The latest project at UIC is our brand new radio station – RadioUIC. We spend some time planning this project and have approached it from different angles to give everyone the maximum benefit. The first and most important thing to note is that the programmes are made, edited and produced by the students. We will be putting out a programme once a week which will be there for you to enjoy at any time during the following week. The normal week’s planning is for the students to meet on Monday and talk through the different ideas for making the programme. This week for example there are 3 different programmes being made – one is about Pride – the big festival for Gay and Lesbian which tool place on Saturday in London. One of the students went there and interviewed some of the marchers about their experiences. Another programme is going to be about summer songs and the third is going to be a group discussion about the lyrics in songs – sometimes misunderstood and sometimes just not making any sense at all! Please listen in and see what the students are up to! The experience the students have during the making of the programmes is really interesting. They tell us that this is not only good fun, and perhaps useful for their futures (something to add to their CVs when they go back home – I’d imagine being able to say something like “editing programmes for a student radio show in English” would only be seen as positive) but ts an interesting way of learning English. Above all it gives conversation classes a real and authentic focus. You know that many conversation classes can see a little artificial – asking students to discuss things they may not really be interested in. With the radio show students can choose their topics and then get practice in planning in English – this can include all the skills, but primarily speaking and so really gives a great opportunity to develop these areas. Students don’t have to do anything particular – there are plenty of opportunities, so if they like speaking it’s easy – if writing or editing stories is more their thing then that’s also possible.

The first broadcast is scheduled for Thursday this week – 8th July!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 10:52 am and is filed under Life in London, UIC London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.