english as a second language
Want to Practice Your English? Start an English Club
An English Club is a gathering where ESL students can practice English in a casual atmosphere. Practicing during ESL classes is vital; however, it is not real life. During class, you focus on something specific, like vocabulary or pronunciation, you have papers and books to help you and everything is fresh in your mind. In an English Club, you can practice all the skills in a real life environment. You will have to really speak clearly and listen carefully to understand others. At an English Club, you can make really good friends who will increase your confidence, and you will feel more comfortable speaking the language among people you trust.
Here we offer some tips on how to start a successful and fun English Club:
1. Post a sign-up ad at your school’s bulletin board. Give your email so that the students can contact you and offer interesting ideas. Ask them to write down phone number and email so that you can contact them about time and place for the meetings.
2. Ask for help. Every member should contribute to the club, and you can ask a native English speaker to join the meetings, maybe a teacher, who will find the experience interesting as a curriculum enhancer.
3. Plan an introductory meeting to meet each other and to talk about expectations and ideas. To make it worthy, the meetings should have around 6 to 10 students. These can be organized in many ways, maybe each participant can lead during one week, and you can plan based on topics or skills.
4. Define the rules and routines beforehand so that everyone knows what to expect and how to behave. You should have an ‘English only’ policy, decide whether food and drinks are allowed or not, and what topics and behaviors are off limits.
5. Define the schedule for the meetings. Will you be meeting once a week for about two hours, or more? Think about the best time of day; it may vary every week depending on the place and activity planned. Take breaks during holiday season and invite new people about every three months, but always maintain the club’s identity intact.
6. Define who can attend the English Club. Virtually anyone can be a part of an English Club, it depends on your preference, but if we follow the belief that variety brings richness, you should try to allow all kinds of people with all kinds of experiences in. The club must have members with varied language abilities so that everyone can learn something from each other.
7. Vary the meeting places to make the club even more dynamic and to change the atmosphere. You can meet at school one week and later plan to meet at members’ homes to make it more casual; you can play music, watch a movie and feel at ease. From time to time you can meet at a restaurant or café, to experience a new and challenging environment, or in the outdoors, where you can match your topics to nature characteristics like the weather, kinds of vegetation, types of fauna around, picnics or fun outdoor activities.
An English Club is the perfect complement to your ESL classes, a great way to not only practice your English skills, but also meet new people and hang out with your friends.
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Interesting Facts about the English Language (and why you might want to learn it!)
Learning another language has a vast range of benefits - it can open more career doors, take you abroad and help you connect with people across the globe and across cultural lines, too. If you choose to study English, there are even more benefits! If you pick English as a second language, you’ve decided to chose one of the most widely spoken and written language in the world! Here are some more interesting facts about the language and more reasons why you might want to master it.
- One out of every six people in the world speaks English. 750 million of these do not originate from an English-speaking country!
- British colonialism initiated the spread of the English language across the world.
- In over 100 countries, including China, Russia, Germany and Egypt, English is the main foreign language taught in schools.
- The English language bears similarities to both French and German as its first forms were originally brought to Britain by German settlers and then subsequently influenced by the Normans who spoke a language closely related to French.
- Latin and Greek words were added to the English language after the birth and spread of Christianity.
- Some words from ‘American-English’ are actually older forms of English words that are no longer used by other English speakers, e.g, trash for rubbish or fall as a synonym for autumn.
- English is the main language used on the Internet. It is also the language that 75% of the world’s mail and cables are composed with.
- Five of the world’s largest broadcasting companies (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC and CBC) transmit in English.
- Half of the world’s technical and scientific periodicals are published in English.
- The Oxford English Dictionary features over 500,000 words. In addition, there are believed to be up to 500,000 technical and scientific terms that do not feature in it.
- 80% of all the information stored on computers throughout the world is stored in the English medium.
- American English (and subsequently British English) has also been influenced by Spanish. This can be seen through words such as canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante.
If you are looking for an established and well-respected ESL school in the United States, LCI - Language Consultants International - has a range of classes designed to help you master the English language according to your needs.
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