English Methods – Tutor Blog

Beyond the Ted Talk: 8 Additional Resources to Get Students Speaking

Talene — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 11:13:46 +0000

TED Talks are marvelous little English teaching gems. They’re ideal for exposing students to new vocabulary, regional accents, and grammar in use. Plus, they help us tutors generate novel conversation topics during Fluentify sessions.

While we all love them dearly, they’re not a one-size-fits-all follow-up activity. Some of my students make far more progress using other resources. Here’s a little bit about who those students are and where they can find the TED Talk alternatives that best suit their needs.

1. THE FALSE BEGINNER: This student has an A1-ish level of English. Every now and then, a student is capable of preliminary communication, but also definitely not ready for a 30 minute lecture about education systems, architecture, or microfinance. Surely, beginner students who ask for clarification on questions like “Where do you work?” or “What are your hobbies?” need repetition. It’s easy to forget that they may also benefit from visual scaffolding. I recommend creating your own A1 content using Unsplash. This website offers free, searchable, visually compelling images that are great for providing false beginners with context. A photo like the one below can help bring “What do you usually eat for breakfast?” to life!

2. THE ALMOST THERE BUT NOT QUITE STUDENT: This student has a high A2, low B1 level of English. While the occasional TED Talk poses a welcomed challenge, a new TED Talk every week could be slightly overwhelming. You don’t want to lower your student’s morale by assigning grueling follow-up activities. To keep your intermediate students motivated with smaller, more manageable tasks, check out BBC’s Lingohack for A2s and 6 Minute English for B1s. BBC scaffolds content really nicely for non-native speakers, so these resources are great for students who can nearly handle TED Talks, but just want a little extra support.

3. THE “REAL PEOPLE DON’T TALK LIKE THAT” STUDENT: This student has a B2+ level of English. Since TED Talks are public lectures, presentations are usually organized coherently and accessibly. In the real world, people mumble; people speak with false starts and use, like, all kinds of, um, fillers. This student usually has considerable exposure to native English speaking friends or colleagues, and realizes that people in day-to-day life aren’t quite as articulate as the average TED presenter. For students who are looking for listening comprehension practice in more colloquial, casual contexts – podcasts, podcasts, podcasts! I like This American Life and Freakonomics, but it’s a wide world out there so let your student explore.

4. THE CURIOUS STUDENT: This student adores TED Talks, but wants to keep things interesting and try something new. Send this advanced student to The Atlantic for thought-provoking videos, often rich in vocabulary and complex sentence structure.

5. THE YOUNG (OR YOUNG AT HEART) STUDENT: Most primary and middle school students, once they’re comfortable, are naturally chatty so when you touch on something they’re into, it’s usually difficult to get in a word after that! However, after you’ve sufficiently covered the familiar (school subjects, friends, family, after-school activities, etc.) Pixar Short Films are amazing for kid-friendly unfamiliar topics. Since the Cambridge PET has a photo description task, Highlights is another great image resource that’s perfect for secretly preparing kids for standardized tests under the guise of fun!

Have more “Beyond the TED Talk” resource ideas? Post them below!

How to Improve Your Rebooking Rate.

Iwka J — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 13:41:09 +0000

You get a booking from a new student, the lesson goes very well and the student is clearly enjoying it, at the end they say they would book again soon, you provide them with a nice feedback form, … and you wait, and wait and they never book again.

All you can do is wonder… why?

I wish we could easily say why but I’m afraid there can be multiple reasons. Let’s have a look at some of them and most of all, see what we need to pay attention to in order to improve as teachers on Fluentify.

Some reasons are beyond our control! So first of all, don’t panic as one of the following might be the case:

The student would simply like to practice with different tutors (he or she might be interested in different accents).
The student booked a session with you because their favourite tutor was away so as much as they enjoyed the class with you, they want to continue with the tutor they know well. And yes, I know, it would be nice if they let us know about it rather than disappear without any explanation.
The student received a promotional token or 1 session as a gift but they never had any intention to actually buy a pack. So you did your best but Fluentify was never something they were looking for.
The student has no idea what they want so they keep trying different tutors until they realise what they are really looking for or until they use up their tokens and their adventure with the English language ends.

Let’s consider now a student who has a few tokens at their disposal, is willing to work with one tutor only, books a session with you hoping you will be the one!

Here is what you should do:

Start already before the session! Send a message on chat to greet the student and find out a bit more about them. Do some research on the platform if the student has been with Fluentify for a while.
During the session be very friendly but professional at the same time. You want to become their friend AND their English teacher.
Find out who they are and what their needs are. Why are they learning English and what would they like to achieve?
Tell them YOU know how to help them achieve their goals and that after the introductory class, you will provide them with detailed feedback with some ideas for a programme the 2 of you could follow.
Make sure the student talks most of the time! If they ask you about your life, family etc., answer the question but don’t go on for too long! Bounce the question back to the student and let THEM tell you about themselves.
Get a good idea of what they are interested in and use this information when sending a follow-up activity.
If they talk about some important events taking place in their lives soon, make sure you mention them at the end of the feedback form. They will immediately feel that you care about them!
Don’t forget to teach English during the session! As much as the first lesson is about getting to know each other, you need to teach your students something during the session! After all, they paid for an English lesson. Provide your student with some feedback during and at the end of the session; pick up on some mistakes they have made more than once and provide them with some more structured practice around the mistake – short but effective!; correct them from time to time and feed them some new vocabulary.
If your student has a low level of English – praise them, boost their confidence but at the same time don’t forget about error correction. Make them feel they are already learning English from the very first minute they met you.
If you feel the lesson is not going in the right direction, change something! Make sure you have a few resources ready – you could share a file with your student, you could watch a short fun video and talk about it, you could even do a grammar exercise together if this is what the student wants! Be ready for anything and everything.
Tell them a bit about Fluentify – how to book sessions, when and how often and that they can choose to follow a teacher by clicking on a heart icon on the tutor image. After this the student will know exactly what to do when the session ends, i.e. book their next session with you and mark you as their favourite tutor

You have now gained a new long-term student! They trust you, they love spending time with you, they can’t imagine their life without you!

Happy tutoring to you all!

The best way to teach vocabulary so that it sticks

Iwka J — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 12:59:29 +0000

“I knew this word but now I have forgotten it…”

“I know this word but I never use it…”

Sounds familiar? I bet you have all had students saying such things or students complaining about not making much progress. And I am sure you have noticed that their passive language skills are a lot stronger than their active speaking skills.

Apparently, our memory plays a huge role here. And we all know that ‘practice makes perfect’ AND Fluentify is all about practising the language. However, our conversations in order to be productive should follow some rules. And today I would like to focus on how our memory works so that having considered a few facts you can maximise the time spent with your students.

The Curve of Forgetting.

The graph comes from an interesting article published by the University of Waterloo that talks about remembering facts and analyses the curve of forgetting.

What does it mean in practical terms? For example, you may have had a very productive session with your student, during which you studied a lot of new vocabulary and by the end of the session student was familiar with all the vocabulary items. You said goodbye to your student and he or she booked a session with you for the following week. You left your feedback, the student had a quick look at it and then didn’t think about the new vocabulary for a week. What happened to the new vocabulary? The student most probably lost 90% of the words you introduced to him. So now back to square one…

How to avoid that? – REPETITION and REVISION are the key to success!

Here is a sample sequence of Fluentify sessions:

STEP 1:

Session 1 – 30 mins and about 15 vocabulary items introduced at the beginning of the lesson, practised in context during the session, quickly reviewed at the end of the session

Feedback – ask your student to review all the new vocabulary items (e.g. write short sentences, write a short summary of the lesson content) within 24 hours!

STEP 2:

Session 2 – 30 mins ideally booked after a few days. Encourage your students to do so! The introductory part of the session devoted to an active review of the vocabulary from session 1, followed by an introduction of new vocabulary or grammar.

Feedback – main focus on a new topic but a reminder of the vocabulary from the previous session.

STEP 3:

Session 3 – 30 mins booked more than a week after the first session – a very quick check of the vocabulary from session 1 (our student should have memorised about 80% of the new words and expressions), followed by an active review of the target language from session 2 and finally followed by an introduction of a new topic.

Try it out! It may not be a solution for everyone because we all have different learning styles but I am sure many of your students will appreciate this kind of approach and become your loyal Fluentify followers!

Best Follow Up/ Homework Activities for Adult Learners

Katie — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:31:56 +0000

In past articles we’ve written about the importance of student feedback for the learning process and how to write killer feedback for your Fluentify students. However, we know that one of the hardest parts of this is actually picking that ‘perfect’ homework activity. These activities are important because they force the student to do some studying outside of your short lessons together and they can help students expand on important skills that they may need to pass their upcoming exam, participate in a business meeting, or check in to their summer destination hotel.

Today we’ll look at some great activities that you can assign your students to make sure that they are getting the most out of your sessions together and making significant improvements with their English.

1. RELEVANT reading comprehension activities

Some of the best activities to send students that you can use both before and during your sessions are reading comp activities. These can be current news or blog articles as well as ESL specific content (although recent research shows that students learn languages better when using real life content that they might find when they need to use their second language).

Remember to keep three important things in mind when selecting a resource:

Is this resource relevant to the student’s goals and will it help bring them closer to that goal?
Is the resource level appropriate? Too hard or too easy? We don’t want to overwhelm our students but we also want to make sure to challenge them- keep this important point in mind.
Is it interesting? If you’re completely bored reading this activity, chances are your student will be too.

When looking for these activities, start with what you read! As you go through your daily routine of reading various online materials, think about what you could use during your sessions. Also, ask your students what kinds of things they usually read- you can try to find the English equivalent.

Some of my go-to websites are:

The Economist	The Muse	Mashable
The New Yorker	Lifehacker	Pop-Up City
Business Insider	Forbes	TechCrunch
Inc.com	Medium	Elite Daily
Entrepreneur.com	Wired	Zen Habits
The Guardian	Vox	Buzzfeed Travel

2. ENGAGING Listening Comprehension exercises

Because some students may already do a lot of English reading comprehension activities in their daily lives, they might be missing that crucial listening element. Sending short videos for listening comprehension or longer podcasts for general listening practice is a great way to help students take their comprehension to that next level.

Again, it’s important to try and make these activities as pertinent and appropriate as possible.

Some of our favorite video sites are:

TED Talks, Brain Pump, Devour, The Do Lectures and The School of Life

Podcasts are a little more difficult because they are usually longer and very specific- but there are thousands out there. A quick google search will help you find a free podcast that is perfect for your student.

3. APPLICABLE writing homework

While our sessions are focused around speaking, most of our students are already writing often in English and always have some doubts, even if they’ve written the same email a thousand times. Assigning written activities is a great way to have students do some technical English practice, and it can also help you identify weaknesses or gaps they have in their grammar.

This kind of activity is perfect for everyone:

Business professionals- have them write a standard email, or even a sample contract, based on what they do for their job
Test takers- you can find hundreds of free writing prompts for all of the English certificate exams (TOEFL, IELTS, Cambridge) via Google. Find a good one and send it to your student that you will review together during the session
Travelers- When people are making accommodation plans, they will often need to write to the B&B or they will have some questions for the hotel. Have them write a sample email using formal English that includes all of their possible questions or concerns

4. EFFECTIVE Grammar Exercises

A little bit of grammar never hurts! And for some of your students, it might be exactly what they want. Whether your lessons revolve around grammar improvement or you want to reinforce some of your advanced student’s skills, find some good grammar exercise websites that you can steal some activities from.

Some sites we’ve listed in past articles are:

The British Council, English-Hilfen, or Perfect English Grammar

Some other great sites are:

Grammarly , English Grammar, English Grammar Secrets, English Club, English Leap

————–REMEMBER————-

Sending your students activities to do outside of their sessions is crucial for their improvement and is something that Fluentify guarantees to its users.

Also, if you are ever having trouble getting your students to stick around, rethink the way you do your follow ups and the way you assign activities- it can make a big difference.

Are there any other resources you guys use that we’ve left out? Please, share them below!

6 Tips for English Learners

Katie — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 08:16:16 +0000

Sometimes the English learning process can be difficult, frustrating, and daunting. A lot of English learners have been studying for years but still don’t feel confident in their skills or their ability to communicate. But sometimes, all you need is a little boost! In this article we wanted to go through some tips to help students build confidence and continue on their English learning journey in a positive state of mind!

1. Make mistakes

As an English learner, nobody expects you to speak a perfect English and if this is your goal throughout your learning process, it’s going to set you back. Even when you’re not sure about a word, a phrase or how to use them- give it a shot! Your teacher, tutor, or English speaking friends will help you and when they correct you, you’re more likely to remember it in the future. Also- ask questions! When you’re not sure about something or you don’t understand a correction that has been given to you, ask why so that you can gain a deeper understanding of the language. Speak, be vulnerable, and make mistakes.

2. Figure out your method for learning new vocabulary

During this process you’ll be learning new words constantly and if you’re not in a classroom where you’ll be tested on them, you’ll need to develop a new method for remembering them. This will be different for everyone- whether it’s writing them in a notebook to review later, adding them to a flashcard app on your phone, writing them on your hand, or creating a vocal recording that you listen to while you sleep (it’s science!) there are lots of different ways you can make sure that you’re studying all of the new things you’re learning so that you’ll be able to use them in the future.

3. Be patient, but driven

It’s really easy to get frustrated with yourself while you’re learning English, but you have to cut yourself some slack- learning a language is hard. You may feel like you have been studying forever and you haven’t seen a lot of improvements, but a negative attitude will only slow your learning. Be patient, but remember to stay focused. One of the most important things to do when you’re learning English is to be consistent with your studying and practice. If you push yourself to do even a little practice every day, you’ll see improvements much faster.

4. Don’t try to translate directly from your native language into English

Once you have reached an intermediate level of English, it is really important to make the transition from translating into thinking in English. If you continue to try to directly translate, it will impede your learning for a few reasons. First, sometimes there is not a perfect translation for what you want to say, so you’ll need to find a different way to express what you want to. Secondly, your fluency will be limited if you need to take the time to process your translated thoughts while you’re speaking. One way to make this transition is to practice ‘talking’ to yourself in English when you’re alone- driving in the car, in the shower, or walking to the store. This will help your brain to start thinking in English instead of translating (you’ll also figure out where you have gaps in vocabulary that you need to fill in, double plus!).

5. Never stop learning

Don’t let English be a stressful task- make it fun! There are numerous ways that you can practice your English on a daily basis. Check out our article on 10 Meta-Learning Tips for some ideas on ways to integrate English into your daily life. Listening to podcasts or radio stations in English can have a major impact on your comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. Following an English blog about your interests, whether it be fashion, sports, literature, or business, is another way to get your snippet of English practice for the day. Find ways that are fun for you to study and the learning process will become significantly easier.

6. Speak, Speak, Speak!

The research shows that to become fluent in a second language, purely studying the language isn’t enough: you need to speak it, and speak it often. One of the best ways to work on your fluency is by speaking with native speakers so that they can correct your errors and so that you can shadow their accents. That’s why we love Fluentify and we believe that it is the best way to significantly improve your English fluency. The more you speak, the more fluent you’ll become.

Are there other tips that you would give to students learning English? Leave a comment below!

10 Meta-Learning Tips for Students to Practice English Daily

Katie — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 08:53:15 +0000

For most of our students, we know that doing one or two English lessons a week isn’t really going to be enough to help them see real improvements in their fluency or to take their English to the next level. That’s why it’s really important that we talk to our students about the different things that they can do on a daily basis to consciously (and subconsciously) work on their English. In this article we wanted to talk about some of the best tips you can give to your students of all levels to work on their English every day.

1. Change your devices to English

This is a great tip even for beginner students. Most of us know how to navigate our devices pretty easily, so changing them to English will just give your students exposure to new vocabulary and terms they might not know.

2. Download a Language Learning App

A lot of language learning apps are perfect for beginner students because they start from basic vocabulary and phrases and then slowly transition into grammar and more complicated topics. Some free apps you can recommend to your students are Babbel, Memrise, and Busuu. Tell them to spend 10-15 minutes a day ‘playing’ with the app whenever they have a chance.

3. Word of the Day

Good for beginners and more advanced students, word of the day services are a great way to help a student learn new vocabulary. Some good ones are Miriam-Webstar’s Learner’s Word of the Day or EnglishClub.com’s Word of the Day. Students can sign up for alerts to get the new words sent directly to their inboxes every day.

4. Use a Flashcard App

Speaking of new vocabulary, students need a way to memorize all of these new words and phrases. When students were learning English in school, it was easy to memorize- they were forced to because they had to take tests and quizzes. However, outside of the academic environment it’s a little hard to force yourself to memorize. One thing you can do is recommend that your students download a flash card app for their phones- this way they can keep track of all of the new things they’re learning and then test themselves from time to time. Some free apps you can recommend are Flashcards by Brainscape, Flashcards+ by Chegg, or Flashcards Maker Pro. Recommend that at least once a week they go through the cards and do some review.

5. Listen to an English Radio Station

This one is one of my favorite meta-learning tips. Listening to the radio in a second language is one of these ‘subconscious’ ways of not only increasing comprehension, but also expanding vocabulary and improving grammar. Tell your students to download an English radio app that they can listen to while they’re doing other things such as driving, cooking, or working out. Without noticing it they will be absorbing a lot of important things and they’ll notice a huge improvement in comprehension if they listen for 15-30 minutes a day! Some apps I like to recommend are this American radio station and then the BBC radio station app.

6. Follow an English Language Learning Blog

There are tons of ESL blogs out there and they can help students understand some of the trickier things that aren’t taught in school, or rather the words and colloquial phrases that are often used by native speakers. Because most of Fluentify’s users are Italian, we manage a great blog called The Zine that is specific for common doubts or mistakes of Italians learning English- you can recommend it to your students!

7. Shower Conversations

You might know this method by a different name, but ‘shower conversations’ is just the way that we refer to having conversations with ourselves in our second language. Tell your students to try to do this when they are in the shower, walking to work, or any other time when they might be thinking to themselves about something. This helps students go from ‘translating’ to ‘thinking’ in a second language and it will have a huge impact on their fluency. This is also a great way for students to figure out where they have ‘vocabulary gaps.’ Tell them to look up these new words and add them to their flashcard app!

8. Have a Trusty Translator App

In our opinion, one of the worst things to happen to language learners was full sentence/ paragraph translation apps. Students are trying even less than they were before to understand and study sentence construction and correct grammar tenses because there’s an app that does it for them. It’s a disaster, especially when people actually need to speak in English. However, students will still need to translate vocabulary in order to learn new words so it’s important that they have a reliable app or website. We always like to recommend Wordreference.com because it gives more than one translation for words and also includes some full verb conjugations- it’s all a student needs to be able to create their sentences and express their ideas.

9. Written Language Exchange Platform

A lot of our students will need to use written English either for work or study. Sometimes during short English speaking lessons, it’s hard to find the time to work on a student’s written pieces. One way that they can continue improving their written English is by signing up for a written language exchange platform. The idea behind this is like a ‘writing tandem’ where students can write a short note in English and native speakers will correct it. The the student is then expected to correct some writing in his/her native language. Some sites you can recommend are Lang-8 or Word Reference’s Language Platforms.

10. Watch an English TV Show

The final tip, which is great for high intermediate and advanced learners, is to watch or follow an English TV series. This one is also popular with students because, of course, it’s entertaining. Remind your students to use ENGLISH subtitles if they really need to at the beginning, but to eventually wean themselves off the subtitles so that they don’t become dependent on them and they can really work on their comprehension. Being able to understand some or the majority of a TV show in English is a great accomplishment for your students, so encourage them to try!

These are just some of the things that students can do to work on their English every day and to help them go from the basics to a decent level of fluency. Of course, these are recommendations and you can’t force your student to do these things, but try to figure out which methods would be the best for their situation, goals, and level and convince them to try them out!

Are there any other meta-learning tips that you recommend to your students that we didn’t include? Share them in the comments below!