ELI students and teachers attended the semi-annual ELI Coffee Hour on 3/6/2024, which featured Spring theme. This year, everyone participated in discussion activities, listened to music, and played competitively in our special game room!
Special thanks to Alexandra and Amie for hosting the event!
Jieun Kim (SLS Doctoral Student) and Maggie McGehee (SLS MA Student) won the award for Best Student Presentation at the East Coast Organization of Language Testers 2023 Conference.
Their presentation, “Streamlining a reading placement test: Insights from factor analysis and Rasch modeling”, drew on data from the ELI Placement Test and began in SLS 671 Research in Language Testing. Anu Reddy (Linguistics Doctoral Student) contributed to the research.
Congratulations, Jieun and Maggie!!
ELI students and teachers attended the semi-annual ELI Social Hour on 10/30/2023, which featured a spooky Halloween theme. Everyone was engaged in discussion activities and played language-related games!
Thank you to everyone for creating a fun and relaxing environment for the event!
ELI instructor, Sohyeon Lee, has been presenting a free workshop on the AI system, ChatGPT, in each of the ELI writing classes throughout October and November.
The workshop showed ELI students how they could ethically use ChatGPT to help improve various aspects of their papers in progress, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of using this tool.
Sohyeon is one of new ELI instructors during Fall 2023, who has been teaching ELI 73.
A big MAHALO to Sohyeon for putting together an insightful and timely workshop!
Congratulations to Krissa Guevarra who has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship! Krissa will be teaching in South Korea in 2024. We congratulate her on representing UH Manoa, the SLS department, and the ELI in this outstanding accomplishment!
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the nation’s largest study abroad fellowship program, facilitating cultural exchange through direct immersion in a host country and interaction with a local community. The English Teaching Assistant Programs place Fulbright grant recipients in classrooms around the world to assist local English teachers while serving as cultural ambassadors for the United States.
ELI instructor Laura Bacchus presented a free workshop on the online editing tool, Grammarly, in various ELI classes this April.
The workshop showed ELI students how they could use Grammarly to help edit their papers, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of using this tool.
This workshop helped students by walking them through the editing process of a paper with and without the use of Grammarly.
Laura, an ELI instructor who has been with use for years, most recently taught ESL 100 in the Fall of 2022.
Thank you Laura for the helpful and informative workshop!
Grammarly is a free online editing tool that can help you improve your English writing, whether you’re writing papers for your classes, drafting an email to your professors, or just making a social media post!
ELI instructor Laura Bacchus is hosting this free workshop on April 5th, from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm at Moore Hall 153B.
You can register for the workshop at the following link: https://forms.gle/1u8w54XM2JZPzB4x6
Congratulations to Yuki Kawahara, who recently participated in the UH Breakthrough Innovation Challenge competition held by the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE) and was one of the winners!
The UH Breakthrough Innovation Challenge is an entrepreneurial competition where participants pitch their innovative business idea to a panel of judges for a chance to win cash prizes. The Challenge pairs competitors with business mentors and teaches students to research market opportunities, seek customer validation, and determine the commercial potential of their idea. Furthermore, students hone their presentation and communication skills.
Yuki, an ELI 80 student, gave a live pitch of her business idea to a judging panel and a live audience. She presented an innovative pitch on “Changing Japanese Higher Education.” The presentation was followed by a Q&A session with the judges.
The results were decided by a judging panel of four, which included Zachary Kim, co-founder and chief technology officer of Float; Jill Nakatsu, director of academic affairs for the UH Mānoa College of Engineering; Cindy Matsuki, SBIR manager with Innovate Hawaii; and Mark Tawara, founder of BrightLight Digital. Each judge was given a thumbs up emoji paddle, which they would use to raise for a “Yes” vote. Each thumbs up was worth $250, giving contestants a chance to win up to $1,000. Every contestant walked away with at least $250.
On October 28th, the English Language Institute hosted its annual Coffee Hour to celebrate Halloween and provide students the opportunity to converse with each other in a relaxed environment!
This fun social event included coffee, drinks, and snacks, as well as activities like board games, a tarot reader, a guessing game, and conversation starters.
For more information or to inquire about future coffee hours, please contact uhmeli(at)hawaii(dot)edu!
A new article in the Ka Leo, UH Manoa’s student newspaper, talks about the University’s exchange student program. Written by ELI student Yi-Ting Liu, the article also features statements by Kenji Yoshizaki, who is also enrolled in the ELI, and Juli Ji, an exchange student enrolled in the Hawaii English Language Program (HELP).
You can read the full article at the Ka Leo website, link below: