Kings Bournemouth – A week of English and business experience in Bournemouth
06 Mar 2019
January 21st saw the beginning of an action-packed week for a group of 37 Italian ASL students, who came to Kings Bournemouth for an intensive week of English with Business. Anne Powell reports back on their work-related programme.
The students soon settled into their lessons, designed with a focus on brands, marketing and international business, and were eager to be able to practice their language skills in this.
Of course to prepare for the business world, knowing the skills that are needed is an important factor — so Tuesday afternoon saw all students taking part in an Employability Skills workshop. They worked on exercises that helped them to identify their own personal skills and strengths and learnt to put these into a Curriculum Vitae to present to future employers.
One of the main points was discussion on how business skills can be developed through work experience, volunteering and company visits, and this is just what the students had a taster of over the next couple of days.
A visit to Barclays Digital Eagle Lab enabled students to see the space developed by Barclays to support entrepreneurs and ambitious businesses in developing their ideas. Barclays Digital Eagle Lab offers spaces for co-working, private offices and event space, plus advice and mentoring for start-up businesses. Students were able to see the available machines like 3D printers and laser cutters used to develop prototypes of all sorts and were able to chat to some entrepreneurs using the facilities before completing a trail with clues to find and assess businesses and marketing in the area.
Students also got the chance to visit Kingfisher Barn Ecological Centre where they learned how the centre helps to take part of important local sites of natural interest and braved the cold temperatures to take part in some volunteering cleaning up the paths and areas.
On their last day, students demonstrated all the skills they had learned over the week with group presentations of their advertising campaigns to promote new product ideas they had developed. Along with evening activities of a quiz night and bowling, the students had a lot of fun and finished off their week with a trip to Corfe Castle and the Jurassic Coast, where they were all stunned by the beauty of Durdle Door and enjoyed the fresh sea air.
All teachers, staff and activity leaders involved agree that it was a great pleasure to have such a lovely group of students and leaders and we were sad to see them go.