Dear Friends,

I am sitting here in the Victoria International Airport, waiting for my flight, and answering e-mails. I have been out of touch for the last week, too remote to get a reliable connection to the internet. Now that I have a connection, and I am replying to e-mails, I feel so excited.

For some time I have seen a great discrepancy between the people who come to me through CELBANPrep. There are 3 groups of learners. (See in which you belong.)

1. English as a Second/Foreign Language Learners: these people may have some background in English before coming to Canada, but for the most part take two years to learn the language, to get a score of 5.
2. Confident Learners: these people have come to Canada with a strong English background. They get a score of 5 or 6 on any English exam without too much work. But overconfidence can undermine this group of people who do not understand that to pass the CELBAN they need to work on their English grammar to increase their level to an academic level.
3. Fluent Learners: these people have scores of 7-9 on English Exams. They merely need to understand the format of the CELBAN exam and how the Canadian culture impacts it.

CELBANPrep is most efficient and effective for group number 3, people who can sail through the lessons and are ready for the exam. But most are from groups 1 and 2; people who need to focus on their grammar and writing skills to increase their score to at least a 7. This takes time: more time than CELBANPrep can offer. And it takes instruction: more instruction than CELBANPrep has offered. Still I have done my best to assist people.

One day I got the following e-mail from someone who had been very involved in reading the assignments on the writing forum. She wrote:

Dear Kim,

                One thing is bothering me for a long time and I am not sure should I shared it or not as it might hurt you. But if I will not share I will not feel relax by thinking: it could be  a good suggestion. Heartly, its my humble request to you, if you do not like it please disregard it happily. Well, I was thinking why not to create a little grammer resource for celban writings? As I am writing for a long time; I have observed that most of candidates do the same mistakes for 1 to 4 assignment. Like spacing, capital I and first letter of every sentence, agreement of tense and verb, punctution, articles and spellings . Especially, the candidates who are new to computure skills.  When I read others’ post, always find you writing the same again again for all of us. Everyday you do so hard efforts. It might take may be a week to you create this small but effective resource but I believe it would reduce your work load and time remarkably. Dear Kim I really, new to use the polite words in English if any one of my words hurts you please forgive me for that.

      In last I would love to receive the link for next assignments

                                                                                                           Thank you for your patience. S

I smiled when I read her message. I had been thinking the same thing, but things had been too hectic at the office for me to take the time to do this. So, for the past week I have been on a writing retreat, creating: new lessons, new presentations, new workbooks, and new handouts. Without distractions, I got so much work done! I created resources for Writing for Internationally Educated Health Professional:

• 4 presentations,
• 3 workbooks, and
• 2 printable handouts.

Topics include, for a start:

• common sentence errors,
• punctuation errors,
• verbs and verbals errors, and
• agreement errors!

Articles, prepositions and collocations are to come.

They have to go through some beta testing, in January. Then I will be making the courses available to the public in three ways:

1. for people with a CLB score around a 5 to help them get up to around a 7 in writing, before taking CELBANPrep.
2. as resources for people who have subscribed to CELBANPrep.
3. as a resource for other health professionals: physiotherapists, x-ray techs, physicians, pharmacists, midwives and the like.

So, if you have not heard from me in a while, I apologize, and I thank you for the gift of time so that I could create these resources.

And for all those people who have subscribed to CELBANPrep, thank you for investing in me so that I could invest my time in creating resources to invest in the future of others. By sustaining me, you are sustaining individuals, families and nations!

With great excitement and appreciation!

Sincerely

Kim