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• Dear teacher!

Hello, dear teachers!

Welcome on board!

Would you like to feel like a castaway in modern English, or become a fluent speaker? Are you satisfied with your spoken grammar and vocabulary? (REMEMBER! Spoken grammar VERY differs from grammar you read in textbooks).

In my 13-year-teaching experience, I saw numerous times when intermediate students totally misunderstood a three-minute audio/video clip but when they are handed out a script of the same clip, they managed to explain 75 – 80% of it. What a phenomenon!

Do you feel confident, when you are had to explain anything to a native speaker? Or you are afraid of making slip-ups and as a result, get stuck, muttering what you wanted to express. “Oh, DEAR! DEAR!”,- you might think, “How stupid I am!!!” But you ARE NOT! Trust me, you are NOT really stupid! You are absolutely NOT STUPID!!! You just haven’t trained your fluency as one of the major skills. You just haven’t opened your own potentials.So, would you like to broaden your horizons in English? Do you want to end up fluency?

What is fluency? According to Kristin Dodds, a proficient English teacher and editor:

”Fluency is the ability to speak (and understand) English quickly and easily... WITHOUT translation. In fact, you should speak and understand instantly. Fluency is goal”.

Sadly, teaching system in some European countries, including Ukraine, is very unsatisfactory. It is accused as unfriendly, out of date, illogical and detrimental mentality. Independent researchers claim that the level of foreign students and even certified language teachers is quite low to survive in modern society. “What’s the matter?”- you may wonder. THEY ARE OBSSESED wih grammar rules and thick, boring text books. LACK OF LIVE (not via e-mail) communication with native speakers. LACK OF LISTENING live conversations. In fact, THEY ARE SCARED to make mistakes and, as a result, LACK OF SPEAKING abilities.As the matter of fact, we communicate with our EARS and MOUTH, neither any texts with, nor grammar books, written sentences nor printed words with. You’ll never read a script on someone’s forehead, while you are expressing your opinion to your opponent. Neither he/she will.

In one of the local schools (I ‘m sure similar situation could have happened in other institutions) two months ago I asked a sort of 12-year-old “professor” of English if she could speak English. Well, she said: “I know Present simple, Present Perfect, Future in the past etc.” I wondered if she could speak, using them all. She answered: “No, I can’t..er.. I’m afraid…umh.. It’s not my cup of tea.” (Of course, she told me that in Russian). Oops, this well-known “professor” in English could only named Tenses titles but out of use, unfortunately. I’m sure, if she’d read subtitles between my eyes, she’d have succeeded.

I had used to be quite shocked with it for over 13 years in Kiev and Odessa where I used to live and worked for Microsoft Branch Office in Kiev, State Universities and several language schools. It is still dime a dozen but I’m not shocked now. I just try to share and show successful up-to-date methods to teach and study Real Live English. Well, we are really happy to work together as a team!l

Now, would you take a test? (from workshop for ESL teachers):
a) Take a stopwatch;
b) Scan the text again;
c) Can you quickly find 12 spoken phrases (6 - phrasal verbs, 6 – idioms). Watch the time!

Which some of them mean:

• useless
• Not like it
• Like someone
• Become (unexpectedly)
• Give
• Quite often
• Make not a serious mistake
• Help
• Old-fashioned
• be interested

If you managed to do it for 5 minutes, you are PERFECT!

Good luck,

Your friend, Tutor.

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