Living with a broken hand has given Nick a real insight into what it’s like to live (and work) with low levels of writing skills. In this short video, he reflects on some of the changes he has had to make at work and also on his recent experience talking to nurses about redesigning workplace
Choosing an online dictionary Online dictionaries are very useful tools when writing and reading and there are some really good ones out there. Go for a learner dictionary – this will be more useful and give you more detailed information about usage. Here are some tips on how to choose an online dictionary: 1. Make
Write and Improve Learner Orientated Assessment is the sort of assessment that happens in class and by teachers all the time and so rather than resulting in a formal assessment report, it feeds directly into the learning that is going on right at the moment. We really like “Write and Improve”. Language learners can use
OK, they sound a bit pretentious but Grice’s Maxims are incredibly useful and they are four principles of communication that we keep coming back to them when we are working with learners in the workplace. Here they are: The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives
So many businesses could access funding that is available to develop the language, literacy and numeracy skills of their employees. We have Workplace Literacy Funding for training eligible employees. It is also possible for larger businesses to apply for their own funding. And, of course, some businesses are prepared to pay for training privately. We
We worked on a project about narratives in partnership with Elizabeth Knox Home & Hospital this year. The training was shortlisted for the Health Ed Trust Training Award presented at the New Zealand Aged Care Association conference at Sky City. Because Knox is an Eden Alternative Registered Home, the quality of interactions is critical in
“What stopped me ever liking the job was because I was not there because I wanted to be there: I was there because I couldn’t choose the job I wanted” (Martin) “Get anything that paid money, whether it was cleaning or anything. Just do it and get a job” (Gill) “Jealousy. I could do the
Nick attended a Symposium held at the University of Waikato and ran a workshop on addressing the needs of employees who speak English as an additional language in a workplace literacy setting. We shared a number of lesson plans and classroom tasks designed to assist employees with the following aspects of report writing: Accuracy and sentence structure Accuracy with collocation (time
Speaking skills are core business For many businesses, effective speaking makes as much, if not a more, significant contribution to how well an employee operates in the workplace as reading and writing. For example, a security guard needs to be able to understand their site operating procedures and report any observations accurately and objectively in
There is quite a lot of cross-pollination between the workplace literacy world and the world of regular language teaching. A small example of the way our work in the literacy world has enhanced what we do in the regular language school is with spelling. Spelling is important in the workplace and while everyone makes the