Author: Nicole

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Moving sale: 1st drop

Here is the first drop of our 2020 moving sale. Sadly, we could not set everything up in our eCommerce site because it would have just been an insane amount of work to briefly sell stuff at a loss! So it is a little cumbersome, but we hope the great deals will keep you energized!

Here are a few points:

  • Download the list. Note that with some titles, we have quite a few copies available. We have created “supersized” pricing for these.
  • Highlight what you would like to purchase and email it to info@englishcentral.net along with your full name and address. We will then set up your order and email it back to you with your total including any applicable taxes and shipping charges.
  • Sales are while quantities last. No rainchecks. All sales are final.

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Celebrate with Cheese Toadstools!

Back in university, we had a professor who liked to share interesting little anecdotes from the past. “History for cocktail parties,” he said. Well, one story was about the croissant and how it was invented in Austria to celebrate the ousting of the Turks – the croissant is a crescent shape and the crescent was the symbol of the Ottoman Empire, so how delicous was it for Austrians to celebrate by biting into, chewing and ultimately expelling a lovely pastry?!?

We thought of this recently and how there should be a new symbolic pastry to celebrate recent events. While we would be thrilled if our readers came up with other ideas and shared them with us, this is what we have come up with. While you do need to get your hands on mushroom shaped cookie cutters, the recipe itself is easy. Note that sprinkling caraway seeds on top is optional, but a very tasty addition.

Sift together 1 cup of flour, 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of paprika. Toss with 3/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese and 1/3 cup of grated cheddar cheese. Cut in 1/2 cup of butter and 1 tbsp of full cream. Mix in a stand mixer for a few minutes until the ingredients come together in a smooth dough. Chill for 1 hour, then roll out to 1/8 inch thick. Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes and then place on a baking sheet. Lightly beat one egg with a teaspoon of water and brush over the toadstools. Sprinkle caraway seeds on top (optional).

Bake at 325 degrees Farenheit for about 12 minutes. Serve warm if you can, but they are delicious cold as well.

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International students allowed back into Canada

As of October 20th, international students are again allowed into Canada provided that they are studying with an institution that has an approved covid-19 readiness plan. It will be interesting to see how quickly students return.

We should take this opportunity to give a shout-out to Languages Canada. They have been working hard since the outset of the pandemic to work with the government to advance the interests of this industry which, as we all know, has been hit particularly hard by this pandemic. They have pointed out that over 75% of English and French programs are at risk of permanently closing and that with international students contributing $22 billion to the economy every year, Canada needs international students as well. They developed the Study Safe Corridor, a well-thought out plan, that would ensure that students could get to Canada for their studies, ensuring that they depart safe, arrive safe and study safe.

Read more about the new regulations.

Read more about Languages Canada’s efforts.

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Getting Materials to your students while campuses are closed

While the majority of post-secondary educational institutions have quickly made a heroic switch from the classroom to online learning during this pandemic, it has surfaced that an associated problem is how to get learning materials into the hands of students. Campus bookstores are for the most part closed and so is gone the usual source for student books and eBooks.

English Central is happy to say that we are able to help in this situation. We can get physical books and eBook codes into the hands of your students, economically and reliably. Further convenience is that we deal with all major publishers (and a lot of smaller ones too), so we offer the convenience of one-stop shopping.

Some notes follow on the service we can provide, though we encourage you to contact us with any questions or to go ahead with this program. Please email nicole@englishcentral.net.

How does it work?

We will need you to supply us with the titles and ISBNs of the materials you use, your start date and expected enrolment (we understand that numbers right now are often a bit of a question mark; estimates are fine). We will then confirm prices and order in the necessary quantities so that they will be available to ship out as soon as students place their orders. We will add these materials to our eCommerce site. We will also create a PDF for your program to distribute to your students, listing the materials by course and hyperlinking them to our eCommerce site; this will make the ordering process as simple as possible for students and will ensure they order the correct materials. Physical books will be shipped to students’ homes, codes will be emailed to them.

Pricing

We will charge list price for the materials, which is either the same or less than what students would be paying in a campus bookshop. For eBooks, there will be no additional charges (other than tax). For physical books, we will be subsidizing shipping charges. For orders over $100, shipping will be free. For orders less than $100, we will charge half of the Canada Post rate (there will be a promo code on the PDF we produce for you). Of course, there will be no shipping charge for eBooks. Contactless pickup is also available for those in the Toronto area.

Are there any obligations?

No. And if not many of your students end up buying, there will be no penalties.

How do you move forward with this?

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The Broken business model of EFL

There is an insightful article that was recently published in the EL Gazette about the broken business model of EFL schools in the US and the UK. While many teachers think of language schools as money makers that deliberately keep their teachers poor, this article blows that idea out of the water to show an industry that definitely is not making money the way it used to. Note too, that many of the problems the US and UK are facing also exist in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

Read more in the EL Gazette.