BEGINNER TO INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH SPEAKER

IN SIX LESSONS
Transformational English Teaching and Learning based on Social Learning with
Social Media and placed in the context of the failure of English as a Second
Language programmes to improve learners speaking abilities
Jason West
This research was supported by Languages Out There Ltd.
Please cite this work correctly.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to jason@englishoutthere.com or
Languages Out There Ltd, 12 Derby Street, Weymouth, Dorset, UK, DT4 7HX

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Abstract
This is a study about a randomly chosen yet typical highly educated adult Chinese English learner, Jane
(27yrs), who, like millions of others, considered herself to have failed to learn to speak English after 16
years of formal English study.
Jane was provided with self-study English course materials in PDF and MP3 formats that prepared her
for focused online speaking practice facilitated using social media services Facebook and Skype. She was
allowed to choose the level of her materials and the process involved offline self-paced study followed by
a short practice conversation with the researcher and then two or three similar conversations using the
same language with fluent or native speakers (non-teachers) that the she had befriended online. All calls
with the researcher were recorded from start to finish and then Jane listened to the recordings again a
few times on her iPod before starting the next lesson.
Jane began the study speaking like a beginner and chose to work with beginners learning materials with
Chinese instructions. The sixth lesson she chose was an intermediate lesson with English instructions and
she managed to complete the speaking practice task sounding like a comfortable intermediate speaker.
This result proves it is possible to quickly and inexpensively transform the speaking ability of adult
language learners who have failed to achieve their primary goal of speaking a second language
comfortably after years of conventional English as a Second Language (ESL) courses.
Finally, the result (and the way in which it was achieved) raised questions about the overall effectiveness
of ESL courses. Most claim to improve a students reading, writing, listening AND speaking skills but our
research concludes that this is not true and that ESL course publishers and providers are knowingly misselling their products.
Keywords: English as a Second Language, social media, speaking, self-study, social learning,
transformation

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INTRODUCTION
When Pearson PLC bought Wall Street Institutes almost 400 English schools for $92m in 2010 their
press release said that the market for English language teaching and learning course products was worth
$50bn per annum.
In 2001 the English Out There (EOT) project began with the aim of facilitating real and memorable
communicative experiences with local people in London and incorporating them into every lesson of an
English language course. EOT was created partly because students at conventional schools had often
already used the course books (that they had actually bought with their course fee) in their home
countries. It was also considered a shame that students spent most of their time practising the language
from the lessons in a classroom that contained learners of a similar level but who all had different first
languages and made different habitual mistakes. After all, the English-speaking world and millions of
English speakers were right outside the classroom door.
Study abroad English language teaching had not changed much for decades when EOT was founded.
There was really only one method of course delivery and learning materials were primarily created for use
solely in classrooms. The majority of EFL/ESL courses in 2012 are still taught in the same way.
Since EOT started in 2001 it has produced English teaching and learning materials based upon 250,000
hours of teaching and constant student and teacher feedback from the field (i.e. the streets of London).
Because of the process followed in every lesson the materials were also able to be adapted for online use
with social media such as Facebook and Skype.
This case study provides audio evidence and some supportive scientific references to prove that students
who have failed to become comfortable English speakers, despite investing lots of time and money in
ESL programmes, can actually make transformational improvements in their speaking and listening skills
in very short periods of time.
The results of this case study (and other similar case studies) have caused us to question the entire
pedagogical basis for the global ESL industry. We therefore thought it would be useful to compare the
relative effectiveness of different ESL programmes to English Out There and then try to find some
authoritative research on the general effectiveness of the entire global ESL industry.
EOT is based upon the Communicative Method which is the method that is used to deliver most of the
worlds EFL/ESL courses, but EOT has one crucial difference. It uses a redesigned lesson plan format in
every single session. The format means that real practice of the target language happens minutes after the
language has been taught or self-studied. The aim is to scaffold and support learners to the point that they
have the confidence to use the language from the lesson with a fluent or native English speaker (a nonteacher). It was hoped that this process would help learners to improve faster than they had with other
English courses they had taken, especially in what was felt to be the main reason for learning English...to
speak it, comfortably.

METHOD
The case study subject, Jane, an adult Chinese English learner (27), was recruited from an email she sent
as a result of an offer for free help made in an online forum for learners who wanted to improve their

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English speaking skills. The website used is very well known and has a lot of users, EnglishClub.com.
The offer was for free course materials and online speaking practice in return for agreement to allow all
data collected to be put into the public domain.
Process
Jane would be offered a selection of materials and then download a lesson PDF and any MP3s that went
with it. She printed off the worksheets (see Figure 1. below), completed the exercises with a pen and
dictionary and listened to the MP3s when instructed by the text. Once she felt she was ready to do the Out
There Task (the speaking practice exercise at the end of each lesson) she would contact the researcher and
fix a time to talk on Skype. The call would be recorded. All the researcher did on the call was respond to
her questions and have a pleasant conversation as a non-teacher fluent English speaker would. The
researcher did not teach her in the conventional sense and correction only occurred as part of a natural
desire to establish mutual understanding. The researcher would spell words sometimes and help Jane with
her pronunciation when it interfered with understanding. They worked blind, using audio only; so the
researcher never saw Janes face. Detailed learning content information and samples are available from
the English Out There website (see below).

Figure 1. Self-study lesson instructions and a worksheet

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Contact time
Jane spent approximately 18 hours either studying with the worksheets (approx. 12 hours) or practising
the language from the lessons with me (2hrs 24 mins) and then with two or three other practice partners
met on Facebook. It all took place over a period of just under two weeks from 22nd March 2010 to 29th
April 2010 (there was a gap from the first lesson to the second of about four weeks whilst she took her
architecture exams). We asked her to do the first speaking practice session from each lesson with the
researcher and then repeat the same language with her other online English speaking friends. Her time
speaking to the other English speakers has not been documented but an estimate would be around four
hours, based upon slightly shorter conversations than those with the researcher (as she had been
instructed) and two to three practice partners.
All recordings were immediately uploaded to the secure online platform and automatically dated by the
system. We would then create the podcast by writing up contemporaneous notes about the session, adding
information about the lesson materials used by Jane prior to the speaking practice and copy and paste the
text chat history from Skype, which contained spellings of new words.
Jane would download the MP3 recording of the conversation and put it on her iPod before listening again
a few times.
This process of storing the data online means it is secure yet accessible. We wanted to make sure that its
credibility could not be questioned at a later date and to record all of our contact time with Jane.
After the sixth lesson we decided to edit together clips from the first and sixth to compare Janes speaking
performance. This created the before and after podcast referred to below.

RESULTS
These can be found on our podcast page at:

http://languagesoutthere.podomatic.com/
Please listen to the first recording at the top of the page. It is the recording of Jane before and after her
six lessons. The notes with that top podcast explain Janes background and how we worked with her. If
you read them all you will then read Janes answers to some specific questions posed by Professor
Stephen Krashen of the University of Southern California who listened and commented upon the before
and after clip. If you click on Comments you will be able to read what Professor Krashen thought of
Janes performance.
If you scroll down beyond a few before and after case studies with other learners you will come to all of
the full recordings of our work with Jane. There you can listen to each entire conversation and read all of
the contemporaneous notes.
Here are some of Janes comments that we think are worthy of being highlighted:

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Well, after several regular communications online with professor Jason including lots of
exercises in the plans, they made me not only enrich my vocabulary, but also made English
speaking become kind of a habit for me.
And,
I downloaded every recording when Jason posted them online. And I put them on my iPod, and
listened to them when I was free. It's very interesting to listen to my conversations with Jason
because through it, I can discover what I need to improve again. On the whole, studying English
in this new way made me not just improve my English level (especially speaking), but made me
many friends all around the world.
N.B. It should be noted that Jane studied 10 EOT lessons in all but she only did the speaking practice with
us for six of them. The rest she did after we had recorded session six and before she answered the
questions i.e. she continued working and practising her speaking with her many friends all around the
world. Which means she became an autonomous English learner.

DISCUSSION
The idea behind EOT is to make the practice conversation enjoyable and personally memorable to try to
aid recall of the language when it is needed again at another time. The practice session can be repeated
with numerous different practice partners and not become stale or tedious because everyone naturally
responds slightly differently. The repetition of the patterns of successful communication and the
negotiation of meaning leading to shared understanding in natural conversation produces a very intense
but manageable and personalised social learning experience. Learners experience a series of successful
conversations with non-teachers in relative privacy and are much freer to make mistakes than if they are
in a classroom of their peers where a mental block caused by anxiety has been shown to be a reality for
many (Horwitz et al., 1986). They are also given a lot of the language and information required to get
them into this special kind of conversation. We think the learners mental state whilst in a successfully
scaffolded conversation, can probably be compared to the psychological state described in Flow Theory
(Csikszentmihalyi 1975) and by i+1 indirect acquisition, which involves speaking at just above the
learners natural speaking level with a very high level of comprehension of what is said by both people
(Krashen 1981. See Figure 2. below).
Figure 2.The role of output in language acquisition (Krashen 1981)

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We have found, through trial and error, that to achieve this admittedly rare communicative state for
language learners requires careful preparation prior to the speaking practice.
We often get calls on Skype from English learners who wish to practise their English with us. We dont
take unscheduled calls of this nature but from time to time, to create a control to the case studies we
have done and to illustrate what happens when someone doesnt prepare properly before they try to speak,
we have taken the calls and recorded them. You can listen to a prime example with another Chinese
English learner, Amy, on our podcast page here:
http://languagesoutthere.podomatic.com/entry/2011-03-15T04_13_30-07_00
The preparation is important for a few reasons. Firstly the exercises rehearse the language to be used.
Secondly the language studied is at the learners approximate current speaking level and thirdly it gives
them something to talk about, a way into a conversation that is interesting to them and their partner and
creates discourse. When a language learner experiences a series of successful practice conversations that
they had previously deemed themself to be incapable of having there is a noticeable emotional reaction.
This reaction is one of excitement even euphoria or rapture (which is commensurate with the research on
Flow). When a series of lessons that produce this reaction to language use are put together to form a
course it is possible to reduce the learners level of anxiety prior to speaking, boost their confidence level
considerably, improve their fluency and with some careful analysis and guidance improve accuracy. In
our experience it is possible to help a chronic sufferer of second language performance anxiety and enable
them to go from speaking like a beginner to a comfortable intermediate in just six lessons (Before and
After Case Study Audio with Jane, West 2010).
What is surprising about EOT is that learners following the EOT process, both face-to-face and online,
experience extremely positive new learning after just a few sessions. For example in London anonymous
written feedback from students who experienced between just one and four EOT lessons involving
speaking practice with members of the public on the street responded to the question How much has
your English improved? using a scale of 1 to 5, the percentage represents the proportion of learners that
gave that assessment of their own improvement:
1. 0% (lowest) 2. 8.33% 3. 21.97% 4. 43.18%

5. 26.52% (highest)

Table 1. Anonymous learner responses to How much has your English improved?, after four EOT lessons in
London (source: EOT Feedback 2001-2003 sample size 132, EOT 2004)

EOT lessons involve a process of Input, Activity and Result (reflection).

The Input can be taught or self-studied anywhere, not just in a classroom, because we provide ready to
use worksheets for students. The object of the input is for the learner to know what they will be required
to do in the lesson and to become familiar with the language that will enable them to perform in a series
of conversations with fluent or native speakers of English (non-teachers).
The Activity comes when they are required to speak to strangers in public using the language in preprepared questions or to speak to online English speaking practice partners. The materials provide
preparation that supports the learner enough i.e. lowers their Affective Filter (Krashen 1981) briefly to get
into a focused practice conversation and allows them to prove to themselves that they can enjoy real
communication and understanding using the language. The process of negotiating meaning and
understanding with someone who is not your teacher or a classmate provides a more natural form of

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gentle correction with many Aha! moments and emotions associated with positive interpersonal
connectivity. All of the physical senses can become involved and linked to each highly individual
experience. So a heady and, in that moment unique, mixture of emotions and senses surrounds the
meaning of the language used to communicate. The large numbers of cognitive markers laid down by the
experiences make them highly memorable which then translates into making the language used, the
sounds and structures that elicited mutual understanding, much easier to remember in the future when that
language is required again. Many EOT students report being able to remember locations, faces, names
and the specific language focus of lessons years after they happened.
The last stage of the lesson is the Result or reflection period. Offline this involves face-to-face feedback
with a teacher to discuss the speaking practice experiences and any new language that emerged. Online it
involves recording the conversations and then listening to them again a few times. Listening to recordings
of oneself speaking a second language is proven to be highly effective for self-correction (Swanson, P., &
Schlig, C. 2010. also Hui-Yin Hsu, Shiang-Kwei Wang and Linda Comac 2008)
The flexibility of the EOT process and the use of multiple locations outside of the classroom environment
make classes fun and very exploratory; physically, socially and linguistically. The classroom is a finite
space with quite limited possibilities for interaction, especially in the context of a language course. The
world outside of the classroom on the other hand is immediately contextually and personally relevant to
the learner and the task. The increase in computer assisted language learning (CALL) over the last decade
has included the use of virtual worlds such as Second Life. Bizarrely the infinite space potential of virtual
worlds has been ignored by some educators whose early acts were to build virtual classrooms in which to
teach. This is illustrative of a certain type of narrow vision that even affects those who are experimenting
with technology for language teaching and learning. Classroom and teacher centric conditioning has stood
in the way of progress. Informal meeting spaces are useful, exciting and often free, they also have many
cognitive learning advantages over the use of the familiar classroom.
This is what Professor Stephen Krashen (Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning,
1981) wrote on our podcast page when he listened to Janes case study,
"Remarkable. If we had more description of just what lessons Jane did and other exposure to
English, and her own view of what caused the improvement, this would be a major contribution
to our knowledge about what works. Thanks for posting this." (Krashen 2010)
ESL programmes normally predict improvement across all four skills (reading, writing, speaking and
listening) after lengthy periods of study. However, the relative benefits of the course of study to each
specific skill is usually not made clear. This means that unless a course or course book clearly states
which skills it is adept at improving the inference is that all four skills are given equal emphasis. This is
easily illustrated by reading the course descriptions created by any of the big ELT publishers and teaching
organisations. Language learners consider speaking and listening to be the most important skills; when
asked 80% declared them to be very or extremely important. And 47% of learners thought that they didnt
practice enough or didnt have sufficient opportunity to practise their conversational skills when studying
a language (Myngle.com survey http://www.myngle.com/blog/2008/08/21/facts-figures-second-languagelearning-market)
So, whilst written tests are the main currency of success, everyone knows that the true test is being able to
speak comfortably in the language you are learning. Most language learners the world over aim for
fluency, in as short a period of time and for the least financial outlay possible.

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Below in Table 2. are the published claims of some respected and commercially successful English
teaching organisations that use a variety of course delivery methods. The claims relate to the estimated
time for a student to improve by three levels, including by default, speaking. The levels correspond to the
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).

Time to improve Name and type of language provider

three levels
None Published
Wall Street Institute, large international chain owned by one of the
biggest ELT publishers, Pearson PLC
480 Hours
LSI, international chain of accredited private language schools
378 Hours
Severnvale, small private language school
204 Hours
British Council (Hong Kong), NGO whose main activity is teaching
English
180 Hours
Livemocha.com/Active English (Pearson), biggest online social
language learning network
165 Hours
Rosetta Stone, global household name technology-based self-study
courses, advertisments in TIME, The Economist
18 Hours
English Out There Case Study with Jane
Table 2. The time taken to improve three CEFR levels, information sourced from the organisations own official
websites.

There is obviously a significant difference between the 18 hours of EOT and the 165 hours of Rosetta
Stone and but then there is also the vast disparity with the more conventional EFL/ESL programmes at
the small private English school and the international chain. This information raised some questions for
us.
What could possibly be the factor or factors that made the difference between EOT and the other courses?
And even, based upon our prior experience of ELT, does conventional EFL/ESL actually help learners to
improve their speaking skills?
The search for an answer to the broader second question led us to some research that analysed ESL
student dropout rates in the Canadian high school system. With ESL courses being deemed key to nonESL educational integration and long-term academic success the effectiveness of the ESL programme
was analysed by looking at the drop-out rates of students from the entire educational program and not just
their ESL courses. If learners can use English comfortably enough to integrate fully and become just like
one of the native-speaking English population of learners the researchers hypothesised that the groups
high school dropout rates should be similar. The results of their study make for interesting reading. They
discovered a differentiated dropout rate, depending upon intake placement of the students: beginner
(95%), intermediate (70%) and advanced (50%) (The Dynamics of ESL Dropout, Watt & Roessingh
2001).
Using drop-out rates to highlight the ineffectiveness of conventional ESL courses is one way to make a
point, however one of the researchers went further in her paper Effective High School ESL Programs: A
Synthesis and Meta-analysis (Roessingh 2004). It is an analysis of 12 major studies of effective ESL
programs conducted over 14 years that she hoped would point the way to instructional and policy reform.
The abstract contains the sentence,

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In short, educational outcomes measured by way of dropout, failure, and low achievement on
standardised tests all suggest that for some reason ESL learners do not benefit from ESL
programming. (Roessingh 2004)
Roessingh applied the findings in her paper to the wider non-High School ESL environment (i.e. the
global ESL industry) by writing,
We suspect there is much that is generalizable to other ESL teaching and learning contexts
(Roessingh 2004)
and made the startling assertion that,
ESL learners do not achieve in line with their academic potential (Roessingh 2004)
(which is borne out by Janes case study since she was a post-graduate student in architecture but after 16
years of formal study still spoke English like a beginner). The paper goes on to highlight the areas of
instruction that the data illustrates to be effective. The use of non-threatening fluent and native speaker
practice buddies is prominent (with EOT we use the term practice partners). We think Roessinghs
paper would be useful for all ESL teachers and teacher trainers to study as part of their initial training or
CPD.
A more recent piece of research called Evaluation of the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada
(LINC) Program, carried out by the Canadian government, clearly shows the improvement in speaking
after 1000 hours in the ESL classroom is statistically the same against a control group that wasn't in
school at all. So there was no improvement whatsoever. To download and read the research visit:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/evaluation/linc/2010/index.asp
In answer to the first question above, the main difference between EOT and the other methods is that
EOT requires focused speaking practice with non-teachers and non-learners, in other words fluent or
native speakers. This practice takes place away from and outside of the classroom or conventional
teaching environment. It is a social experience as well as a learning experience. The only other
programme in the list (See Figure 2. on the previous pages) above that comes close to EOT in terms of its
process is the online social language learning network Livemocha.com. However, it seems that not all
social learning processes were created equal and even within this new field there are crucial differences.
What could they be?
Krashen was the first academic to really separate the concepts of language learning and language
acquisition (learned language being consciously manipulated and produced whilst acquired language is
produced unconsciously and automatically). Before Krashen simple human intuition existed and in
response to the question Hows your French? most people probably replied something along the lines of
A bit rusty. Thus signifying that they felt they needed to use it or lose it i.e. practise it. This nonacademic or populist assessment of what is required to speak a second language comfortably should also
be considered in the context that we have all learned to speak at least one language very comfortably and
that in the successful completion of this immense task we neither asked for nor received any overt
grammatical analysis of our progress. In fact all we did was talk to our carers about things when they
were contextually relevant to establishing mutual understanding.

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When we started teaching EOT and began to witness improvements that surprised us (and wed all had a
lot of experience at conventional ESL schools with identical types of learners) we started to discuss why
what we were doing worked so well. Some plausible answers started to emerge. Fundamental to the
process of EOT is the ability of the learner to have a conversation with a fluent or native speaker using the
language introduced in the first part of the lesson. Through trial and error and quite a bit of research we
found a balance. Our research included texts on course construction and task-based learning but it also
took in A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning (Skehan 1998). In an email exchange with the
author we explained what we were doing and the results it was producing. Professor Skehan replied that
he could believe it and that we might like to include a little focus on form (grammar instruction) at the
start of each lesson, adding that from what wed told him we were probably already doing that (which we
were).
The conclusion Skehan came to in his book is that post-critical period second language learners need a
fine balance between form and meaning-based communication to succeed. He wrote,
This is a conundrum that is very difficult to solve. It requires either a learner who is especially
sensitive to form, or instructional conditions which themselves artfully juxtapose the demands of
form and meaning in effective ways.(Skehan 1998)
Since 2002/3 (when we first read Skehan) further reading has caused us to question the orthodoxy of the
effects of a critical period. We have begun to think that the way we have been learning languages
(academic or rules-based) in combination with the psychological effects of puberty (acutely increased
social and self-awareness) actually prohibits the majority of adult language learners from experiencing
conditions conducive to speaking a second language comfortably. This block is, in our opinion, much
more psychological than linguistic but is removable and the various EOT case studies, especially the one
with Jane (West 2010), are proof of that. Recent research involving the use of brain imaging technology
strongly points to prior learning being an influence on the subsequent language learning success of adults,
with Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiola (2008) concluding their paper called Neural Substrates of Language
Acquisition with the loaded question,
Which causal mechanisms underlie the critical period for second language acquisitionwhy
are adults, with their superior cognitive skills, unable to learn as well as young infants? Can
techniques be developed to help adults learn a second language?(Kuhl & Rivera-Gaxiola 2008)
Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiolas research highlights the effectiveness of motherese and socialisation in infant
SLA and the masses of data analysed in Deb Roys Human Speechome Project of 2006
(http://www.media.mit.edu/cogmac/projects/hsp.html) in which he recorded his son's development at
home by gathering approximately 10 hours of high fidelity audio and video on a daily basis from birth to
age three (the resulting corpus constitutes the most comprehensive record of a child's development made
to date) have clearly shown that material and emotional context allied to repetitively negotiated meaning
and understanding provide the building blocks of first language acquisition. What jumps out is that there
is a repeated cognitive process involved. The process appears to involve a combination of socialisation
and practice or immediate use of information (language).

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Figure 3.

The National Training Laboratories in the USA use a chart called the Learning Pyramid (see Figure 3.
above) to illustrate the recall rate of different teaching strategies based upon research by Mujis, D &
Reynolds, D (2001) in which optimal recall of up to 90% is achieved through a combination of
challenging, practical and multi-sensory tasks involving the immediate use of the information to be
learned. N.B. The origins of the this chart and recall rate figures have, understandably, been questioned a
lot but the general pattern would appear to correspond with what we know in general about learning
retention. This also appears to be supported by the research results of both Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiola and
Roy. In the context of language learning it would suggest that the setting-up and facilitating of successful
speaking practice with expert users of the language could mimic and improve upon conditions in which
first languages are successfully acquired (improved upon because of the superior cognitive skills that
adults have).
If language acquisition in adults (i.e. those who are deemed to be beyond the critical period) can be
improved through the creation of certain pedagogic, social and emotional conditions that replicate the
way in which we all acquired our first languages, it begs the question why acquisition doesnt occur
naturally more often and what causes the block or language barrier? Put simply, why do the majority of
people who formally learn English have trouble speaking it?
A number of highly respected and famous academics have researched this stumbling block to speaking a
second language comfortably but we think it is useful to go back to 1908 and Yerkes-Dodson law. Most
people are familiar with performance anxiety in human beings. Yerkes and Dodson formulated a law and
produced a well-known diagram of the inverted U (see Figure 4. on the next page) to clearly illustrate
that when arousal in an individual reaches a certain level their performance is dramatically adversely
affected. Easy to comprehend scenarios where this can happen are public speaking (mind goes blank), a

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sports man or woman fails to remain focused and cool and their performance suffers badly and also when
a nervous English learner tries to speak to someone.

Figure 4.

It has been proven by the scientific community that there is an optimal amount of arousal for effective
human performance to take place. Too little is bad and too much is bad. In the production of a second
language (i.e. speaking) there are naturally different levels of arousal (or anxiety). At the extreme end is
lathophobic aphasia (Stevick 1976) which describes where a language learner is so afraid of speaking that
they completely fail to speak and then there is the Affective Filter (Krashen 1981) which describes
variable degrees of interference in the ability to speak caused by adverse psychological conditions
experienced by the language learner. Yerkes Dodson law, lathophobic aphasia and a raised Affective
Filter are all undoubtedly linked even if they are not just different ways to describe the same condition. A
condition that almost every language learner has experienced. All of the evidence unequivocally proves
that human beings often have a real physiological problem speaking a second language. The problem
starts out as a psychological one and is manifested physically in failure to speak when under pressure to
do so, or speaking in degrees of faltering and incoherent language.
The anxiety experienced by the second language speaker is often blamed upon the collision of the
requirement to formulate and speak a grammatically correct sentence with the need to respond in a timeframe deemed acceptable for normal communication. Anecdotally, learners who form sentences and
translate in their heads suffer the most. Once conversation is a reflexive rather than a conscious effort the
learners often report themselves to be thinking in English or that speaking English has become a habit.

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The psychopathology of second language speech is widespread and crippling for many millions of people
who have spent years of valuable time and lots of hard-earned money trying to learn to speak English
comfortably and as the research mentioned above pointed out it seems that what most ESL programmes
do is fail to achieve the learners primary aim. How a reportedly $50bn industry has survived using
largely the same modus operandi for so long is astonishing and we have started referring to the
phenomenon as The Emperors Old Clothes.
Technology is a great tool when it is used as precisely that, a tool. We started using Skype in 2005/6 for
business calls and in 2007 the EOT materials were adapted for use with VoIP (Voice over Internet
Protocol). We still use Skype with PDFs and MP3s to teach and the case studies we have carried out have
all used these very simple files and tools. The world has had the technology to transform language
teaching and learning for quite some time but the focus has been weighted too heavily in the direction of
the technology and, in our opinion, not enough on the creation of appropriate pedagogy for use with these
amazing tools.
The learning materials culture of the teachers using technology seems to have gone from offline use of
traditional coursebooks to having (or wanting) to create all of their own materials or adapting authentic
content for online teaching. The creation of effective content has thus become a central (very time
consuming and often unpaid) activity for many teachers.
Furthermore, constant lesson creation and adaptation means, as in many offline lessons, that there are
very few tried and tested lesson plans being used (N.B. by tried and tested we mean over hundreds of
hours of teaching the same materials with in-built iteration). The focus on training teachers to create new
lessons for themselves all of the time places a huge strain on the teachers and leaves the crucial learning
process for the students open to large variations in effectiveness.
It is our belief that we have had the technology available to transform ESL for years but we have lacked a
systemic approach to creating and testing purpose built materials for use with the technology. Major
reasons for this include the reluctance of schools and publishers to embrace open platforms and tools and
the fact that publishers are tied into long-term third party paper distribution contracts based upon a
previous educational paradigm that they are reluctant, if not fearful, of letting go of.
Added to that the normal practice of publishers is to send drafts of new materials to their distributors for
feedback as to the sales potential of the product. We have heard many anecdotal accounts of ELT authors
being asked to write something innovative and it not being published based upon the sales teams report.
Which might sound commercially astute but we would argue, has been hugely counter productive in
terms of the need for pedagogical progress.
In fact we were contacted by a global ELT publisher when EOT was announced as one of the top ten uses
of social media for formal language learning by the European Union. They invited us to visit them and
show them our learning content, which we did. It was an extremely interesting exercise and the rejection
letter did not surprise us in the least,
LOTs approach to the ELT market and reaching teachers and students via social
communication platforms is genuinely interesting. However, assessed from the perspective of a
publisher, we do not feel that LOT offers the type of materials that we could bring within our
catalogue, whether in relation to the current offering or our future publishing plans. The
particular success of LOT seems to be in the methodology of delivery whereas we would need to
publish items whose content, structure, design, etc. is compelling and novel in its own right.

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Following an editorial review and further discussion based on this review we do not believe that
the content offers this. (Anonymous global ELT publisher, 2012)
Reading between the lines they seem to be saying that, despite the success of EOT, because it is not
solely classroom bound (methodology of delivery) and doesnt look like other glossy publications
(need to publish items whose content, structure, design, etc. is compelling and novel in its own right.)
then they will never consider publishing anything like it. So, now we have it in writing, big ELT
publishers appear to favour style over substance, even at the expense of effectiveness for the learner.
This stasis is buttressed by the industry culture that places teachers interests, specialisms and pet projects
above the interests of the students, despite much ritualistic and politically correct lip-service being paid to
the student-centredness of courses.
EOT materials began life as blank pieces of paper and got filled in and developed from direct feedback
from teachers and students working on the streets of London with members of the public. They are
planned from the view of what we want to achieve in the session and always on the basis of applying
what has been studied in a series of practice conversations with non-teachers. They are social learning
materials for a subject and skill, language use, that we irrefutably know is acquired almost exclusively
socially.
"Training studies show that adults can improve nonnative phonetic perception when training
occurs under more social learning conditions, and Magnetoencephalography (MEG) measures
before and after training indicate that neural efficiency increases after training (Zhang et al.,
2009)." (Kuhl 2010)
And,
"Understanding how language learning, cognition, and social processing interact in development
may ultimately explain the mechanisms underlying the critical period for language learning.
Furthermore, understanding the mechanism underlying the critical period may help us develop
methods that more effectively teach second languages to adult learners. Neuroscience studies
over the next decade will lead the way on this theoretical work, and also advance our
understanding of the practical results of training methods, both for adults learning new
languages, and children with developmental disabilities struggling to learn their first language.
These advances will promote the science of learning in the domain of language, and potentially,
shed light on human learning mechanisms more generally." (Kuhl 2010)
Conventional ESL programmes fail to deliver on the primary motivational goal of the majority of English
learners when they undertake a period of study..speaking. This is primarily because they do not prepare,
scaffold and support the use of target language in social interactions with fluent and native English
speakers.
We believe our case study proves that English Out There is a uniquely transformational language teaching
and learning process.

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N.B. Since this article was written the publisher in question has published a five level general English
coursebook and, until UK Trading Standards asked them to remove them they advertised using the
words unique social media tasks and described the course as being the first course to use social
networking to help students succeed in English.
Acknowledgements:
English Out There was created by Jason West but it is also the work of many experienced and dedicated
professionals over many years. The biggest contributors to EOT apart from Jason have been teachers
Georgina Moon (DELTA), Maria Stamati-Knipe (MA TESOL), Jonathan Jones (CELTA) and our
materials writer and editor Tim Bowen, a well-known author (Macmillan) and Pilgrims teacher trainer.
We estimate that over the 250,000 hours of teaching and development that took place prior to publication
of the materials around fifty other teachers have made practical and valuable contributions to the project.
References:
Swanson, P., & Schlig, C. 2010. Improving second language speaking proficiency via interactional
feedback. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology , 1(4), 17-30.)
Hui-Yin Hsu, Shiang-Kwei Wang and Linda Comac, Using audioblogs to assist English-language
learning: an investigation into student perception, Computer Assisted Language Learning Vol. 21, No. 2,
April 2008, 181198
Roessingh, Hetty, Effective High School ESL Programs: A Synthesis and Meta-Analysis - Canadian
Modern Language Review, v60 n5 p611-638 Jun 2004
Skehan. P. 1998, A Cognitive Approach to Language Teaching, OUP
Krashen, S, 1981 Theory of Second Language Acquisition
Drnyei, Z., & Csizr, K. (1998). Ten commandments for motivating language learners
Kuhl, P. K., & Rivera-Gaxiola, M. (2008). Neural substrates of language acquisition. Annual Review of
Neuroscience. 31, 511-534
Kuhl, P. K. Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition
Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, University of Washington; 2011. Published in Neuron, 2010
september 9: 67(5): 713-727 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2947444/
Mujis, D & Reynolds, D (2001), Effective teaching: evidence and practice
Horwitz et al., 1986
Csikszentmihalyi 1975, Flow Theory
West 2010, Before and After Case Study Audio with Jane
Canadian government, Evaluation of the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC)
Program http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/evaluation/linc/2010/index.asp

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Roy, 2006, Human Speechome Project

Yerkes & Dodson, 1908, The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit Formation
Stevick, E.W. (1976). Memory, Meaning and Method. Rowley, M.A.: Newbury House.

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