Frequently Asked Questions

10 questions for Andy.

1. Why did you publish this website?

Well,...I've been in this field for nearly ten years, and I see it going in the direction of internet based lessons and so on.  I guess I wanted to provide online lessons for people in order to be helpful and also to build up my skills with cyber-lesson planning.

2.  Where do you teach English now?

I work on my own as a freelance teacher.  I mainly teach business-people in a variety of professional settings right outside of Seoul, Korea.

3. How can I improve my English?

First you need to decide on what aspect of the language you want/need to improve the most.  This question is too general for anyone to answer it succinctly.  If you want to improve your listening and speaking skills, then I have some suggestions.  If you need to improve your writing skills, I know some decent books, etc... 

4. Ok, speaking is the skill that most EFL students seem to lack.  How can I (we) improve that part of our English language skill?

For speaking, it is all about practice in my opinion.  If you don't have the time or money to live abroad (in an English speaking country) or have the desire, chance or inclination to partner up with an English speaker as a friend or otherwise, then you must create some opportunites to speak English.  Think of it as training, because that's really what you're doing.  Your throat, tongue, teeth, lips, voice box, etc... need to be trained. 

One way to achieve this is to select a novel that you might enjoy....and read a few pages of it (ALOUD) every night. 

The book series Side By Side is excellent for speech training and can be done with one other person. 

You might consider creating a study group where your goal is to speak only English through the course of a meal, for example. 

The internet is a fantastic way to improve your speaking skills.  Use any number of forums to make friends with similar interests and then move to a messenger system or skype and communicate via cam and microphone.  It doesn't even have to be a native speaker.  Another student of English will do fine.  The main thing would be to stay away from the same nationality as yourself.  Slipping into your own language, is then much too tempting. 

You may email me at andyishere818@hotmail.com for any further suggestions and/or more in depth steps for the suggestions I already mentioned.

5.  How can I improve my listening skills?

A lot of students seem to think that by watching episode after episode of 'Friends' they will eventually make a strong improvement in their listening ability.  They are not entirely wrong.  Such exposure can be helpful, but it is the long way to improvement.  If you want to use TV, movies or even music as a listening exercise than it should be treated as a lesson, not as recreation in the beginning.  Later (when your skills have risen)  you can watch programs for fun.  One method I learned from a young student in Saudi Arabia (who had a lot of time on his hands) was as follows:

- Select a movie you like and watch it with the subtitles (in your language) on.

-At another time watch it again (with English subtitles).

- Later watch it the 3rd time (no subtitles).

- For the fourth viewing watch your movie with no subtitles, scene be scene.  Pause, rewind and so on (as needed) and take notes.  Repeat lines after actors, include or skip whatever you want.  This step could take several days and involves a lot of 'listen and repeat' as well as writing.

- The fifth time you watch this movie is for fun.  No subtitles, no extra help and you should be able to understand it well.  You might consider looking at the actual movie script (available online) AFTER you've worked through the above steps.

Another method (of which there are many variations) is below.  This can work with movie scenes, single episodes of TV programs or bytes (scenes) of various things off of youtube and the like:

1st watch with no sound and imagine what the speakers might be saying.

2nd  listen to the above without watching the program.

3rd watch and listen to the program once through.

4th watch bit by bit, pausing when necessary and repeating the words/sentences the best you can.

5th get the script online if possible and read along with the actors/speakers.

As I mentioned there are many variations to these methods.  To find one that works for you, try one of the above and adapt it to your needs.  Try not to choose something too difficult or too easy.  For more ideas of how to improve your listening skills, feel free to send me an email.