COURSE DESCRIPTION Do you already have a basic knowledge of English, but want to improve your ability to communicate in real-life situations? And do so in a fun, enjoyable way? Then Everyday English for ESL is just the course for you!
Each lesson begins with a fully-animated dialogue, which presents the vocabulary, grammar, and expressions you need to know in order to communicate successfully in English in a wide range of everyday situations.
The situations include:
• ordering food in a fast food restaurant • checking-in at the airport • making an appointment on the phone • returning goods to a shop
The dialogue is presented with and without speech bubbles, and is followed by:
• a listen and repeat activity to help you improve your pronunciation and intonation • a listening comprehension passage related to the topic of the lesson • a series of questions for you to answer about the lesson topic
All the audio material has been recorded by professional voice actors with British or American accents, and each lesson comes with a ten-page downloadable PDF, which contains:
• a full transcript of the lesson • language notes, explaining key grammar and vocabulary points • a word list • a series of language exercises • a crossword, • a word search puzzle
Several of these activities can also be done online, and the extra resources include Quizlet flashcard sets featuring the vocabulary used in each lesson.
At the end of the course, there’s a Final Quiz, to test what you have learnt.
With internet access becoming cheaper and more accessible, more and more students are turning to online English lessons with Skype to improve their English skills rather than signing up for courses in traditional academies. When considering which type is best for you, it’s important to think about when, where and how you prefer to study. Let’s look at how the experience of learning English on the internet can differ from a physical English classroom.
Location Of course the most obvious difference is the location: would you prefer to be in a school setting with desks, textbooks and a white board or in a virtual classroom via a webcam at home? If you need external motivation, you might feel more inspired to study English when you have to make the effort to go to a school building and work with other students. There can be lots of distractions at home - the TV, kids, pets or the telephone. But if you are quite self-disciplined, then interacting with your teacher on Skype should be motivating enough. Many students find studying from home much more comfortable and convenient because they don’t have to spend time getting to and from their lessons.
Timing The timing of lessons is another important consideration. If you book Skype English classes, you usually have the option of choosing how long you want your lessons to be and at what time of the day and week. This flexibility is particularly useful for people who work or have families and don’t want to study at a school in the evenings or at weekends. Classes can also be taken at any time of the year and are easier to reschedule if something comes up. Of course, if you want your children or teenagers to study English during school holidays according to a traditional set timetable, language schools can give them that sense of stability.
Interaction Depending on your personality, studying English in a conventional classroom with a group of other learners who have the same level as you could be an advantage or disadvantage. Some people thrive on the social aspect of working in groups, talking and interacting with new people. Speaking with people who have the same level of English as you can also help you build confidence. Although you can take group classes over Skype, it tends to be easier to study one-to-one with a teacher. You’ll have their full attention, rather than sharing their attention with classmates. This means a higher intensity of learning and lessons focused more on your individual needs.
Materials There are many different styles of learning; some people learn better through pictures and images, others with music, and even others who learn best with ‘kinaesthetic’, physical activities involving bodily movement. This is no different for learning English. Think about how you learn - do you learn by handling physical objects, drawing pictures or playing games? Then a normal classroom setting might suit you better. Some students like the feel of a physical textbook with pages they can turn and notebooks they can copy information into. Others, however, respond much better to computers and technology, preferring to type rather than write and to save lessons on their computer drive. Online teachers can utilise technology during a lesson by playing Youtube videos, podcasts, radio programmes and sharing a wealth of images from the web to enrich the learning experience. This style of learning may be more suitable for audio and visual learners.
So if you’re thinking about taking an English course, whether it is online or at a school, the most important thing is to choose the option which is the most suitable and motivating for you and your needs. Good luck!
This post was written by Hannah Yurk Hannah Yurk, Online Academy Manager and Administrator of Break Into English, a company that specializes in online English classes via Skype.
Here's lesson 5 of my Everyday English for ESL course. This lesson features a recipe for cookies. You can download a free ten-page PDF workbook for this lesson here.
COURSE DESCRIPTION Do you already have a basic knowledge of English, but want to improve your ability to communicate in real-life situations? And do so in a fun, enjoyable way? Then Everyday English for ESL is just the course for you!
Each lesson begins with a fully-animated dialogue, which presents the vocabulary, grammar, and expressions you need to know in order to communicate successfully in English in a wide range of everyday situations.
The situations include:
• ordering food in a fast food restaurant • checking-in at the airport • making an appointment on the phone • returning goods to a shop
The dialogue is presented with and without speech bubbles, and is followed by:
• a listen and repeat activity to help you improve your pronunciation and intonation • a listening comprehension passage related to the topic of the lesson • a series of questions for you to answer about the lesson topic
All the audio material has been recorded by professional voice actors with British or American accents, and each lesson comes with a ten-page downloadable PDF, which contains:
• a full transcript of the lesson • language notes, explaining key grammar and vocabulary points • a word list • a series of language exercises • a crossword, • a word search puzzle
Several of these activities can also be done online, and the extra resources include Quizlet flashcard sets featuring the vocabulary used in each lesson.
At the end of the course, there’s a Final Quiz, to test what you have learnt.
Reading is one of the four main skills that learners of English need to improve (the others being Listening, Speaking, and Writing), but it's not always easy to find interesting reading material at the right level. Most of the main EFL publishers have a range of graded readers (see here and here, for example), but they are usually physical books and not available in digital form (plus you have to pay for them). Which is where Read Listen Learn comes in ...
Read Listen Learn is a free website that offers digital graded readers for English teachers and learners. There are currently over 180 readers and they come in two forms: short stories adapted from works by over 50 authors, and articles on history, science, crime, sport and more. The readers are graded at 5 different levels for English learners and they all come with audio versions so you can listen while you read. Each reader also has a glossary. And once you have registered (using Facebook), you can create you own personal library of readers.
MY THOUGHTS Read Listen Learn is a great resource for both teachers and learners. In fact, it's quite similar to the excellent Dreamreader.net website, which I reviewed here. The readers vary in length from 250 words to over 5,000 words, and the audio versions vary in speed according to the level. However, it would be nice to have some different voices, and comprehension questions would be a welcome addition (it's something that Dreamreader.net already has). The navigation could also be improved — to see a list of all the articles you currently have to click on the My Library button on the homepage, and then on Find Articles, which doesn't seem very logical. Co-founder Simon Dalton tells me that he's in the process of updating the software, so hopefully these minor problems will be ironed out soon. Apparently, an app is on the way too, which is good news for mobile learners. By the way, you can read an interview with the other co-founder Mark Bartholomew here. I'm adding Read Listen Learn to the Reading page on the Learn English Online website.
COURSE DESCRIPTION Do you already have a basic knowledge of English, but want to improve your ability to communicate in real-life situations? And do so in a fun, enjoyable way? Then Everyday English for ESL is just the course for you! Each lesson begins with a fully-animated dialogue, which presents the vocabulary, grammar, and expressions you need to know in order to communicate successfully in English in a wide range of everyday situations. The situations include:
• ordering food in a fast food restaurant • checking-in at the airport • making an appointment on the phone • returning goods to a shop
The dialogue is presented with and without speech bubbles, and is followed by: • a listen and repeat activity to help you improve your pronunciation and intonation • a listening comprehension passage related to the topic of the lesson • a series of questions for you to answer about the lesson topic
All the audio material has been recorded by professional voice actors with British or American accents, and each lesson comes with a ten-page downloadable PDF, which contains: • a full transcript of the lesson • language notes, explaining key grammar and vocabulary points • a word list • a series of language exercises • a crossword, • a word search puzzle
Several of these activities can also be done online, and the extra resources include Quizlet flashcard sets featuring the vocabulary used in each lesson.
At the end of the course, there’s a Final Quiz, to test what you have learnt.
This cartoon by Peter Brookes from The Times relates to the announcement that President Trump will visit France in July.
BACKGROUND Donald Trump will attend France’s Bastille Day celebrations in Paris on 14 July, after accepting an invitation from the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Macron’s office said on Wednesday that the US president would attend the traditional Paris military parade as part of the commemoration marking the 100th anniversary of the entry of the United States into the first world war. US troops will join French soldiers in the annual display of military might on the Champs Elysées. Trump’s Paris visit will be his first trip to France since he became US president. (Source: The Guardian)
THE CARTOON The cartoon harks back to the days of the French Revolution (1789-1799), when condemned prisoners were taken to the guillotine in a tumbril, a sort of open cart (you can see the guillotine in the background on the left). In this cartoon, the 'prisoners' in the tumbril are Donald and Melania Trump. The tumbril is being followed by French president Emmanuel Macron, who is smiling. He is carrying a Liberty Cap on a lance. Trump exclaims, "You call this a state coach?!!".
LANGUAGE The expression "You call this a XXXX" is used when the speaker is not impressed by the thing he is talking about. • You call this a bedroom? It's more like a wardrobe!"
COMMENTARY Although Macron has invited Trump to Paris, there's no love lost between the two presidents. Who can forget the famous handshake battles during the recent G7 summit or Macron's apparent snub of Trump at the same event? And Macron was disappointed with Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
HISTORICAL NOTE In revolutionary France, the cap or bonnet rouge was first seen publicly in May 1790, at a festival in Troyes adorning a statue representing the nation, and at Lyon, on a lance carried by the goddess Libertas. To this day the national emblem of France, Marianne, is shown wearing a Phrygian cap. The caps were often knitted by women known as Tricoteuses who sat beside the guillotine during public executions in Paris in the French Revolution, supposedly continuing to knit in between executions. (Source: WIkipedia)
