The TEFL Academy (Level 5 TEFL Course). Assignment C complete. [Correctly Passed] A+ Grade.

The TEFL Academy (Level 5 TEFL Course). Assignment C complete. [Correctly Passed] A+ Grade. The book contains a wide range of relevant and functional materials and exercises, that include mind-maps, role-plays, fill in the blanks, matching exercises, as well as conscious-raising activities and discussion questions. I also can see that the four skills are well balanced in terms of activities offered to develop each skill. I can see that all the materials are attractively and clearly presented in the book. The fact that a lot of mind-maps are repeatedly used throughout the unit helps students to assimilate the material much easier as well as demonstrate the connection of different lexical terms making them more memorable. Furthermore, the contents pages show that the book has a functional focus, thus, the units are organized with an emphasis on functionality and there are a lot of activities that give students the ability to communicate effectively in various everyday situations. The topics are very interesting and appropriate for the age of the group. Since adults have a lot of experience in life and their opinions about its different aspects are quite formed, I am sure that they will find topics such as globalisation, self-improvement, education very interesting and entertaining. On the other hand, I can see that the book offers contextualized practice of grammar and vocabulary to make the learning process more memorable and engaging (this point is of utmost importance for the learners). The speaking activities are very well structured and provide students with the effective and meaningful practice which can be carried out in pairs as well as in the small/big groups. The book also contains a variety of real-life photos that makes it appealing to adults and young adults (which I guess this book is aimed at). Besides, these colourful visuals introduce characters, stories and set the settings for the listening exercises, so the students are able to activate their previous knowledge about the topic and make predictions about the language and vocabulary being used. Every unit starts with the clear goals and it ends with an “after unit” section in which students can evaluate themselves by reflecting on their own progress and what they are able to do after completing the unit. These kinds of self-evaluating activities tend to give students not only a sense of achievement, but also help them identify the areas to improve and to practice more. I also like the idea that all the points seen during the lesson are summarised in the language summary and practice sections at the end of the book (language summary, grammar, and vocabulary practice). It can help students who are having difficulty and can provide more practice for students who want to practice more and revise the material. I was wondering if the coursebooks currently offer a digital version as well. If this is the case it would be one of the biggest points in its favour. All in all, since my knowledge of the students will be based on their need’s analysis, and our relation will be developed throughout the course because I will get to know them better, I will decide whether I need to add or omit something from the course book material, but I definitely would use this book in my course! Highlight 12 vocabulary items (words or phrases) which would be useful to pre-teach. Part A: Adapted/shortened text The bad things that happen when algorithms run online shops Smart software controls the prices and products you see when you shop online – and sometimes it can go spectacularly wrong, from causing offence to destroying livelihoods. But that’s the trouble with algorithms. All sorts of unexpected results can occur. Sometimes these are costly, but in other cases they have benefited businesses to the tune of millions of pounds. What’s the real impact of the machinations of machines? And what else do they do? Errant algorithms can also cause human headaches when it comes to prices. The costs of products that appear on retail websites are constantly fluctuating thanks to software that sets them competitively. The frequency at which these changes happen is so great that dedicated websites have been set up to “watch” the pricing on websites like Amazon. Daniel Green has been running one of these sites for years. He explains that prices don’t just change daily – but sometimes several times in one day. “They will drop the price of a product every few days or every few hours until a product is purchased by someone and then the price goes back up,” he says. “We know that they keep prices low on a lot of their most popular products to give the impression that they have great deals and then for less active product categories or less popular products they may have a bit more of a profit margin there.” Sometimes this can produce amusing and unexpected results, however, in what Green calls a “race to the bottom”. Two retailers selling the same thing on Amazon’s marketplace will re-price their product against their competitor, but the re-pricing can occasionally continue unabated until absurdly low or high price points are reached. “It just goes back and forth,” says Green. Sometimes the most damaging prices are the lowest – as low as you can get, for example. This was what blighted the Christmas sales of a string of Amazon marketplace sellers in December last year, when automated re-pricing software Reprice Express erroneously changed the price of thousands of items to as little as one penny or one cent. The glitch, which happened two weeks before Christmas, hit sellers running small retail businesses extremely hard. Part of the trouble was that once orders had been placed, they were almost instantly processed by Amazon’s automated warehouse systems under the “Fulfilled by Amazon” (FBA) programme. Sellers asked the FBA team to stop sending these orders out but were told it wasn’t that simple. Amazon says that nothing about the operation of this system has changed since the December incident. “It almost felt like somebody broke into your house or your personal life and started to take things away from you,” says Richard Burri, whose office stationery store was affected by the error. He and his wife estimate that the various computer algorithms working together would have cost the business between $100,000 and $150,000. Fortunately, the majority of the firm’s human customers who had bought one penny items agreed to return them when contacted. Others found that buyers weren’t always so obliging. Shamir Patel sold pharmaceutical products via Amazon. He also asked customers to return one penny products, but he says about half of them refused to do so. The cost to his business, he calculates, was around £60,000. “You were a bit powerless to do anything about it,” he recalls. “You were literally just watching your money flush down the drain.” Yet another seller, Judith Blackford, who marketed dolls and babies’ gifts, says she suffered sleepless nights and adds that she has been forced to close her business completely. “I’m selling off any stock that’s left now. Pretty much most of it is going out half price just to get rid of the stock,” she says. “It’s made me not really want to go on with the business.”