Student life in Portsmouth

When students come to England and to us at LSI Portsmouth, often this is an incredibly important time in their lives, one that they will remember for always.  For some it is the first time they have left home, for others it is the first time they have travelled abroad alone. For all of them it is an experience that is different to their 'normal' life.  We are very aware of how special these times can be, and over the years have had the pleasure of having photos, letters and little videos being shared with us that show how meaningful these moments are.

Recently one of our very special students, Mohammd Bafarhan from Saudi Arabia, left the school.  He had stayed with us for over a year and had really become part of LSI, and it was a very sad day for us when he left.  While he has been having a holiday before returning to go to Portsmouth University, Mohammed made a little video, which encapsulates someone having the time of their life.  He has agreed that we could post it below to show our readers.  There are some cameo photos and videos from some of our teachers and many of the students who have been with us over this last year or so could well find themselves in his video slideshow.
Thank you so much Mohammd for sharing this with us, we wish you only fantastic things for the future.

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4Mk8bCxjtM

(please be aware there is some 'street' language some might find offensive)

Welcoming Belle to the Party!

Belle Dowber joined us this month as our new full time Social events organiser. We have wanted to make our social programme even more lively and diverse and we think Belle is just the lady for the job.  She popped in to answer a few questions for us so we could get to know her a little better.

My name is Belle, I was born and raised here in Portsmouth, and consider myself a bit of a ‘Pompey girl’. Aside from moving to Brighton for three years to complete my degree, I’ve always been based in Portsmouth.  For three years, I lived in Brighton, where I graduated from the University of Sussex with a first class degree in linguistics. Either side of my studies I’ve been off gallivanting around the globe. I’ve just recently returned from a four month trip, the majority of which I spent travelling around India and Sri Lanka.

On her travels

Being the new Social Organiser? This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, so it was a bit daunting on my first day. However, everyone has been so friendly and welcoming; it’s made starting here much easier. I’m really excited about this job, and I’m looking forward to taking the Social Programme to the next level.

I’ve only ever worked in England, but would love the opportunity to work abroad, further along the line. Having said that, does making cocktails on the beach in exchange for free accommodation count as working abroad? In that case, I’ve worked in Indonesia too.

on her travels

on her travels

on her travels

I love cycling my old rusty bike, she’s my trusted companion. I also play the ukulele, even though my repertoire consists of 8 songs. My main passion is travelling, and even when I don’t have the time to take long trips away, I try and squeeze in short weekend trips so I can see as much of this lovely planet as possible.

I love living by the sea, and feel very lucky to be able to enjoy all the perks of living in a seaside city. The area around Clarence Pier, with its arcades and funfair and candyfloss, makes me feel nostalgic, and the tranquility of Eastney beach is always the perfect place to watch the sunset. Right now, I love the buzz around Southsea common, spending long sunny days eating lots of barbecued meat, and playing football or Frisbee with friends.

On the Isle of Wight

What else can I tell you? I nearly began a career as a professional ballerina, and completed all my examinations with distinction, as well as dancing with the English Youth Ballet. At the age of seventeen, I decided that I wanted to follow a more academic route, a decision which I’m very happy I made. Even though I miss ballet tremendously, I’m sure you’ll see my twirling down the corridors, or standing on my ‘demi-pointes’- these things never leave you!

Thank you Belle - we can't wait to see what you have planned!

We are so proud! Graduation Day 2014 MA Linguistics and TEFL

Today was a very special day for some of our teachers.  For the last two years they have been working their socks off studying for their Master Degrees in Applied Linguistics and TEFL, and today they graduated.
So massive congratulations to Lewis Richards, Robyn Brooks, Caroline Gwatkin, Gordon Scruton  and Stephanie Furness-Barr.  Gordon and Steph have moved to pastures new now, however we still love them dearly ;-)
We are very proud of all of you!

Also our new Administration Officer Amelia Gibson also graduated in
BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing degree.

What a fab week we had celebrating all our colleagues hard work!

Art club at LSI - How to paint a landscape

Recently we started an Art Club at LSI Portsmouth on Friday afternoons.  The results from the students were so fantastic that we filmed a class to show our other students what they could achieve.  We are very lucky to have an incredibly talented and skilled bunch of teachers at LSI Portsmouth.  One of our teachers, Alan Daysh, has been a landscape artist for the last 30 years, mostly painting land and seascapes of the Isle of Wight, although he paints a variety of other subjects beautifully as well..

There will be another art class this Friday afternoon - Alan will be demonstrating painting a still life.

Giving Presentations at LSI Portsmouth - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly -

Over the last ten years, on the Executive side of the school, we have created most of our own in-house materials for our executive functional course programmes.  For a long time we have wanted to take this a little further.  At a recent workshop discussing our materials, we finally decided the time had come for us to make some of our own videos to use.  This is our Presentation skills video, that we will use to supplement our presentations courses.  Des (O'Keeffe)  took the lead role on this video, and took to acting like a duck to water.  Two of the audience (Ceri Tipler and Nick Ricard) are already wonderful actors and as you can see in the video do fabulous little cameos.  This is just the first of many that we hope to create, and we hope that it makes the learning process for the students even more special by being made by us for use in-house.

A Change is as Good as a Rest

English UK regularly gives great training opportunities to its members, and recently a group from LSI Portsmouth went to participate in discussions about Change Management. As you can see from the photo not only did they learn a lot but they also appeared to have a very good time!

From left: Andrew Edwards, Angel Ma, George Pickering,
Nawaz (from Liverpool), Rosie Ford, Lea Brophy

Great Quick Tip on Pronunciation from Hannah

Hannah has a great tip for improving pronunciation this week. Hannah is one of our marketing team and also a student welfare officer, however she is also a very experienced teacher, as this tip shows!

If you enjoyed Hannah's tip - don't forget to subscribe on YouTube to our channel so you don't miss new ones as they are published.