Great success of the “Teaching in English” training courses organised by Graz

These training courses aims to support teachers in implementing English-language teaching.

The 26 participants of this edition followed the online training from their home offices in Graz, Bergen, Granada and Leipzig, representing four of the seven Arqus partner universities. “In the current situation, the Arqus European University Alliance remains committed to promoting a multicultural, multilingual and inclusive Europe which is open to the world. Therefore, we had opened this training to our Arqus partners as part of the Action Line 4 ‘Multilingual and Multicultural University’”, explained Daniela Unger-Ullmann, responsible for Action Line 4 at Graz University.

The Refresher course was intended for university teachers who were already familiar with the basics of English Medium Instruction (EMI). Participants learnt how to keep their students interested and motivated by making online teaching interactive, entertaining, supportive and with lots of opportunities for students to participate actively.

The Certificate “Teaching in English” course was intended for university teachers who were interested in learning how to teach their subjects through English. The first objective of the course was to familiarize participants with a variety of teaching strategies and scaffolding techniques suitable for teaching through English in university classrooms. The second objective was to reflect on the different issues and challenges related to teaching groups of international learners. All participants received a certificate at the end of the courses. They were full of praise for the smooth organisation, the complex content and the inspiring lecturer Robert O’Dowd from the University of León, Spain.

This is what some of the participants expressed about the courses after completing them:

It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a course like this one that much! It’s not only that Robert has been really an amazing teacher, it is also the usefulness of contents and tools and how he has shown us. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve seen a lot of possibilities to use them in my classes

I really enjoyed the course and believe that, given the circumstances, you organized everything in the best possible way – including the celebration

I indeed enjoyed much the course and learnt plenty of useful things. I am very glad that I had participated and would like to thank you again for giving me the opportunity to join the workshop

Arqus is a great collaboration network. I’d like to participate more often

It was already my second course with Robert as instructor, he is doing this in an excellent way and he should feel celebrated, as well

I very much enjoyed the course and I am already putting it into practice