39 Course Experiment using Facebook as an LMS - Alicja (2)

I have a lot of great English conversations with Bernd. He is German but lives in Brazil. He wanted to become more fluent and natural with his English speaking. This is us talking in our second lesson and then in our twelfth. Can you hear a difference? :-)
Bernd used the English Out There learning content and we talked and recorded our sessions on Skype.

So, this was my last session with Anthony, which was a shame as we get on really well but he doesn't need me any more, he knows what to do, has already improved and will go on improving.

Today we started with me talking about the psychology of acquiring English speaking skills which Anthony seemed to appreciate and then as part of the lesson discussion we both talked about some rather unsettling memories from our childhoods.

I also noticed that he was habitually using the present tense when he should have been using the past tense...listen for his reaction when I point it out. Interesting...it bamboozled his brain for a bit but he got there and if he listens to this clip a few times he will probably adjust naturally.

Finally, at the end he told me an Australian work colleague of his told him recently that he thought Anthony had been born in Australia!

This was a fun conversation as usual. Stereotypes and specifically English stereotypes...so it was an amazing coincidence that I'd just shared a very provocative image of Prince William that a friend posted on Facebook in outrage (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202462627269992&set=a.2676258948723.2147806.1323703051&type=1&relevant_count=1)

Anthony didn't react the way I thought he would and I am going to let my Facebook friends hear what he had to say about the image. Let's keep this education thing going!

I think I detected that Anthony's English has improved in the way he wanted it to and he'd had a conversation with someone I'd introduced him to via my volunteer group. He'd also been recording his meetings at work and listening to them again later...which is a fantastic idea...not just for work but also for your language skills. Listen out for my question about his reaction to hearing himself speak and how he explains what is does for him when he hears himself. Fascinating stuff. Well done Anthony!

This was a fun chat with Anthony, a self-confessed geek. He did well and tailored the questions to me specifically because he knows I do a lot of online work. We discussed big data, bitcoin and android apps as well as his work in Australia for local government.

I think he's pretty busy so finding people to talk to online is tricky and he is a bit lazy because he is in Australia, an English speaking country and has English speaking friends :-)

He said he practises with them, but I want him to record and listen to those conversations using his mobile phone (the Soundcloud app is great). The reason he wanted me to help him was to iron-out the things in his speech that caused slight misunderstanding with less sympathetic listeners at work. if he records conversations at work and listens again he will start to hear what he is doing that confuses people and should naturally correct.

This was Anton's first proper EOT session. He will do it with me each time first and then speak to a two or three other practice partners. Record everything and listen again...he's pretty good so I will try to pick up on things and be a bit tough. He just wants a polish! :-)

Anthony found me via the English Out There Facebook page (http://Facebook.com/EnglishOutThere) and he'd listened to some of my recordings with other learners.

This is our first (before) conversation. We are going to use the SS5 upper-int course.

Here's Noemi before and after her short English Out There course in central London...again the product of ten classes that were conducted completely without the use of a classroom! Have a listen, can you hear a difference in the way Noemi speaks?

This is the first time since we started English Out There eleven years ago that we have taught it in London using no classrooms whatsoever.

On the last day of a group's two week course (10 lesson/30 hours), as they were getting ready to say goodbye, I had a brief chat with Angelina one of the group leaders. She is an English teacher in a French secondary school.

I was curious to hear what she and the students thought about our course, especially since we had done everything outside of the classroom.

What Angelina told me made me ask her if I could interview her and put the clip online for others to hear. She very kindly said I could.

Have a listen as Angelina, a veteran of seven study trips with teenage English learners, describes the differences between what all of the other English schools do and what we do. It made me a very happy man last Friday :-)

Charles is a lovely bloke and although his English wasn't great he volunteered to be recorded at the start and end of his EOT course in London.

This year we decided not to use any classrooms at all to teach EOT. We wanted to stimulate the students' minds a bit more in the input stage (at the start of the lesson) by not asking them to go into a classroom (like they do all year at home).

It seemed to work as, in anonymous written feedback, 78% gave the English Out There course 4 or 5 out of 5 (60.8% gave it 4, 17% gave it 5).

Have a listen to see if you can hear a difference in the way Charles speaks English after just ten lessons over two weeks in London?

So, this is the same 'before' clip from our first conversation where Liliana dries up a bit and you can hear the nervousness in her voice edited next to a passage from her last session with me, the lesson on dreams and dreaming.

In the second clip she controls the conversation and talks with minor input from me for almost three full minutes whilst she tells me a story about one of her previous English teachers and his dream about her.

The aim of working with Liliana was to finally, after over twenty years of English study using other courses, help her to feel comfortable speaking English with a fluent English speaker.

Have a listen and let me know what you think?