Chapter 11: How to Plan Your Personalized English Course

To create your own study plans for self-guided speaking practice you need to find some English learning materials. Then organise them to give you just enough information to be able to have a conversation at your current speaking level.

Most language learners know where they are weak, they don’t need to be told, especially if they have been learning the language for a few years.

• Choose a few areas of language that you really want to improve and think of the topics that will enable you to use that language. You can use the English Out There course overviews at the end of this ebook to select topics and grammar points at each level.

• Then find some content in a course book or online that requires you to do some reading as

well as some written exercises that give you between one and two hours of work with the language.

• Really focus on a specific area you feel you have trouble with. It doesn’t matter if it is fairly

easy and you don’t feel you are learning much from the content. The focus of your attention

should be on the speaking task to follow, the performance; that is the important thing.

• Once you have the topic and content you will work with, before you try speaking, go onto YouTube and put the topic and/or language focus into the search box. This should give you some videos to watch that include use of the language you are going to study and then speak.

• Once you have worked for an hour or so, or feel ready to have a conversation about the

  topic you have chosen, write four or five open questions to ask your speaking practice

  partners (i.e. questions that require the other person to repeat some of the language in the

  content you just studied and use full sentences in their reply).

For example, I use Google Docs in Google Drive to collect and curate content from the internet. Just open a new document and click on Tools and Research and a search box will appear on the right of the screen.

Type in the language area or topic you want to learn and then practice. Let’s say travel advice and degrees of obligation and advice – modals (these are the topic and language focus from EOT TD4 lesson 9, see the end of this ebook for more suggestions).

I just typed in ‘travel advice YouTube’ to get some videos that contain the language I want to hear and then use myself. To add them to your document just roll your mouse over the words or image and click on insert link. You can drag images to your document page too.

This is a great thing to do to make the language and exercises fully comprehensible before you try to speak. You want to feel very confident reading and writing the lesson content before trying to use it to speak.

Always search for content just below your normal reading and writing level. By doing this the language in the content you read will be easier to understand and will prepare you better for your speaking task at the end. You can always add more difficult language to the lesson later.

You need to build trust and you do that by being focused, keeping the calls short and being interesting and then quickly saying “Thank you, goodbye”. What this behaviour tells your new practice partner is:

•             You are serious

•             You are prepared

•             You won’t waste their time

•             You won’t talk forever or try to keep them talking

•             You have something interesting to talk about

•             You are a considerate human being

•             You respect them

After three or four experiences like this they will start to trust you, get to know you, like you and, possibly, want to talk for a bit longer as they explore your world through talking to you. BUT, you must never try to make calls longer than they need to be (10 to 20 minutes) or make unprepared calls because to a fluent or native speaker it will be obvious and it will annoy them. It is very obvious to the English speaker when you have not done your homework. If you don’t prepare before you speak, the experience for you, and just as importantly for them, will not be a good one.

The end result will be that you will lose a golden opportunity to have a long and satisfying social learning friendship with a generous English speaker. Treat your practice partners like you treat your bank manager or your doctor.

If you do treat them with respect, they will look after you and give you months of practice, help and advice for free. What is that worth to you, your family and your future? They are giving you a very valuable gift, treat it with great care.

Create one or two lessons and give them a try with someone you know well, not a new practice partner. If they seem to work and you feel you got some good focused practice then go on and create a series of lessons that work just as well.

You can also use the topics and language focus areas in our ready-to-use worksheets. The course overviews are at the end of this ebook with some sample worksheets.

Remember the lessons need to provide you with content and questions that not only help you to practise the language you need to be able to use but also provide some entertainment and stimulation for your friendly English speaking friends.

You must keep it interesting and fun for them too or you will lose them and they won’t pick up your messages and calls in the future! You want to try to build strong, close and long-lasting relationships with your practice partners. They are your new best friends. They will form what online educators call your Personal Learning Network or PLN. Your PLN is a very powerful and life changing tool.