So you teach English to migrants? Firstly, your skills are invaluable and in great demand! Only this year, the government released a report which looked at the impact of community-based English language provision, and concluded that what you’re doing ‘increases English language ability and encourages wider social integration’. As teachers, we are already aware of the life-changing impact that we’re able to make by leading someone along the slow and winding journey to speaking the language around them but it’s still very reassuring to have our hard work acknowledged and affirmed by a government report, isn’t it?

Teaching English is rewarding but it’s no secret that lesson planning can be time-consuming and often frustrating (especially as a newbie!). How many times have you sat there, head in hands, puzzling over how to encourage your students to speak more confidently? Or maybe you’re the sort that always has a million and one other activities to fit into your week, and lesson planning doesn’t even really come into it. You would love to have more time to devote to crafting fun and applicable lessons, but your good intentions always seem to result in a hastily-written outline of ideas on the back of an envelope (although there’s nothing wrong with this approach or with recycling paper).  

Whichever end of the strapped-for-time scale you find yourself on, we’d love to introduce to you our revolutionary new resource: So to Speak – a Complete Set of Conversational English Lessons. This book was born out of the feedback which we’ve been receiving here at 2:19, telling us that you wanted more conversational teaching resources. Written by a blend of experienced TESOL trainers, creative graphic designers and hard-working ESL teachers, each lesson centres around a useful, everyday topic, such as Food, Jobs and Clothing, but with a refreshing and quirky twist.

 

 

Not only will you no longer have to plan your lesson, but neither will you need to spend hours of your precious time laboriously creating materials (because we’ve done this for you). Each chapter is bursting with colourful vocabulary cards, role play scenarios, game boards and much more! And the best part is that they are both photocopiable and reusable, with each set printed on card as well as paper.

Okay, so you get the idea- we think this book is the best thing since sliced bread. However, ‘the proof is in the pudding’, as they say. Since its launch in June 2018, the pudding has been proven over and over again by teachers up and down the country (and some even further afield).

One of the busy teachers who has been helped by So to Speak states that ‘this is the book I wish I’d had when I and other volunteers started an English group for newcomers to the UK. The topics are just what lower level students need and the notes enable anyone with little or no teaching experience to present the material without too much hard work. That has already been done by the authors!’  (Elizabeth Giles, MA DELTM, previously Principal of Central Language School, Cambridge).

There is so much more we could say about this exciting new resource, but we’d much rather you were able to check it out for yourself. We’re confident that you will find it to be an invaluable tool, and we’d absolutely love to hear how it’s being used so please drop us a line to let us know how you’re getting on with it!’

So to Speak is available through our website:

https://www.twonineteen.org.uk/resources/so-to-speak/