The English for Uni Roadshow

What is a good way to publicise something? One answer is: via a roadshow. A roadshow is a travelling event to publicise and showcase a resource to a large number of people in different places. The idea of a roadshow is to give people a taste of what's on offer so they want to learn more about it. Publishers, for example, may have roadshows to promote a group of their authors to potential readers. 

At a project managers' meeting a few months ago someone suggested that we have an English for Uni roadshow. That sounded good. However, a real live roadshow would mean taking the English for Uni project team and actors round Australia, and that was something we hadn't budgeted for. Then another suggestion was made: why not have a 'virtual roadshow'? What a great idea!

From that suggestion, we went on to film a virtual roadshow which promotes all the resources on our website and also introduces you to nearly all the team members, as well as many of the principal actors in the videos. We are pleased to announce that the English for Uni virtual roadshow is now live on the front page of the website. You can also see it on YouTube.

Creating the content was interesting. Originally we wanted to put a transcription of each person's words into the video, so you could read their words and listen to them at the same time. That made screen too cluttered, so we opted for a reminder of the English for Uni website address instead, and a key word in the top right hand corner. 

For Harumi Kaga,

for instance, you can see the word 'Japanese' in the corner,

while for Kareena Kapadia

there is the word 'prepositions'.










We hope that the English for Uni roadshow will be played on screens and monitors in educational establishements all round Australia, and even in other countries. If you would like a copy for your school, college or university, please contact us via the website!

Interview with David Crystal

Ms Parrot and Harumi Kaga were lucky enough to talk to the famous linguist Professor David Crystal about the importance of grammar when they were all at the GAL 2014 Congress in Marburg. You can see the interview on the English for Uni website.

New movies coming!

This has been an exciting week of filming.

Last Saturday we filmed a version of the popular Chinese dating show 'Fei Cheng Wu Rao' (known as 'If You are the One' in Australia), with one male contestant and three lovely ladies:

What a perfect vehicle for teaching about conditional forms.

After that, we filmed a talent show that will be used for teaching the use of tenses in academic writing:

Look out for Adelaide's own Really Really Terrible Quartet and the wonderful Prince Wolfgang and the Medics, all competing to win 'You've got Talent'.

Our next stop was the historic Carrick Hill property, where we filmed 'With a Revolver in the Library' - look out for the movie in October to find out what happened to chef Harumi Kaga (and to learn more about prepositions).

There'll be three new movies and a new song out in October, along with grammar exercises and explanations!