What teachers are saying about Actively Engaged from Bokomaru Publications

Bokomaru Publications is an ESL publishing house for the college ESL market located in Montreal, Quebec. Instead of offering a skills book and companion grammar very loosely connected into a range of common themes as other publishers do, our course books are highly cohesive.

• Each book explores a single theme: living together, office-life, digital literacy
• Students learn a range of discourse models for everyday communication: narrative, description,  exposition, and argumentation.
• The grammar and vocabulary are tightly integrated with the speaking and writing tasks.
• Each lessons builds upon the lesson before.
• All of the language learned throughout the semester is elicited by the final competency evaluations.
• The competency evaluations are contextualized and goal-oriented.
• PowerPoints keep learners focused and engaged during class time

In short, we strive to help teachers deliver cohesive and coherent courses to their college students. Do teachers like our products? Read on. We have collected testimonials from four teachers working at four CÉGEPS across Quebec. Here is what they say.

Actively Engaged on the Job for 604-100B

Actively Engaged on the Job does just what its name implies: it actively involves students in learning another language. Students love the variety of interesting classroom activities that promote specific language structures they subsequently consolidate with the companion website's online activities. My classroom is always very lively and the shyness that lower-level students traditionally demonstrate in speaking in front of their peers is gone. To top it all off, any technical difficulties or questions I have ever had were quickly resolved and/or answered by the website administrator. It is definitely worth a try.

--Jonathan Bishop, Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe 

I have been using Actively Engaged now for three years. The grammar on the power points is presented clearly and in an engaging fashion. For the level, the recycling of language in the tests and written project really help the basic grammar to stick. Too often in a course book, chapter one treats one grammar topic, which is followed by a test. Chapter 2 treats another. However, there is no continuous revision, which is in Actively Engaged. I have found a marked written improvement for the final test. The book contains many games, which are a lot of fun, and I have had students comment that they have never enjoyed an English class as much as this one. Nick has been a great support, always there promptly to help and explain any computer issues.

--Dagmara Brunst, Cégep de l'Outaouais

Actively Engaged at College for 604-101-MQ

I am currently using Actively Engaged at College with my 101 this term.  At this stage, I can say that I first like the fact that Actively Engaged at College is hosted on Moodle. This makes it easy to use, adapt, and modify. 

As a college teacher, I like the fact that it follows the weekly organization of the session and allows you to open or close lessons and sections and easily make content available or hide it as and when needed.  It is also well-designed to match the planning of the session. It provides teachers and students with the content, activities and evaluations for twelve of the fifteen weeks in addition to a review unit, a thematic unit specifically devoted to writing wikis, a hyperlink to final evaluations, and a writing tool for self- and peer-editing: www.virtualwritingtutor.com.

I also find the Powerpoint slides very handy. They are well structured and ready to deliver. Moreover, in addition to being accessible at all times for all, they are especially useful  for those who are low-level and need more time, or those who are slow and  learn at their own pace, or simply those who  are disengaged and miss class. With at-risk students, the slides take a lot off my shoulders.

The grammar and vocabulary are introduced through fun and game-like in-class pair and group activities which students enjoy -although at times.  The wiki-project is a great idea to encourage collaborative writing, and this, Actively Engaged does very well on a weekly basis with clear instructions and a well-designed template. 

 --Ali Boumoussa, Collège Ahuntsic

Labo d'Anglais is a fully loaded Moodle learning platform

Actively Engaged provides a treasure of stimulating and often playful activities that make the language less intimidating and facilitate oral and written exchanges between students of heterogeneous levels.

Fully customizable by the teacher, the online component offers many attractive features: homework management; pertinent listening, reading, and vocabulary exercises; activities grouped by lesson; a comprehensive PowerPoint document for each lesson, covering grammar, method, and formative practice. It is a single interface that can conveniently serve to take tests, do exercises, distribute documents, collect assignments, and keep track of results. Made to minimize the teacher's workload, the online component can sometimes be uneasy to use for people with low or average computer skills, but extensive technical support remedies this difficulty.I particularly enjoyed the vocabulary and the speaking activities, which are very pertinent and extremely easy to adapt to all levels. The topic and format of the writing project are entertaining as well as relevant.

Virtual Writing Tutor ESL Grammar Checker

The VirtualWritingTutor is one of my favourite features that fosters student autonomy and motivation and enables significant progress. Free and user-friendly, the VirtualWritingTutor gives students editing method by forcing them to proofread their texts. It trains them to identify their errors and to always make more than one draft. It allows hard-workers to see how much they can improve their writing, thus validating and rewarding their effort.

--Alethea Paquiot, Collège Édouard-Montpetit

Order Actively Engaged for your students today!