ALsensei

The city of Brighton in the UK is home to Kaplan International Colleges newest English language school for teenagers. The Kaplan English school in Brighton is scheduled to open in time for Summer 2013 and will offer Junior English courses as well as accommodations, meals, and a full activity program.

As one of the trendiest cities in the UK, Brighton is a well-established destination for teenage language learning. It also has beautiful beaches, lots of parks, and a lengthy history of international students.

The campus features cutting-edge classrooms, an exciting social program hub, and purpose-built accommodations. The Brighton school is set up to be an extremely popular place for students aged between 14 and 17 to learn English and have a great social experience.

Kaplan’s Junior Operations Manager for the UK & Ireland, Anna Robinson, said, “This age group are really going to love being in this exciting location and experiencing everything Brighton has to offer.”

In addition to the new Brighton center, Kaplan also offers its junior program in the UK cities of Bath, Bournemouth, London Kingston, Salisbury, and Torquay.

It also has junior English language schools internationally in America and Australia. Some of the cities include Berkeley, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Boston in the US and Cairns in Australia.

Have you been to Brighton?
Are you interested in studying in the UK?

How would you like to receive a free English tip, assignment, or lesson every day in 2013? Well you can do that now by taking part in the Year of English project, which is sponsored in part by Kaplan International Colleges.

The project is an English-learning course delivered by email everyday throughout the year 2013 to those who sign up. The course is especially designed for students who need just a little more help to become fluent in English.

The founder of PhraseMix, Aaron Knight, was inspired to create the Year of English project after seeing the success of a similar project held last year for people interested in learning how to program computers called the Code Year project.

Aaron stated, “For a lot of people, learning English is a vague goal that they hold on to for years and years but never quite achieve. I wanted to give these English learners the motivation to make a big push toward becoming fluent this year. I also wanted to give them the tools to do that with daily lessons.”

As part of the course, students will receive Kaplan English grammar exercises once a week. To sign up for the course, click here.

These are two of the questions on a new survey called the “Language of Love” survey currently being conducted by Kaplan International Colleges.

Language of Love survey

The survey was designed to discover the romantic motivations for learning a language among other things. Anyone may enter via this link and after answering the ten questions on the survey, will be eligible to win $100 worth of Amazon vouchers.

Kaplan’s Online Marketing Executive, Martin Hofschroer said, “This is a fun survey, which I’m sure language learners around the world will enjoy. We hope that there will be some interesting results that we can share with the language learning community.”

Once all is completed, Kaplan will publish an infographic with the results on Valentine’s Day 2013. Be sure to check out the Kaplan blog and Facebook and Twitter pages for notification about the release of the infographic.

Also, continue to learn English with Kaplan by checking out two of the other infographics. One of them looks at the benefits of learning languages while the other shows how students learn English outside of the classroom. If you contribute to this survey, your opinion could be included in the next one!

Do you think English is a romantic language?
What are your favorite “love” expressions in English?

If you’ve used any kind of social media service in the last year, I’m sure you’ve heard of Instagram by now. To be brief, it is an application which allows users to edit, post, and share photos in a new and unique way. Kaplan International Colleges holds a weekly competition in which students post photos related to their English learning journey.

The latest winner of this contest is an award-winning filmmaker from Istanbul, Turkey named Eray Dinç. He is currently studying English at Kaplan’s English school in Oxford and won by submitting a photo of a street scene in autumn.

Eray, a 24-year-old English student, was able to capture the autumn colors in an exquisite way which caught the attention of the judges. Winning should come as no surprise, though as he has won 13 awards for his short films at such events as the Istanbul Short Film Festival.

While students are studying abroad, the Kaplan Instagram competition encourages them to record and share their experiences through digital photography. The competition is open to Kaplan students and they can enter by submitting a photo on Instagram and tagging it with the #KaplanExperience hashtag. Weekly winners receive Amazon vouchers worth $100.

Social media assistant at Kaplan, Hazel Francis said, “We’re so happy with how much interest there has been surrounding our #KaplanExperience competition. Since the launch, we’ve had over 3000 entries and we’ve seen a real eclectic mix of talent.

“It’s great to see so many students sharing their experiences with us from all over the world, especially someone as established as Eray! I look forward to seeing more photos from his time in Oxford.”

Are you interested in photography?
Have you used Instagram?
What are some of your best memories of trips abroad?

Did you know that besides climbing buildings, flying through the air, and shooting bad guys with spider web, Spider-Man also has the ability to help you learn English?

A recent study done my Kaplan International Colleges showed that more than half of the people surveyed learned English by reading comic books. Spider-Man was voted as the most popular superhero.

How did Spider-Man do against other comic books? He was able to get 15% of the vote beating rivals Superman (10%) and Batman (6%).

For this survey, Kaplan interviewed hundreds of their past and present students and asked them if watching TV shows, listening to music, reading comics or playing video games helped them with their English skills.

In the Kaplan infographic, it shows that 55% of students surveyed learned English from reading comic books such as Spider-Man, The X-Men, and The Fantastic Four.

The President of The Stan Lee Foundation, Junko Kobayashi, said, “The Stan Lee Foundation also believes that superheroes have a role in education by promoting learning. We are pleased that Spidey, such a well-known character, has played a major part in helping students study English.” (Stan Lee is the creator of Marvel Comics)

Do you use English comic books to learn English?
If so, which ones do you use?
What is your favorite American superhero?

There are a lot of applications for your mobile devices out there to help you learn English. I’d like to highlight a new free app today which is called “English Train” and was recently launched by Kaplan International Colleges. Learning English with Kaplan can now be done on your mobile phone or portable device!

English Train is a fun and easy way for students to learn and improve their language skills. The app is more like a game where learners must match words to their corresponding images in a fast-paced race against time.

At first, there are three categories that players learn vocabulary from. These categories are animals, technology, and food and drink. After learning each word, they must match an image of the word to an audio description of it.

Following the train theme, students will arrive at stations and then see passengers at each station. When the passengers speak, they must match what they say to the correct image found on train seats. Once the round is completed, players are able to see their results and have the opportunity to make corrections.

The Global Leaderboard is a place where learners can upload and share their results with other players from around the world. They can even share their results on Facebook as well which means that if students think they are faster than the English Train, their friends and family can also take part in that success.

English Train is a wonderful study tool to help English students of all ages learn new vocabulary and speak with more vocabulary.

Have you tried this app?
If so, what did you think about it?
What are some other apps you use to help you learn English?