Angielski konwersacje Warszawa

I teach English using The Lexical Approach: (1) The Communicative Approach with strong emphasis on (2) Content-based Phrasal Learning. I believe that this methodology forms the most natural and efficient way of learning the proper usage of language, with minimum interference of (3) Polglish (Polish-English) structure.

(1) The Communicative Approach is based on the following principles:

    * activities that involve real communication promote learning
    * activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning
    * language that is meaningful to the learner promotes learning

and is designed to achieve the following objectives:

    * students will learn to use languge as a means of expression
    * students will use language as a means of expressing values and judgments
    * students will learn to express the functions that best meet their own communication needs.

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(2) Content-based Phrasal Learning

Memorizing single words and their various meanings is a very inefficient way of learning a foreign language, especially if those individual words are taken out of context. In my experience many language learners who have been trying to do so often sound unnatural as they try to put those words into constructions not used by native speakers. Therefore it is important to learn new words along with the phrases and expressions in which they naturally appear. Only then will you know their proper usage, and hopefully progress much faster.

Example 1. Compare learning the meaning of a phrase "he never got the joke" with learning the meaning of "joke", "never" and "get" and trying to reconstruct this phrase.

Example2. Try to select the option that produces the best sentence.

Johannes Gutenberg is generally credited ................ together the two main concepts of modern printing.

A to bring B as he brought C by bringing D with bringing E for the fact of bringing

It seems almost impossible to do without having previously learned the phrase "to credit someone with doing something".

Example3. When I hear students say "I am under impressed" - is it a grammatical or a phrasal mistake? Do they mean "I am impressed" or do they mean "I am under an impression that..."? Aren't they in fact saying "under-impressed" which might suggest that they are not impressed enough? Don't you think correct phrases might be more important than grammar?

That's why you need a phrase notebook to take notes in!

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(3) A Few Words about Polglish

Polglish comes from taking the style, phrases and syntax from Polish and putting it directly into English. Do you find yourself saying "I would like to go... how to say, how to say...to the seaside." or "Ok, so the meeting is at 4pm, I will be." If so, you've fallen victim to Polish-English. Don't worry, it is part of interlanguage, a natural process that occurs in all foreign language learners. It is important that native-speaking teachers identify and correct it from the very beginning so that it does not become part of your speech habits.

This combination of teaching methods is aimed at three areas of student language development:

1) communication practice: giving everyone constant opportunity to speak
2) proper English usage: elimination of mistakes and Polglish structure
3) increased eloquence: providing the students with new vocabulary and phrases

So, here's what we do:

We talk (2) and discuss various materials (5) adjusted to your level of English (1), so that you learn new words and phrases in a natural way (4) while taking notes (3). After a short summary of the lesson (6) you get homework (7) which we review the next time we meet.

1. I always adjust the difficulty of the lesson to the particular level of the student.
2. We talk all the time because real-life conversation is better than boring out-of-context drills.
3. I encourage everyone to take notes to remember what you learned. When you review your notes at home the efficiency of the lesson improves greatly.
4. I strongly emphasize learning English in its natural context (please read about phrasal learning above) by memorizing whole expressions rather than individual words. I would like everyone to use English like native speakers do.
5. I prefer working with audio-and-text-materials, but it is up to you as to what we use in class.
6. There's usually a summary at the end of each lesson. What have you learned today? It helps you remember.
7. For those interested there's always homework, because one or two hours of English a week is definitely not enough!