Language help for the serious student

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Play “20 Questions” Here you can play a questioning game which is most commonly known in English as “20 Questions”. You play with real people. On this website there are NO logins, passwords, subscriptions, payments, m…

Many teachers use A I as an assistant. It speeds up their preparation work. They use A I to create learning materials and lesson content.

Educational organisations now recommend collaboration with A I to design courses more easily.

In its current form, A I is a machine that finds common similar wordings on an extremely large database, and then regurgitates language. A I does not innovate. It has the effect of standardising, assuming that teachers do due diligence, checking for errors in the A I output. The result is that a lot of new learning materials and course structures are almost indistinguishable.

I have dabbled in using A I myself, but I have decided it’s not for me.

Almost all of my learning materials are AI-free, and I have never used A I to help with designing my courses.

Here is some information about my lessons.

PRONUNCIATION
Correct pronunciation can be very important, so that people can understand you.

The lessons, except the trial lesson, start with pronunciation if there are sounds or words that you need to practice. I display the words that you need to pronounce. In the trial lesson, this stage may be near the beginning of the lesson, or later on in the lesson, depending on the circumstances. In further lessons, this stage is often quite short, about 3 minutes if there are about 8 words for example. Sometimes a pronunciation stage is not necessary.

During the rest of the lesson (after the pronunciation stage), depending on your level, I will tell you about all or some pronunciation errors that you may make while you speak, and I will give you a chance to practice correct pronunciation.

SPEAKING
All students practice speaking in the lessons. Speaking is the main activity throughout the live lessons (after the pronunciation stage). This can include speaking live grammar exercises, speaking about topics, discussions, simulated business scenarios, speaking tasks from exams, and speaking about your homework answers (grammar / listening / vocabulary / reading homework). There are opportunities for you to make choices yourself about the content of the lessons.

In the lessons I display a screen where I type live summaries of what I think you are saying, and your errors.

WRITING
Writing is for homework. Some students do not want or need to do writing. Writing can be about topics (including your life experiences), and you can write exam tasks. The following lesson, I give you feedback on your homework. There are opportunities for you to make choices yourself about the content of the homework.

READING
(“Reading” means looking at texts so you understand information or stories. I do not mean pronouncing a text - this is “pronunciation” - see above.)

Reading is for homework. Reading can help with expanding your vocabulary, and to practice real-life situations where you need to extract information. Some students do not want to do reading homework, or they may not have time.

GAME
Many of my lessons include a game where you ask questions to identify my secret word or idea. This speaking activity can be played at many levels. It integrates grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The advantage of this game is that I do not need to interrupt you (or wait) before highlighting and working on you errors - you ask one question at a time.

LISTENING
Of course, I do some speaking in the lessons, and you have to listen to that (for information). If you need further listening practice in the lessons, we can play the above game in reverse. (I can make my questions easy or difficult!)

Some students do listening homework: they are exam-style papers of various kinds.

GRAMMAR
(“Grammar” means the structures of a language.)

For the lessons, we do spoken grammar exercises, and the game above is often useful.

I can set written grammar exercises for homework. I have produced homework exercises in which you have to supply missing words in texts from the real world, including newspaper articles.

VOCABULARY
(There are many things to know about a word or vocabulary item: its meaning, other words with the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings, when we cannot use it, what other words go with it, and its spelling and pronunciation.)

All the activities above can help with vocabulary. I have also produced homework exercises involving more advanced vocabulary, where you match words to gaps in texts about topics or to gaps in real newspaper headlines.

As a student becomes advanced, they eliminate most grammar and pronunciation problems, and the importance of vocabulary increases relative to pronunciation and grammar.

LOWER LEVEL LEARNERS
Beginners speak simple sentences in the lessons: easier grammar and vocabulary exercises, and sometimes simple role-plays. There is no separate pronunciation stage at the beginning of a lesson. As you get more advanced, I can start to set vocabulary exercises for homework.

CHILDREN
I do not teach children if they are too young and/or we don’t have a common language and/or they are beginners. The details depend on the circumstances.

When I teach children the lessons are a little different. We can incorporate more listening activities into the lessons, sometimes using videos. After a few weeks we might start to use a children’s textbook.

PLEASE WRITE YOUR QUESTIONS TO MY EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected]

Adrian

VOICED AND UNVOICED "S"