Sam Lyall

My methodology revolves primarily around speaking practice and correction through mistake. Whilst an initial assessment is necessary, a large part of what is lacking in standard English foreign language education is experience.

In this regard, my main tool is the use of both text and audio based tools to register understanding of the student and help to clear up any mistakes and provide useful real life scenarios catered to the learner in for both speaking and writing practice, so they can learn to use English in the way they intend, without having to wade through unnecessary work that will serve no purpose for the learner to use.

In practice, standard lessons would consist of conversational subjects alongside resources that can be used to help the learner build a solid lexical foundation in English and be understood in the way they desire. For children, this may be standard grammar and conversation they can have with their friends or parents, paired with vocabulary to increase their flexibility when speaking English. For older students this may consist of topical writing in a formal style, useful for applications in business and study environments.

The first lesson or two would consist of a baseline examination of the students prior understanding of English, however with no pressure involved. It is admirable in my eyes to venture into learning a new language and an adventure I’d like to help my students make leaps and strides over! After this initial lessons, where we have identified weak points, we can move to working on them together and forming a basic understanding of why these weak points exist, such as comparison to native language. I find that being able to rationalise the difference between a persons native language and their target language can allow them to correct themselves with much more ease and self correction is key to further learning once a certain level of fluency is achieved.

My experience in English teaching revolves around a TEFL qualification in teaching English language to foreign students. This can be with vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation as I have experience with phonetics that will help me correct learners and assist in creating a natural sounding accent or dialect that can be easily understood. Recently, I spent a month in Poland with an organisation called Angloville where we taught people of all ages to better speak English in both casual and business environments, to great success.