeing them smile while playing learning games. Moreover, I have been able to reduce my workload - a dream of every teacher. Again, I want to sincerely thank you for the exceptionally good training course. I look forward to the next course in September, which I'll definitely take part in. Yours sincerely, Anni White

Teaching life skills at school "Not for life, but for school do we learn." This Latin proverb saddened me deeply when I first heard it. It shows that already in the era of the Roman empire the school was seen as a separate institution, moved away from the rest of the society, where it's doctrines couldn't be put in practice. Thus, in order to get excellent marks, a student would have to study given theories, texts and songs by heart, without worrying about the practical applications of this information. If you ask me, the general idea of school hasn't changed much in the past 2000 years. Looking back to my school times, I recall hours after hours of studying all kinds of theories from cellular biology to the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, which doubtlessly were interesting topics but unfortunately had nothing to do with our everyday lives. To be fair, we also gained some useful skills. For example, there was a compulsory cooking and householding class. For two hours a week we were not only taught how to prepare a healthy meal or do the laundry, but we also got to try these things out. For many of us students, the weekly hours of cooking were the favourite classes, because it was those skills that we loved to show our parents at home, by baking a cake or doing the dishes by ourselves. In addition to those exciting cooking classes we also had another subject, the goal of which was to make us fully functional citizens: the society and politics class. I must admit that teaching the parliamentary system to a classroom full of 14-year-olds can be a tough task, but I still reckon that the teacher should have found a way of teaching other than lecturing us passages from the study book and making us copy notes from the board. In the future, I truly hope to see a school where the students can learn not for school, but for life.