Hannah and Adam are having a baby!

Our first 'Working at LSI Couple' are having a baby!

Adam (Assistant Building Manager and IT Support) and Hannah (Teacher, Marketing etc)

Lovely Hannah is leaving us today, for the very best of reasons; to have a baby.  Hannah has been with us for what seems like forever, as an amazing teacher, a marketing lady, a welfare officer, party planner and has even made a few cups of tea in her time.  Hannah is always smiling and game for anything.  If you would like to see her in action, watch our 'Happy' video, which certainly wouldn't have been the same without her, and her interviewing Raquel and also her brilliant Quick Tip.  Her students will miss her, the teachers will miss her, all of us will miss her!
At least we still have her on film until she feels ready to come back to us.

Good Luck Hannah and Adam 

Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today marks Chinese New Year, the longest and most important holiday in the Chinese calendar. The festival, known as Seollal in South Korea and Tet in Vietnam, is traditionally a time to be with family, and is celebrated by roughly a sixth of the world! The evening before Chinese New year’s Day is an opportunity for Chinese families to spend time together for an annual reunion dinner. For our students at LSI, being apart from their family at this time of year can be a bit difficult! We asked a few of our Chinese students how they will celebrate the New Year, when they are living nearly 5000 miles away from home.

Hui told us she will be cooking up a Chinese feast for her English host family, serving up traditional dishes such as dumplings, soup and duck leg. She wanted to show her English host family exactly how she would celebrate Chinese New Year if she was back home in Wuhan, China. Another student, Fisher from Beijing, said her family would light fireworks and firecrackers to welcome New Year in with a bang! Although neither student can be with their families, continuing their traditions whilst in Portsmouth is a fantastic way to share their culture and customs with their English host families.

According to Chinese astrology, each year is associated with a particular animal sign and 2015 is the year of the goat.  However, you may also see it referred to as the “Year of the Sheep”. The confusion stems from the Chinese character “yang”, which translates in colloquial Chinese as either goat or sheep! Those born in the year of the goat are supposedly peace-loving and kind, and their lucky flowers are carnations and primroses.

We’d like to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year, wherever and however you are celebrating it. From everyone at LSI, we hope your year is filled with good fortune, happiness and health, and hopefully lots of studying!

Belle.

Valentine's Day - What is it?

What is Valentine’s Day?

Every year on February 14^th, flowers, cards and chocolate are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of the famous St. Valentine. But who was St. Valentine and where does Valentine’s Day come from?

It is believed that Valentine’s Day originated from Lupercalia, the pagan fertility festival which marked the beginning of spring. It was celebrated between the 13^th and 15^th of February. The rise of Christianity in Europe saw many pagan festivals being renamed for early Christian martyrs, and Lupercalia was no exception.  The Catholic Church wanted to turn Lupercalia into a Christian festival, so Pope Gelasius declared February 14^th as St. Valentine’s Day.

The true identity of Saint Valentine is unclear, but the most popular belief is that he was a Roman priest in the third century AD. The Roman Emperor Claudius II banned marriage, as he believed that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and children. Valentine felt that this new law was unjust, and continued to marry young lovers in secret, all in the name of love. When Emperor Claudius II found out, he threw Valentine into jail, and sentenced him to death. When imprisoned, Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter. On February 14^th, on the day of his execution, he allegedly sent her one final love letter, signed “from your Valentine”.

It wasn’t until much later that Valentine’s Day became definitively associated with love. Over the centuries, the holiday evolved, and by the 1700’s, exchanging cards and gift-giving on Valentine's Day had become a common tradition in England. In British culture, you can celebrate Valentine’s Day by giving cards, flowers or chocolate to your loved one. They are most commonly sent anonymously, so even if you aren’t feeling brave, you can still send someone a card or gift to show them how much you love them! February’s vocabulary calendar is full of romantic phrases that you may find useful! (click here)  Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!  
Belle.

Glittering Prize for G! Boutique - Again!

We have written before about the G! Boutique; a 14 bed-roomed boutique hotel that was opened just over 2 years ago by LSI’s previous marketing director Allan Gray and is run by his family.  
The hotel is a luxurious boutique hotel, right in the heart of Southsea in Festing Road.  Since it opened it has been getting a lot of attention; from winning awards to being featured on television and ... they have done it again. 

This is the second time they have won this prestigious award:
Simply the Guest by LateRooms.com.

What makes this award particularly special is that it is voted for by guests.

The award announcement was live streamed on the LateRooms.com website from the Savoy in London and was hosted by TV personality Alex Brooker. 

On the LateRooms.com website, Guests can vote for accommodation in various categories which include customer service, cleanliness, room quality and friendliness among other things. And with over 2 million real reviews left on the site - winning an award really is an accolade!   G! Boutique achieved the highest score with 99 per cent of their guests saying they would recommend the hotel to a friend and 98 per cent saying they would stay there again. Clear proof that it really is THE place to stay in Portsmouth, and definitely the hotel we first recommend visitors to stay at when they come to Portsmouth!

Eli Gray celebrating winning the award in style

Picture from http://bit.ly/1EMJaYx

To find more details on the G! Boutique hotel: 
http://www.g-boutiquehotel.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/GBoutiqueHotel?fref=ts

February Calendar for Valentine Vocabulary ♥♥♥

Continuing with our monthly vocabulary calendar - here is February.

Download and print our monthly calendar - pin it up,  learn all the phrases and by the end of the year you will have an even bigger vocabulary range!

For February our theme is... Love and Valentine's Day!  This is the month of romance, so here are the phrases you might need.

Teaching the Teachers - LSI teachers learning Arabic

Teaching the teachers - Tuesday's class

In the blog we posted a couple of weeks ago, we showed how many of our teachers speak other languages.  We are very fortunate to have on the staff quite a few bi-lingual / completely fluent speakers of other languages. 

So we recently asked our teachers if they would like the opportunity to learn another language, and we got a resounding YES.  

We decided to start off with lessons in Arabic and the lovely Arif has very kindly agreed to be the teacher,
running two beginner Arabic classes in the evenings.  A great chance for the teachers to be on the other side of the desk. The teachers are finding it very challenging, but so far are very enthusiastic. Not so sure about the homework but so far they are being good students ;-)

Teacher: Arif dressed for the
occasion. 

Showing the teachers how its done ;-) 

Teaching the teachers - Thursday's class

Going to New Heights (with a monkey) - The DELTM Course

As LSI continues to grow, so has the importance it places on personal development.  We recently wrote about five of our teachers who are following an inhouse DELTA course.  As well as this, LSI is sending three of its staff to London once a month to follow the DELTM course run by English UK.
Lea Brophy (Vice Principal) Lewis Richards (Exams Director of Studies) and Sue Hodgson (Assistant Director of studies - Executive).  Below is a brief outline of the course from the English UK website;

"This course provides excellent professional development for managers and aspiring managers of language centres, and is run by English UK and validated by Trinity College London.

The course focuses on management at three levels: routine, tactical and strategic, and is run by George Pickering, Terry Phillips and Keith Harding.

It runs in London from September to June, with ten monthly face-to face sessions, and a requirement to complete five 3,500-word assignments and a 5,000-word project. These are practical, with a theoretical underpinning".

The guys below have just completed their third assignment, and as the photo shows are having a great time in London with the other participants (plus a monkey - used during the course to visually explain a point).

From left: Lea, Lewis, Sue, (Monkey), George (Pickering)

English UK Visit website

Saying Goodbye to Bill

Bill Phillips is almost part of the fabric of the school - teaching at LSI since 1994, always with a smile on his face. He is known by his (trademark) bow ties and his catch phrases, for example: 

‘You are like a mother to me’ 
'Let's go kick a*** baby'
'Good morning Officer!' to quote just a few.  Often you can hear him sing little songs on the stairs and in the staff room (and often forgetting the second line ;-).

Over the years, Bill has had a habit of bringing little plants, treats and goodies and leaving them on the side for teachers to take, and it’s probably true to say over the years that everyone has benefitted either from a piece of cake, a small plant or spare pencil case thanks to Bill.

Originally Bill worked in the Immigration Service, but decided to teach English because of his love of language.  You can often find Bill, along with a few other ‘grammarians’ in the staff room, discussing / disagreeing (usually disagreeing) about the correct usage of a piece of language.  That's when he isn't having a quick nap at lunchtime ;-)

Having taught for such a long time, we asked Bill what guidance he would give to someone thinking about going into teaching  “Don’t even think of doing this job unless you like people” he said, which from someone who ‘loves communicating with a smile’ seems like a very salient piece of advice.

Bill kindly agreed to come on camera and talk about some of the memorable moments from the past 20 years, Thank you Bill, we are really going to miss you.

(Bill, I still use the pencil case you gave me 19 years ago! - Sue H)

Bill cutting his delicious cakes!

How Many Languages Can You Speak?

It's true to say that the teachers you find in a language school are probably a different breed to most workers you'll find anywhere else.  At LSI our particular teachers are a multi-talented group of artists, musicians, sporty people, entertainers and authors to mention just a few of the skills.  The question came up the other day 'what other languages do we all speak'?  So, we conducted a very quick (non scientific) survey of the 50 teachers available at the time, asking which languages they spoke in addition to English, at a level of low intermediate and above.  The languages spoken range from Arabic to Chinese!  As you can see from the results below, not only are we multi-talented, we are also massively multi-lingual!

Click on the picture to see full size

What is interesting to see is that, according to this (very interesting) article which talks about the average number of languages spoken by the EU population, as a group, we are by no means representative of the country we live in, and are in fact, way above average! Which is always nice to know! 

We'd love to hear your comments - how many languages do you speak? What are the advantages in speaking other languages? Which is the most beautiful language to listen to?

January Vocabulary Calendar

Starting this month - download and print our monthly calendar - pin it up,  learn all the phrases and by the end of the year you will have an even bigger vocabulary range!
For January our theme is... Feeling Sick!  Every one seems to get sick in January, so here are the phrases you might need.

Click the picture to get the full size to print.

Pre-sessional Leaving Ceremony Last day of term 2014

We were very proud of our latest group of Pre-sessional students, seen here at their leaving ceremony on the last day of term in December.  They all worked so hard and now they have had a break will be going on to continue their studies in their chosen fields.  We would like to wish them all the very best for their futures.

Happy New Year from all at LSI Portsmouth

Have a Great Holiday from all at LSI Portsmouth

Turn off the Alarm - the holidays are here!

All of us at LSI would like to wish all of you a very happy, peaceful and relaxing holiday, whatever you do, where ever you do it and who ever you do it with.  See you next year!

That was 2014 - Wow

What an amazing 2014 we have had at LSI Portsmouth.  Here is a quick run down of some of the best stories of the year:

January:
We started the year off with promotions, a new Exams Director of Studies, a new Pre-sessional Course Manager and a new Assistant Director of Studies for GE and Exams, a Pre-sessional Logistics Co-ordinator, Pre-sessional Support and a Quality Assurance Manager! We got an amazing new coffee machine in the exec centre.  We have always provided filter coffee for our exec students but now they had the ability to have fantastic coffee as if they had a coffee shop on the premises.
Story here

February
In the month of love, G Boutique won an award, and LSI added another self catering student house to the stable.
Stories here

March
In March, we had a very successful cake sale, and we added Instagram to our Social media - which is proving very popular, students  can see pictures of their school and Portsmouth all in one place.
Stories here

April
Well what a month this was!  We launched our brand new Guided E Learning site, Andrew our Principal went to Australia, but the most popular of all the events in April was our Happy video, celebrating the United Nations 'Day of happiness' with Pharrel Williams' song Happy. We had such fun! (and the video has now had over 3000 views!)
Stories here

May
This month saw a lot of interviews with staff, students and a football team, and the announcement that we were now supporting the Rowans Hospice in their efforts.
Stories here

June
Wow, June! We had a fly past by the Red Arrows, a photo competition, our new study centre was opened, and our video showcasing Portsmouth was published - which is also very popular with 6500 views so far!
Stories here

July
We launched our first Business function video, started an art club, had a whole bunch of teachers and staff graduate, and welcomed Belle our new General Social Programme Organizer to the school.
Stories here

August
We set aside August as a month to support a very special student's charity Auxilia, had our first Rooftop Interview, and had a British Council Inspection - Everyone in the school can remember that! But for fun, Jon D's class made a song video.
Stories here

September
September was a quieter month as everyone was able to relax a little after the inspection. Pre-sessional students finished their courses, work experience girls from reception left (we were very sad) and one of our ex students had his final art exhibition.
Stories here

October
Some great taxi drivers from Japan left and made everyone laugh at their leaving ceremony, a fantastic interview with Roy the LSI football captain and LSI student, and we were voted joint first as the top executive centre in UK. (Celebrations all round for that one).
Stories here

November
An amazing Halloween party, Nicki P left to have a baby, five of our teachers started studying in-house for their DELTA, another three of the staff started studying for the Diplomas in English Language Teaching Management, and a lovely video about the difference between weddings in Bangladesh and England.
Stories here

December
We said goodbye to Roy (the football captain) the nights drew in which meant wonderful sunsets from the roof and our final quicktip of the year came from Jon D.
Stories here

So, that was 2014, a very eventful year.  We hope next year is as much fun, and wish everyone a peaceful, happy and healthy 2015.

Christmas Baby on the Way

Stop Press:  15/12/14
Nicki P is now the proud mum of Josef Robertz.  Born at 7.30 this morning weighing 7lb 9oz with a full head of black hair.  All healthy and happy!

Our 'Superb Senior Teacher Support' Nicki Pring is leaving to have a baby!  Nicki started here five and half years ago and has made a huge impression on everyone, supporting all the GE teachers with advice and materials.  A brilliantly gifted teacher and very popular with all the staff, she will be massively missed.  She said 'I am very sad to leave, but incredibly excited at the prospect of being a mum, and is waiting for the best Christmas present anyone could have' - her baby is due of Christmas Eve!

From left: Leanne, Ross, Andrew and Nicki.

Bye Nicki, good luck and look forward to seeing you back sometime next year.

Great New Quick Tip From Jon D

The last quick tip of the year comes from the Irrepressible Jon D.  Watch as our Jon gives a great tip on how to keep your English up to date with the news!

Our Amazing Rooftop!

This amazing sunset was taken by Adam (the asst. building manager) from the rooftop of LSI - fabulous isn't it!

A sad day as we say goodbye

Friday was a very sad day for us as we said goodbye to Roy who has been here for 9 months now.  Roy was the captain of the football team and led them to many victories with his passion for the sport.  He was also house manager for one of our student houses. As well as that he was just an all round great student, positive, happy, motivated, hardworking and always laughing.

If you haven't seen Roy and John's video here is the video again!

We wish Roy and of course all the other lovely students the very best for the future.

Be a Stamp Collector - for a really good cause

Everyone loves receiving mail - the hard solid kind (as long as it isn't a bill), and as more and more of us buy online, although the letter writing industry has been hugely reduced in recent years, the Post Office is still going strong delivering all those lovely parcels.  So, now, rather than throwing the wrapping away, help us (or help the charity directly) and save those stamps.

Against Breast Cancer is collecting all donated stamps, and as they explain on their site, they can receive money which can then go towards the fight against breast cancer.

So you now know what to do - go shopping online (guilt free) and save the stamps!  If you are in LSI give them over to (Elly or Anna) reception, if you are not, then read below and maybe send them to Against Breast Cancer.

"We're raising money by recycling postage stamps. Whether they're British or overseas, new or used, send them to us and we'll turn your old postage stamps into funds to support breast cancer research.

Stamps are sold by weight. As a general guideline we can expect to receive around £20 for one kilogram of stamps, so do encourage your friends and family, at home and abroad, to save their stamps for us.

How to donate used stamps:

Please cut the stamp off the envelope. When cutting, leave approximately 1cm of envelope bordering each stamp. The rest of the envelope can be discarded (which will make it cheaper to send)."

Click this link to go to the site

English vs Bangladeshi weddings - Money or Gifts?

This week we have a lovely video - Arif and Alan talk about the differences between traditional English and Bangladeshi weddings.  Listen to the video to see who gets money and who gets gifts.

How are weddings different in your country? Leave a comment below.

Aiming for the Top - LSI Teachers following the DELTA

Five of our top teachers (Joel, Jenni, Tom, Anisa and Jon D) have been following the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults) qualification at LSI since September.  The DELTA is the highest English as a Foreign Language qualification that teachers can get, and focuses on improving teaching skills and developing teachers advanced level knowledge of grammar, linguistics, phonetics and so on.  As part of LSI's commitment to helping our teachers become as good as possible, LSI is helping to finance the DELTA course for these five teachers this year, and five more next year.   

Going round the table from the right: Jenni, Jon D, Tom, Richard (tutor) Joel and Anisa

At present this lovely group are working really hard, and we all appreciate all the effort they are putting in.  We know they will benefit from it in the end.  

How to improve fluency and vocabulary - tip from Matt.

A great new Quick Tip today from the lovely Matt!

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How to Have a Scary Party - Just Ask Us!

We know how to have a party!!  over 100 LSI students came together to celebrate Halloween in typical LSI style- with a huge party! From cute cats and girly witches to zombie brides and terrifying clowns, our students certainly looked scary.  

We are lucky enough to have an amazing DJ among our teaching staff, and he always knows how to get our students up and dancing. There was an amazing atmosphere, with DJ Hugo playing an strange mix of Halloween classics and current chart favourites. 

 Prizes were awarded for the best costumes, including the beautiful zombie bride Ryo (from Japan), and the bizarrely horrifying mad doctor Arthur (from Holland). However, the top prize was rightly awarded to the lovely Saudi Arabian boys, who arrived as a group, dressed as cloaked skeletons and who really made the party a scary success.

The whole event was a great success, and although there were a few tired faces in the morning, everyone agreed that it was certainly worth it. 

We would just like to say thank you to everyone who came, and we look forward to hosting the next big LSI party.  

LSI Portsmouth - Top of the League!

LSI Portsmouth is very proud of its football team, and all those involved with making it the success that it is.  Every week a group of students and teachers meet up and play their hearts out.  The Captain of the team - Roy (from Korea) is not only an excellent and very popular student he is also completely passionate about his football.  In this Rooftop Interview, John talks to Roy about his passion and also hears why Roy thinks learning to play football is like learning a language, as well as which team Roy thinks LSI would be if it was a football team.
This is a fabulous interview - don't miss it!

To keep up to date with the latest videos from LSI Portsmouth - subscribe to our channel.

LSI Portsmouth Comes in at the Top!

We are exceptionally proud to see that we have come in at THE TOP for executive teaching in the whole of the United Kingdom, along with the London School of English, as reported in the November edition of the
EL Gazette 'based on an analysis of every single language centre listed in British Council reports as offering business or professional English' for schools with separate facilities for the executive student.

LSI Portsmouth has been running executive courses for 28 years, under the direction of Lea Brophy the Vice Principal / Director of Studies for Executives.  It looks like practice makes perfect!  
Well done Lea and all the exec team, and of course all the supporting staff, a real team effort.

(Click the picture to read full size)

Latest Quick Tip from our teachers

Here is the latest quick tip from one of our teachers. Luis explains the benefits of newspapers when you are learning English.

To be one of the first to see our latest tips  - don't forget to subscribe to our
YouTube channel.

We are very Social!

Over the last few years, LSI has been getting very sociable - online. 

We thought it would be a good idea to share where we are and who we are talking to.

We are on Face Book, Twitter, Blogger, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn, and also in a small way on Flickr and Google+.   We would love to see you there!

Facebook:
We use Facebook to connect with students in the school or those who have left. We think it shows the 'fun' side of the school with pictures, videos and updates, and is also used to announce events. 

Twitter:
With Twitter we share small snippets of interesting information either educational, local and school oriented.

Blogger:
Well you're here so you know what we use blogger for. It is like an in-house magazine 
that focusses on the school and the people in it. We hope it shows a more personal side of the school than the website can, so we can convey who we are, the latest changes and updates in the school and focusses on teachers and students alike.

Instagram
We have only recently started using instagram but we love it!  It's our photo album of Portsmouth and we hope to show what an attractive island Portsmouth is.

YouTube
When we have things that are animated we show these on YouTube.  At the moment we are showing tips from the teachers on how students can improve their English, but we also have a few fun videos on there as well.

Linkedin
We are on linkedin where we connect with other professionals in the industry.    

New Rooftop Interview - Raquel's Unique Time Studying at LSI as a Blind Student

Our latest rooftop interview is with Hannah and Raquel.

In this episode of Rooftop Interviews Raquel and Hannah discuss Raquel's experience while studying at LSI; the successes and the challenges that face a student who is visually impaired.  This is Raquel's third time at LSI, she is a complete superstar and has made a real impact on everyone here. 

Alison, Hannah, Eugenio (Raquel's husband) Raquel

Japanese Taxi Drivers Get a Lift in their English

Every year, we welcome a group of taxi drivers from MK Taxi  in Japan.  This year, we were lucky enough to have 6 of them study here at LSI – 4 from Kyoto, 1 from Sapporo and 1 from Kobe.  They are all training to be English-speaking drivers and with a little help from LSI Portsmouth, they’ll be driving people around their cities in English!  They have been a joy to have here – their enthusiasm, smiles and warmth – and so popular with teachers and fellow students alike.  They requested to give a little presentation at our Friday leaving ceremony to say thank you to LSI and to tell us about their wonderful cities in Japan.  Thank you, Satoshi, Tatsuhiro, Shigenori, Mutsuhisa, Hisayoshi, Nobutaka.

MK - Most Kind Hearted! ;-)

Thank you and best wishes Satoshi Ebina, Tatsuhiro Fujii, Shigenori Maki, Mutsuhisa Inoue, Hisayoshi Takamoto, Nobutaka Katsura