A Practical Course in Speaking English: Daily Conversation.
What you'll learn
- Build confidence and fluency in your English speaking skills.
- Improve English pronunciation and accent.
- Communicate confidently in a wide range of everyday situations at work, rest and play!
- Feel confident in understanding and being understood in practical conversations.
- Hold conversations on a variety of topics.
Requirements
- A desire to improve your spoken English.
Description
Doing is learning! Practise using correct, idiomatic English in everyday situations.
Build Confidence and Fluency in Your English Speaking Skills.
- Improve your pronunciation and accent.
- Build confidence that you will be understood.
- Hundreds of sentences and phrases to practice.
- Variety of topics including at work, at home and common social situations.
- Male and female UK/British/English/Scottish accents.
Take your spoken English to the next level!
Whether you are visiting the UK (or another English speaking country) or need to speak English at work, this 'hands-on', practical course help you practise typical language to use in various situations so that you are easily understood.
Particularly suitable for elementary to upper intermediate learners of English, but also for advanced learners wishing to improve their pronunciation skills and accent.
Speaking is only one half of a conversation, you also need to understand what the other person is saying! You will practise your listening skills and become confident in understanding others.
Overview of Course
My experiences in teaching English to hundreds of adults and children, as well as in learning foreign languages myself, has shown me that by far the quickest and most effective way to learn a new language is to speak it.
You may already have a good knowledge of English, know a lot of words, and may even be familiar with some of the trickier grammar points. But that's just part of the story. Real learning of English happens in it's application and use. This can only be achieved by talking and communication with others.
Have you ever walked into a shop (or other situation), having planned exactly what you were going to say in English, and then when you opened your mouth, nothing came out! Or something came out, but it was all jumbled up and you just muddled through and escaped as quickly as possible? Well, you are not alone! So has everyone who has learnt a new language! This course will help you change that outcome.
Children learn by imitating the sounds that they hear around them and this course is based on this same 'listen and repeat' principle.
Many language learners struggle to find opportunities to practise correct and natural spoken English. Unfortunately, practising with non-native speakers can allow poor sentence structure and weak pronunciation to prevail. You want to avoid practising, and therefore learning, the wrong patterns of speech.
"it's not simply that practice makes perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect!"
- You need to practise speaking correct, natural, idiomatic English.
Through carefully constructed and tested exercises, you will learn in a relaxed and amusing way, the to speak this wonderful language confidently and fluently.
You will practise speaking English with native English speakers from the UK: an English female speaker and a Scottish male speaker.
Course Structure
This practical course is broken down into several sections, each based on a particular topic. For example: at the office, shopping, mealtimes. The sections are broken down into short video lessons of between one and six minutes long.
- Each section begins with a video recording based on an actual conversation relevant to the topic.
- You then practise speaking each part of the conversation in a "listen and repeat" exercise.
- Next, you take the part of each speaker in turn and we encourage you to 'get into the role' and act out your side of the conversation.
- Finally, there are recordings of frequently used phrases, relevant to the topic, for you to practise.
- An important note for success: It is vital that you practise speaking out loud, not just in your mind or under your breath, as speaking out loud is the only effective way to embed the language and pronunciation into the speech centres of your brain.
You will have plenty of opportunities to test your listening, understanding and comprehension skills through online quizzes as well as the chance to upload a sample of your speaking practice for constructive feedback.
In addition, there are various other resources including:
- notes on relevant spoken grammar
- notes on particular points of spoken English useage
- links to relevant YouTube videos for additional entertaining practice opportunities.
All the video recordings are backed up by:
- text PDFs of the transcripts of each video
- audio files for you to download and practise anywhere!
You will receive a certificate on successful completion of the course.
Who this course is for:
- Basic to upper intermediate English spoken, listening and/or reading skills.
- Someone wishing to improve English Conversation skills.
- Someone wishing to improve British English accent.
- Someone who uses English at work.
- Someone planning to visit an English speaking country as a tourist.
- Someone planning to move to an English speaking country to live.
Instructor
Mike is a qualified teacher in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) courses. He teaches groups and individuals in formal and informal settings and designs courses to their individual needs. He also utilises the internet for distance learning.
Until leaving Scotland in May 2013 to come and live in Austria, Mike was a Firefighter with the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service. He was second in command of his unit. He was also an Instructor for Safe Working at Heights incorporating rope rescue. This followed twenty years working in London as a Driving Instructor (Grade 6/6). Mike has huge enthusiasm for teaching and likes to retain a fun element whilst ensuring information is both imparted and learnt in a clear, methodical fashion.
Mike was born in Scotland. He has a light Scottish accent, but is also a good mimic of accents (a result of service in the British Army, Royal Engineers) and is great at broadening experience of the many dialects and accents of the various regions of the United Kingdom.
He enjoys skiing; so much so, that he took the Austrian ski instructors examinations, in German! He now spends the winter months teaching skiing, in English or German, to students of any age, from many countries and all walks of life, in a beautiful, breathtaking alpine setting.