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What’s new on EnglishCentral for 2018

What’s new on EnglishCentral for 2018

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EnglishCentral is showcasing 3 new products and services for the 2018 School Year:

  • Custom Course Creation.  We have worked with a number of universities to build custom web and mobile courses to map to their school’s existing curriculum.  This means schools can adopt EnglishCentral for their current classes, without changing their textbook or other materials.  Contact us for a Case Study by Prof. Michael Holsworth on how Kyoto Sangyo University implemented an EnglishCentral custom course with over 6,000 students in its general English program. 
  • Special Purpose Content.   Many schools have asked us for career- specific,  or English for Special Purposes (ESP),  curriculum for their schools.   In response, EnglishCentral has partnered with a number of leading publishers to bring the best ESP content to the EnglishCentral platform,  including:
    • Courses for Aviation, Hospitality, Medical English, from Cambridge University, here;
    • A practical Business Communication Course, from Compass Media, here;
    • 40 courses based on the industry leading Career Path Series from Express Publishing, here.
  • New Vocabulary Courses.   EnglishCentral has completed a major upgrade of its vocabulary learning platform, with new lists developed by Dr. Charles Browne, of Meiji Gakuin University.  These new lists are based on a 2-billion-word corpus from Cambridge University and include lists developed specifically for core vocabulary, Academic Vocabulary, TOEIC Vocabulary and Spoken English Vocabulary.   Learn More here.

The EnglishCentral Team

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New Courses for K-12 Market on EnglishCentral

New Courses for K-12 Market on EnglishCentral

SLEC

EnglishCentral has partnered with Seed Learning, an industry leader in language learning products and services, to develop a new suite of products for the Young Learner (K-12) Market. These courses were developed specifically to cater the needs of those who are just starting to learn the language and include variations in topics such as phonics, reading and comprehension, world history, presentation skills and a lot more. They cover CEFR Levels A1 to B2.

Test drive these new courses here:

Top Kids

Top Kids is a six-level course for young English language learners. This engaging and instructive course incorporates a systematic double-strand approach to introduce vocabulary and grammar within thematic units graded over six levels. The double-strand approach in building vocabulary and grammar skills of learners is key to the course. English language learners need to acquire vocabulary in order to comprehend English and participate in classroom discussions, and as well, it is key to reading comprehension. In addition, grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages as it is the foundation of a language.

Top Kids prepares young learners to be able to understand and communicate well in English on a variety of subjects.

Top Kids 1Top Kids 2
Top Kids 3Top Kids 4
Top Kids 5Top Kids 6
Top Phonics

Top Phonics is an easy-to-use five-level phonics series developed for young learners of English. Starting in Top Phonics 1, students will learn to recognize and say the letters of the English alphabet. By the end of Top Phonics 5, students will be able to read and write common English words and phrases. The five levels of Top Phonics provide a guided, step-by-step presentation of single-letter sounds and vowel and consonant combinations. Top Phonics allows learners to develop their English skills in an engaging, systematic, and effective manner.

Top Phonics 1Top Phonics 2
Top Phonics 3Top Phonics 4
Top Phonics 5
Easy Fun Facts

Easy Fun Facts is a three-level series designed for elementary students of English who are being taught comprehension skills in the reading-to-learn stage. Easy Fun Facts exclusively focuses on nonfiction texts to equip students for future study of academic material in English. The series also utilizes a four-strand approach that sets a foundation for students to practice receptive and productive skills alongside focused language study and fluency practice.

Easy Fun Facts 1Easy Fun Facts 2
Easy Fun Facts 3
Fun Facts

Fun Facts is a three-level series designed for elementary students of English who are seeking to develop their comprehension skills in the reading-to-learn stage. Fun Facts exclusively focuses on nonfiction texts to prepare students for future study of academic material in English. The series also utilizes a four-strand approach that sets a foundation for students to practice receptive and productive skills alongside focused language study and fluency practice.

Fun Facts 1Fun Facts 2
Fun Facts 3
Easy Fun Reading

Easy Fun Reading is a three-level series designed for emergent students of English who are beginning to move from the learning-to-read stage into the reading-to-learn stage. Easy Fun Reading is designed to set a foundation in reading in order to prepare students for future study of academic material in English. The series also utilizes a four-strand approach that provides the framework for students to practice receptive and productive skills alongside focused language study and fluency practice.

Easy Fun Reading 1Easy Fun Reading 2
Easy Fun Reading 3
Fun Reading

Fun Reading is a three-level series designed for elementary students of English who are moving from the learning-to-read stage into the reading-to-learn stage. Fun Reading incorporates short and simple fiction and non-fiction texts to support students in developing fundamental readings skills required for future study of academic material in English. Strict vocabulary control of all passages and activities allows students to gradually accumulate new vocabulary while practicing learned items from previous units.

Fun Reading 1Fun Reading 2
Fun Reading 3
Speaking for Speeches

Speaking for Speeches: Skills for Presentations is an interactive, accessible three-level series specifically designed to develop the public speaking skills of English language learners at the high-beginning to intermediate level. Students will build the essential confidence they need as a speaker through creating their own interesting and fun presentations. This series will prepare students for any kind of speaking from casual descriptions of personal experiences to more formal, research-based presentations. Central to each lesson is an original presentation organized, written, and delivered by a student presenter. With its modern approach, the series helps students acquire practical speech communication skills in a positive, structured environment that they can use throughout their lives.

Speaking for Speeches 1Speaking for Speeches 2
Speaking for Speeches 3

The courses are available and localized into Japanese, Turkish, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese and include the following features:

  • Videos with Interactive Captioning. Over 320 interactive video lessons, with bilingual transcripts and in-context definitions;
  • Vocabulary Training.  Vocabulary learning based on a set of topic and course specific words and phrases, including quizzes;
  • Speaking Practice.  Interactive speaking practice allowing for productive use of such vocabulary in context.
  • GoLive! An option for live 1:1 tutoring, each with a lesson plan (see sample)

For a full view of the Seed Learning Materials, see this catalog.

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Turn your School’s Existing Curriculum into an EnglishCentral Custom Course

Turn your School’s Existing Curriculum into an EnglishCentral Custom Course

EnglishCentral can adapt your existing curriculum to blend with the EnglishCentral platform, giving your students speaking and vocabulary practice from their mobile devices as well as from the web. This means you can adopt EnglishCentral for your current classes, without changing your textbook or other materials.

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custom-course

To do this, we create custom courses for you from our library of over 14,000 videos lessons.  Each lesson is enabled with close activities, vocabulary quizzes, and interactive speaking practice using our IntelliSpeechTM speech assessment system.   These custom courses map to the level and scope and sequence of your current curriculum.  Courses also have custom wordlists students can study in our quiz app on web or on mobile.

Contact us for a Case Study on how Kyoto Sangyo adopted EnglishCentral custom curriculum for web and mobile, mapped to existing curriculum.   This Cash Study covers how EnglishCentral was implemented as part of a general English program at Kyoto Sangyo University. Currently, over 6000 students are using EnglishCentral as part of the English Communication program offered to first and second year students from a variety of faculties. Topics discussed  include:  the reasoning behind the selection of EnglishCentral, initial piloting process, content selection and textbook pairing, student preparation, teacher training, and finally successes and challenges of the overall process.

 

300 173 EC Blogger

Communicating In Business English

Communicating In Business English

Business Communication

EnglishCentral has released a new version of Communicating in Business English, based on the popular title from Compass Media.
The new version includes localizations for Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Go to course

Topics in the course include:

  • making and receiving business telephone calls,
  • giving presentations,
  • participating in meetings,
  • socializing with business contacts,
  • negotiating deals and more.

Features of the course include:

  • Videos with Interactive Captioning. Over 70 interactive video lessons, with bilingual transcripts and in-context definitions;
  • Vocabulary Training.  Vocabulary learning based on a set of  300 key business words and phrases, including fill in the blank activities and quizzes;
  • Speaking Practice.  Interactive speaking practice allowing for productive use of such vocabulary in context.
  • GoLive! An option for live 1:1 tutoring, each with a lesson plan (see sample)

Try this new course out here.

150 150 Alan Schwartz

Turn your School’s Existing Curriculum into an EnglishCentral Custom Course

Turn your School’s Existing Curriculum into an EnglishCentral Custom Course

EnglishCentral can adapt your existing curriculum to blend with the EnglishCentral platform, giving your students speaking and vocabulary practice from their mobile devices as well as from the web. This means you can adopt EnglishCentral for your current classes, without changing your textbook or other materials.

custom

custom-course

To do this, we create custom courses for you from our library of over 14,000 videos lessons.  Each lesson is enabled with close activities, vocabulary quizzes, and interactive speaking practice using our IntelliSpeechTM speech assessment system.   These custom courses map to the level and scope and sequence of your current curriculum.  Courses also have custom wordlists students can study in our quiz app on web or on mobile.

Contact us for a Case Study on how Kyoto Sangyo adopted EnglishCentral custom curriculum for web and mobile, mapped to existing curriculum.   This Cash Study covers how EnglishCentral was implemented as part of a general English program at Kyoto Sangyo University. Currently, over 6000 students are using EnglishCentral as part of the English Communication program offered to first and second year students from a variety of faculties. Topics discussed  include:  the reasoning behind the selection of EnglishCentral, initial piloting process, content selection and textbook pairing, student preparation, teacher training, and finally successes and challenges of the overall process.

300 141 Alan Schwartz

New Career English (ESP) Courses Now on EnglishCentral

New Career English (ESP) Courses Now on EnglishCentral

We have launched a series of new Career English (ESP) courses, based on the industry leading series Career Paths, from Express Publishing and several titles from Cambridge University Press.  These special purpose courses are designed for professionals and students in vocational schools and colleges to help them develop the language skills they need to succeed in a professional work situation.

Olympic Sports

This  course is a resource for sport-event support staff who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of work conversations, emails, news and articles related to the Olympics.

Go to course



Information Technology

This course is a resource for information technology professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of work conversations, emails, news and articles related to the computers and IT.

Go to course
Software Engineering

This course is a resource for software engineering professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that addresses topics including software development, software testing, the user interface, modeling and career options.

Go to course

Engineering

This  course is a resource for engineering professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of tools, engineering concepts, conversions and career options.

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Call Center

This course is a resource for call centers professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of work conversations, emails, news and articles related to call centers and customer care.

Go to course
Computer Engineering

This course is a resource for computer engineering professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that addresses topics including numbers, computer accessories, hardware, software and operating systems.

Go to course
Navy

This course is a resource for navy professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of work conversations, emails, news and articles related to navigation and marines.

Go to course
Military Command and Control

This  course is a resource for people who are and wish to become military professionals. It contains entertaining and educational videos that addresses topics related to the armed forces.

Go to course
Merchant Navy

This course is a resource for merchant navy professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of work conversations, emails, news and articles related to navigation and marines.

Go to course
Airforce

This course is a resource for air force professionals who want to improve their English in a work environment. It contains entertaining and educational videos that comprise of work conversations, emails, news and articles related to aviation and air armies.

Go to course

There are over 70 Industries covered by the Career Path Series.

Each course contains:

  • Videos.  Interactive Video with bilingual subtitles and clickable in-content definitions.
  • Vocabulary Training.   Students learn vocabulary in-context with fill in the blank activities and vocabulary quizzes.
  • Speaking Practice.  Students practice speaking, getting instant feedback on their pronunciation with EnglishCentral’s IntelliSpeech assessment system.
  • GoLive!.   Students can take 1-1 lessons with a tutor.  Each video lesson in the course comes with a lesson plan (see sample) and with a transcript, featured vocabulary, discussion and comprehension questions.
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VNPT and EnglishCentral Partner in Vietnam

Hanoi, Vietnam  October 11, 2017  – Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), one of the largest telco providers in Vietnam with more than 80 million mobile subscribers,  today announced the launch of its version of the EnglishCentral Service in Vietnam under the brand “MyEnglish“.

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Mr. Ngo Dien Hy, CEO of VNPT Media, and Alan Schwartz, CEO of EnglishCentral, announce the partnership in Hanoi on October 11, 2017

The launch this year is the 1st phase in the partnership whereby VNPT has become the exclusive provider of the EnglishCentral Service to consumers, schools and businesses in Vietnam.

The new MyEnglish service is targeted first at consumers in Vietnam.  VNPT has a history of building successful multimedia consumer services in Vietnam, including its IPTV service “MyTV“, which quickly became the number one IPTV service in the market with over 1.5 million subscribers.    As with its MyTV service, the new MyEnglish service will use the billing network of VNPT to provide a frictionless payment system for users as well as VNPT Media’s own content delivery network (CDN) to provide high quality and robust video delivery.

As part of the partnership, VNPT also plans to target the school market through its educational subsidiary, VnEdu.  VnEdu is already the #1 education platform provider in Vietnam with over 1500 schools using its learning management system (LMS) called “MyHomework” in Vietnam.

The launch event was attended by 14 journalists and 2 television personalities,  including Khanh Vy, the Headmistress of Newton Middle School, Dr. Le Thi Chinh, Deputy CEO of VNPT-Media, Nguyen Van Tan as well as various news outlets.

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A panel of industry thought leaders, Khanh Vy, EnglishCentral CEO Alan Schwartz, Deputy CEO of VNPT-Media Nguyen Van Tan and Headmistress of Newton Middle School Dr. Le Thi Chinh lead a Q&A with journalists.

The event also featured a panel of key opinion leaders including Khanh Vy, who currently hosts two educational programs on Vietnamese television and YouTube.   She’s a celebrity in Vietnam EdTech space, partly based on her being a polyglot who mastered 7 languages as a college student.  She commented that “the power of the new service is how it makes speaking fun and motivating for learners, while at the same time boosting their confidence with instant feedback. “

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Khanh Vy, an edTech thought leader  in Vietnam, was at the launch event to opine on how it would change the face of English learning in Vietnam

“We are thrilled to be working with the team from VNPT Media”, said Alan Schwartz, Founder & CEO of EnglishCentral.   The team brings some very impressive assets to help build a customer base in Vietnam, including one of the best brands in the market,  deep experience in launching and marketing services in both the consumer and school markets, and considerable technical skill in payment and video delivery.

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The MyEnglish launch team including in the middle, Alan Schwartz, CEO of EnglishCentral, Mr. Ngo Dien Hy, CEO of VNPT Media, and Nguyen Van Tan, Deputy CEO of VNPT-Media

Mr. Ngo Dien Hy, General Director of VNPT-Media commented that “we reviewed many potential solutions for launching our EnglishCentral, and chose EnglishCentral based on its combination of extensive content offering, unique speaking technology and high quality one-to-one live teaching. We believe the seamless integration of these three elements is key to creating a motivating and engaging learning experience for students.”

More coverage for the event in the Vietnamese Press can be found at:

[wpvideo XMXNgbi5]

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Classi to launch EnglishCentral for High Schools in Japan

Classi Partnership brings EnglishCentral to over 770,000 students in Japan

Tokyo, Japan September 11, 2019  – EnglishCentral, the leading provider of online English conversation solutions, will become a default option on Classi’s cloud- based learning platform, expanding EnglishCentral’s reach to over 2,000 schools and 770,000 students in the K-12 market in Japan.

Started in 2014, Classi is the largest provider of learning platforms to the K-12 market in Japan.   read more

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EnglishCentral Partners with Cambridge University Press for Career English Courses

Three new career English courses from Cambridge University are now available on EnglishCentral, localized into Japanese, Turkish, Korean and Portuguese.  These courses include Good Practice: Communication Skills in English for the Medical Practitioner, Be My Guest: English for the Hotel Industry, Flightpath: Aviation English for Pilots and ATCOs.

Features of these courses include:

  • Videos with Interactive Captioning. Over 70 interactive video lessons, with bilingual transcripts and in-context definitions;
  • Vocabulary Training.  Vocabulary learning based on a set of industry and course specific words and phrases, including fill in the blank activities and quizzes;
  • Speaking Practice.  Interactive speaking practice allowing for productive use of such vocabulary in context.
  • GoLive! An option for live 1:1 tutoring, each with a lesson plan (see sample)
Good Practice: Communication Skills in English for the Medical Practitioner

This course focuses on the language and communication skills that doctors need to make consultations more effective and demonstrates the impact of good communication on the doctor-patient relationship. Adapted from the book Good Practice: Communication Skills in English for the Medical Practitioner by Marie McCullagh and Ros Wright.

Go to course

My Guest: English for the Hotel Industry

This fifteen-unit course deals with the many situations in which hotel employees meet guests, including reception, restaurant and bar work, answering the phone, dealing with guests’ problems, and much more. Adapted from the book Be My Guest: English for the Hotel Industry by Francis O’Hara

Go to course

Flightpath: Aviation English for Pilots and ATCOs

This course focuses on the language and communication skills that doctors need to make consultations more effective and demonstrates the impact of good communication on the doctor-patient relationship. Adapted from the book Good Practice: Communication Skills in English for the Medical Practitioner by Marie McCullagh and Ros Wright.

Go to course

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English for Aviation: Flightpath

 

Go to course

 Flightpath

Based on the curriculum developed by Cambridge University Press, Flightpath is the definitive course for pilots and Air Traffic Controllers who need an ICAO Level 4 of English to work in the industry. Flightpath is the only Aviation English course to offer a thorough grounding in the full range of communication skills needed by aviation professionals to communicate in non-routine situations. With regular focus on ICAO criteria, learners are given full support in reaching industry standards, including case studies, analysis of their own communication skills, exposure to authentic in-flight communication, and communicative tasks.  The course includes a specifically developed aviation vocabulary list to enable mastery of vocabulary.Flightpath is the most accurate preparation course available for any ICAO Level 4 language test, and includes authentic industry training video. Flightpath has been reviewed and endorsed by a panel of leading aviation communication and safety professionals.

This course was designed by Philip Shawcross, who has been working in Aviation English since 1972, as a language trainer, technical trainer and technical English consultant for Airbus, Aerospatiale, Air France, and others.  He has been president of FICAEA since 2007. Read an interview with Philip Shawcross about the challenges of teaching and learning English for Aviation.