What does it take to learn to communicate confidently in English?
In the Introduction to Emma and Lucas – A Journey to Australia, you will note that the story contains “…over one thousand of the most important and commonly used words in the English language, as well as many common Australian expressions.” This repeated exposure to many of the most commonly used words and expressions is a critical factor to ensure that our students learn to communicate confidently in English.
The main characters of our story (Emma and Lucas) are brothers and sisters – twins in fact. Throughout our story, they find themselves in various situations where it’s natural for them to speak together. In composing their dialogue, we have focussed signficantly on keeping it natural, while at the same time keeping the grammar reasonably correct, and limiting the use of slang expressions.
The Introduction notes further that the story includes “…factual information, practical experiences, emotional interactions, light-hearted dialogue and value-based themes.” This makes not only for interesting and informative reading, but provides excellent opportunity for asking questions during our English coaching sessions. As a very basic example of “factual information”, in Chapter 2, Emma (who is the most proficient at speaking English) is “testing” her brother Lucas. The first word she asks her brother to explain is “Adult”. Lucas confirms his understanding of the word by responding confidently – “The legal age of an adult here in China is eighteen years…” to which his sister then replies “I’m pretty sure that’s the same in Australia…” (which it is). This example highlights one of the approaches we have taken when writing this story – with the simple goal of ensuring that our students learn to communicate confidently in English. By incorporating a piece of factual information, together with an assumption, with the latter expressed the way many Australian’s would have said it (“I’m pretty sure…”) you are exposed to English the way it is spoken in the real world – or in any case, the way it’s typically spoken in Australia. A person may of course choose to express themselves differently, for example by saying that they’re “fairly” sure, or “quite” sure (words which, just for the record, are also used in the story). But in normal, spoken dialogue, pretty sure is also very common – hence we’ve included it in the text.
“The course content includes factual information, practical experiences, emotional interactions, light-hearted dialogue and value-based themes…”
Our “ALERT” strategy for confident English communication
There are numerous published and frequently quoted “strategies” or “pillars” for learning to communicate confidently in a new language. We have formulated and tested our own strategy, which aligns perfectly with our course material: we call it our ALERT strategy.
Absorb > Learn > Expose > Read > Test
Absorb: Read and listen to the chapter in English – note down any unfamiliar words. Absorb the Australian dialect, notice how the words sound. There is no substitute for this initial step. In addition to absorbing the spoken words, this step also serves as a reality check, where you quickly discover the words which you don’t already know, and have opportunity to make a note of these.
Learn: Read the translated section – look for the unfamiliar words and learn what they mean. Whether you have signed up for our 3-month Reality English Coaching course program, or are embarking on a self-paced journey of self-study, we recommend that you don’t rush this important step. By making an effort to actually learn these new words, and memorising them, you will find that the final 3 steps become far easier and more enjoyable.
Expose: Listen to the audio narration again –if necessary, focus solely on the translated text. Then repeat, but this time focus only on the English text. In the previous step you learned the meaning of many new words. Now as you re-listen to the audio in English, read the translated text for the first time. For most students, this is when the final pieces of the puzzle come together for the first time – now you discover and understand everything that is happening, and everything that is being said. You might want to repeat this step a couple of times, until you are confident that you understand what part of the English audio corresponds to which section of translated text. Then switch to the second part of this step, where you read your way down the English text, as you again listen to the audio. Suddenly you’ll discover that you are starting to recognise new English words – the sounds are becoming familiar, and you are starting to understand what they mean. Naturally, your level of English proficiency prior to commencing the course, will be a factor in determining how often you will repeat this step. You don’t need to fully “memorise” every English word before proceeding to the next step, but you need to be understanding the overall narrative, and recognising which English words you are hearing correspond to the English words you are reading.
“Suddenly you’ll discover that you are starting to recognise new English words – the sounds are becoming familiar, and you are starting to understand what they mean…”
Read: Listen to the chapter again, but this time read it out loud. A good strategy is to pause the audio after each sentence and repeat what you just heard. So now you’ve heard it, you’ve read it, and you understand a good portion of what you are hearing and reading. Now it’s time to start speaking. We don’t recommend that you do this on a packed bus on your way to uni : ) But it is nonetheless a critical aspect of the learning process, where you start to pronounce the words and sentences you are hearing. While it may be tempting to listen to the entire 1 – 2 minute audio and then start to read it all in one go, we know from experience that it’s easier to remember and accurately repeat a single sentence, rather than multiple consecutive sentences. So our advice is: pause the audio as you go, and work your way through, one sentence at a time. As your confidence increases, you can listen, pause and then “read-back” an increasing number of consecutive sentences.
Test: Test yourself – read the English out loud to yourself – can you read it confidently? Do you understand what you are reading? The “self-test” focusses on 3 specific learning outcomes: Reading, Expression, Comprehension. You’ll note that we do not ask you to confirm that you understand the meaning of “every single word” in the English text, or that you can “correctly” pronounce each word. The meaning of individual words, grammar and pronunciation are not the main focus of Reality English Coaching’s course program. Our entire program is geared towards familiarising you with ordinary, real-world English, so that you can learn to survive and eventually thrive in an English dominated environment. Our goal isn’t to teach you “perfect English”, but to perfect your ability to communicate confidently in English – or in other words, to start using the English you already know.
“Our entire program is geared towards familiarising you with ordinary, real-world English…”
Realistic self-study schedule
Now you’re probably wondering how much time will you need to dedicate to this process for each chapter? Much of this depends on your pre-existing level of confidence in English proficiency. Let’s keep in mind our common goal – to enable you to communicate confidently in English. If you want to obtain maximum benefit from our 3-month course, we recommend that you set aside between 15 – 60 minutes daily to studying the course material. Our 3-month course program closely follows the chapters of the story. This means that before each coaching session, you will already know which chapter we will be discussing in the next/upcoming coaching session. There are 4 coaching sessions per week – on these 4 days, we recommend you focus solely on the chapter which we will be working with in the next/upcoming coaching session. On the other 3 days, we recommend that you focus on refreshing the previous content, as well as getting a “head start” on the next week’s 4 chapters.
Oh, and one more thing…
As you work your way through the chapters, you may be pleasantly surprised to notice that the “difficulty level” hardly changes as you progress throughout the course. In fact, if you combine and average the difficulty level of Chapters 1 – 4 (which corresponds to the first week of the course) then you’ll discover that some subsequent weeks are less difficult than the first week. This is not a coincidence, it’s part of Reality English Coaching’s core ethos and learning strategy. From day-one, you are already out of your comfort zone – you are effectively immersed in English. You’re hearing, reading and speaking English. In the initial weeks, you might even feel like you’re “drowning” in English, but don’t let that discourage you. Just stick methodically to our ALERT self-study strategy. Reality English Coaching’s 3-month online tutoring program is specifically designed for Chinese nationals who want to learn to communicate confidently in English, both verbally and in writing. We look forward to seeing you online soon!