English Conversation Class - ECC

me individuals are just looking for the opportunity to keep up their skills and are attracted by our approach. What do we do? Our approach is not to teach you English, although you will inevitably develop your skills by being in an “English environment” for several hours each week. If after an interview, you join the group, it is because there is a good enough foundation to build on and build with others. We provide a “safe” environment to turn your existing knowledge into an active language, we teach confidence not English, just in English. Safe means a place where making mistakes is OK, where feelings of awkwardness disappear, where you become comfortable using English so you can use it outside of the group. Each session is 3 hours long (imagine 4x45 minutes, although you won’t always see joins) with a maximum of 8 students. It is entirely in English (don’t worry if that sounds a bit scary, it won’t be after week 1) and includes a range of activities and exercises that engage you and whoever you are working with. Sometimes the activities include the whole group, or you may work on your own for a short time before taking the subject to a partner or your group. We move around the groups adding to the input. You will be introduced to sources that provide opportunities outside of the sessions, some of which will set the scene for the following week – yes there is some homework, but we recognise that our busy lives leave little time so it is intended to be in short and interesting blocks. How long? Each module is six weeks long and fits into the school year, we try to avoid holiday periods. You can continue for as long as you feel it is of benefit, our aim is that after a year you won’t need us, although our groups seem to like coming back for more. Who are we? We both come from teaching backgrounds; Kati was maths and IT, me, the agricultural industry and associated sciences. For both of us, our teaching always came from a person-centred philosophy so it was not surprising that it led us into mental hygiene and how that affects the way we learn / live and communicate. My path was to develop counselling and therapeutic support for students at my college, Kati’s through her work with people with varied abilities in the UK and later here studying at SOTE. It was Kati’s course at SOTE that finally pushed her into developing an idea that had been growing for a long time. You will come across some dramatic elements from time to time that have their origin in her studies. We believe in openness, honesty and being real. Creating that environment, allows others to be the same, it enables us to engage in activities with a bit more of the free child and little less of the adult, oh, and at the end of each session there is the realisation that it was all in English! Our best advert is our current students, who want us to continue, more objectively, from one with US relatives who after a year said he had improved immensely, and they were not just being polite. Another who barely spoke in the beginning sat and conversed with the whole group by the end. Our aim is that as you gain the confidence to use your English, you will find yourself more confident in life. “It is so much more than just learning in English” - one of our students. We don’t teach English – we teach confidence, in English