Chapter 13: Meeting English Speakers & Building Learning Relationships

This wasn’t too easy in 2007 when they first published our materials but every day it gets easier as the world gets more and more social. Follow these instructions, they will help you to make the most of the learning materials you collect.

Make contact with some fluent or native speakers via Skype, Facebook or an online language exchange like  

1. Busuu.com18
2. Italki.com19
3. Livemocha.com20
4. Mylanguageexchange.com21
5. Palabea.com22 
6. The Mixxer23

or through Skype language learning forums24.

And/or use Google to search for an ‘English speaking partner’, ‘volunteer English speaker’, ‘language exchange’ or ‘language swap’. There are lots of places to meet friendly English speakers online.

Make initial contact with them by text, video mail or voice mail, this is polite before you call someone; even if you can see they are online. In the message tell them what you want to talk about (i.e. the lesson ‘topic’) and say it will only take a few minutes. DO NOT just call them. 
They will not answer you and it will annoy them. With the first few partners set a weekly time to talk and stick to it!

It’s also a good idea to make friends with quite a few people around the world in different time zones. If you have eight to ten friendly practice partners you will find that one or more will be online and happy to talk when you want to do some practice. Tell them that you want to practise with them and that it will only take a few minutes each time you call them and that they don’t need to do any preparation to have the conversation.

1. Use a good dictionary

2. Make sure you understand the final Out There task.

3. Try to relax.

4. Call one of yourOut There conversation partners and practice the language you have just

studied.

5. Record it and listen again, then call other Out There conversation partners for further

practice.

Complete the whole task and use your partners to cover all of the language in the lesson but feel free to talk about other subjects with them once you have covered the language in the lesson; and most of all have fun and get to know your partners well. They are there to help you improve your English.

Copy and paste this message into your Skype or Facebook chat box for use when you first contact people you want to practise with.

Hi, I hope you don’t mind me contacting you this way but I am following a new English course called English Out There (http://englishoutthere.com/about-us/volunteer-with-english-out-there) which involves me asking fluent and native English speakers like you a few quick conversational questions on interesting topics every now and then.

When I have done a class and I need to practise the language from it I will only need about ten minutes with you to ask my questions and have a quick chat. Then I will go and speak to someone else or you can ask me some questions in English or my first language (if you are learning it and want some practice). It would also really help me to improve if you allowed me to record us talking because by listening to myself speak I will improve quicker.I hope that sounds ok and that we can get to talk about some interesting topics in the coming months and have some fun.

Copy and paste this text into a message to your online practice partners who have agreed to help you.

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Helping learners to practise their English

Welcome to English Out There. You will be talking to learners who are new to your first language. These instructions will help you to make the most of your conversations with these learners face-to-face, on VoIP and inside virtual classrooms. When talking to a learner remember these important tips:

- Be patient and speak slowly enough for the learner to understand you. Help the learner to

relax.

- Listen carefully. Learners have varying pronunciation skills depending on their first language and level. Be forgiving and ask them politely to repeat words and phrases you do not understand or ask them to write the word or phrase in the chat box also. Say ‘can you spell it?’ or spell what you think they are saying and ask them if that’s what they mean. Repeat what they say or what you think they said as this will help them to hear how you pronounce the words.

- Encourage them to stick to the topic and vocabulary from the lesson first but don’t worry if they ask other questions. Conversations should be as natural as possible. Sometimes as the learner’s confidence increases and they become comfortable, they might ask you totally unrelated questions.

- Do not stop and correct everything. We want the learner to become more fluent and their confidence to build. Make sure you correct key things. Maybe even ask them at the start ‘How much correction would you like?’

- If they get stuck and the conversation dries up, ask them if they are okay and then ask them if they wish to continue or go back over something. Help them to relax. Ask them if they wish to talk about something else.

- Never feel awkward if there is silence – they might be thinking hard and always give them audible clues that you are listening, such as saying ‘uh-huh’ or ‘yes’. This will give them confidence that you understand what they are saying.Get to know the learner: nurture them,build trust and enjoy the conversation. NEVER tell them something about the language that you are not completely certain about. The learners will respect you more if you are honest and say ‘I don’t know’. You are not expected to teach them. You are there to facilitate real practice of the target language.

- Let them finish the conversation in their own time and always ask them if they felt that they learnt something or found the conversation useful. When they answer ‘yes’ it will make you feel good too!

- Please let them record the sessions, it will be a huge help to their learning process if they can listen to the conversation again as many times as they want. They might also send it to their teacher for comment.

If you want to better understand how you, as a fluent or native English speaker, can help people around the world to benefit from improving their English DOWNLOAD this amazing free ebook and send it to your friends:

The world is your language learning community, do not abuse it. Have fun!

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