Project N is a project put together by 3 teachers (Julian, Rossana and Katrin) who are currently completing a master’s in digital technologies for teaching at the University of Nottingham. The project wants students to work collaboratively online across countries to share their cultures and develop their English.
The project will last for 5 weeks and include 5 online meetings, some homework and a final task to submit.
The topic of the course is TV, Netflix and how we watch TV these days. The course is aimed at students who are B2 Upper Intermediate and want to develop their speaking and writing.
There are 5 main aims for the project:
1. To help you better understand and notice the cultural differences between and similarities for countries with regards to TV series.
2. To learn useful phrases, vocabulary and language related to TV series.
3. To develop your communication skills and linguistic competence in English.
4. To develop your ability to work in teams and collaborate.
5. To develop your skills to peer-assess each other’s performance and self-evaluate your own performance.
For the classes, you will need to use Zoom. You don’t need to register for an account to access the Zoom classes but it’s recommended that you download the app. Other resources that we may use in this short course are Padlet, Edmodo, Google Slides and Google Docs. Don’t be worried if you are not an expert in using technology, neither are we and functions we are using the technology for are fairly basic.
Katrin is originally from Germany. She has worked as a teacher at the Goethe-Institut and two universities in Japan for 6 years but has recently returned back to Europe to focus on her education once more.
Julian is originally from London in the UK and works for the British Council in South Korea where he has been based for nearly 3 years. Before that he worked for the British Council in Vietnam for 7 years.
Rossana is from Uruguay, currently living in Fray Bentos where she works at the Technological University (UTEC) in the Languages Program, as well as for a language academy. She enjoys entering new projects to innovate in education.
We believe that students learn best when they are socialising and forming relationships with each other. If students can personalise and share their experiences and culture, learning outcomes will be better.
We believe this is best achieved by allowing students to communicate with each other across different activities and tasks. We view tasks as being important so students can carry out things they would do in real-life.
Every lesson has speaking opportunities, new language and language feedback.
There are 2 main assessments.
1) A comparative/contrastive essay that you will work with 1 or 2 other students to collaborate on (300-500 words).
2) A final presentation that you will work with 1 or 2 other students to design and present in the class. The final presentation is based on the essay content.
For the essay, there are 3 choices which as a group you can decide to do:
Compare 2 TV shows from your cultures and highlight the key differences and similarities.
Compare 2 TV shows from your cultures against a 3rd TV show not from your culture, what is different? What is the same?
Choose a scene from a TV show and write about the differences/similarities with your cultures.
The final essay should be between 300-500 words in total.
The presentation is based on the essay and should last between 3-5 minutes.
The course is designed so you can work on the project with another student. If you feel stressed, please reach out to either another student or one of the teachers, Julian, Rossana or Katrin.
We understand that at this moment in time, things can be more stressful than normal. And we can support you if you are feeling anxious or worried.