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English in a Minute
Granville Stevens Publishing, based in Melbourne Australia, is about to launch a mobile English language course at the site www.englishinaminute.com The course is called English Fluency for Business and focuses on fluency rather than content. The self-study course of 80-100 hours consists of sequenced videos (.m4v format for iPhone and ITunes), online testing, .mp3s and downloadable .pdf workbooks. The project is a collaboration between David Isaacson of Granville Stevens Publishing and Moira Macdonald, a Melbourne-based cartoonist and editor. "The course is designed for second-language English learners who have had about three years of English instruction and would like to improve their fluency. In the testing phase of the project, learners have been delighted with the structured, short lessons, humourous cartoons and gentle classical background music that is a feature of the lesson design," says David Isaacson, owner of Granville Stevens Publishing.
English Fluency for Business uses .m4v, .mp3 .pdf and ReadyGo technology
"I wanted to create a substantial, mobile English course for English learners who needed to improve their English fluency for business purposes but did not have a lot of time to go to classes," says David Isaacson. The result is English Fluency for Business, a blended, self-study course of 80-100 hours that focuses on developing confidence and fluency. The course was developed in collaboration with Melbourne-based cartoonist/editor Moira Macdonald.
Isaacson is a graduate of the University of Cape Town (1990) where he completed a Master of Music degree in which he adapted second-language learning pedagogy to music learning. He taught in South Africa, New Zealand (where he specialised in ICT teaching), and more recently in Australia. "As internet technology matured, I saw the powerful potential of mobile learning. With a background in language learning methodology, music and ICT, I decided to create a blended, mobile course. Moira's cartoons have brought a friendly approach to learning English for business. When I saw people's reactions to her humourous illustrations, I knew that we had the potential to bring something new to the business ESL market."
More than four years of development has now brought English Fluency for Business to the launching pad. The development stage included research into a wide range of delivery technologies and codecs. The result has been a blend of .m4v, .mp3s, .pdf and online testing modules by ReadyGo (www.readygo.com). Apple's Final Cut Pro was the perfect development platform for the videos. ReadyGo provided a neat and powerful solution to the online testing requirements.
The English Fluency for Business will soon be released at www.englishinaminute.com. The course has over 25 000 words of text for learning English language structures, all arranged in bite-sized lessons for people "on the move." It represents a substantial contribution to available ESL courses, as well as being one of the most comprehensive blended English courses for iPod, iPhone, and computer available on the internet.
