Teaching and learning

global English using social

media and social
interaction

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Out There product
 Contents
• What is English Out There (EOT)
• How it works
• What it looks like
• What the English speakers do
• Useful links

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What is EOT

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 What is EOT?
• Highly effective series of modular English courses:
– 800 hours, 6 levels, beginner to advanced (CEF)
– 60 hours approx. per level
– illustrated student worksheets
– digital and print, audio (MP3)
– translated into 5 languages

• Three styles: Self-study/Teacher 1:1/Teacher Group

– covers all skills
– focused on speaking and listening i.e. where students need most
practice
– perfect complement to any core course or curriculum
– step-by-step student, teacher and tutor instructions

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USP – Social media
• EOT is the world’s first social media English
course
• Works with all online social media platforms and
free web telephony
• Every lesson involves integrated and structured
listening/speaking practice with fluent and
native-English speaking practice partners using
social media

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 Why was EOT created?
• To improve on what existed

• To make language learning much more memorable

• To facilitate focused real practice

• To socialize the learning experience

• To boost confidence, fluency and motivation fast

• To combat the fear of speaking

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 How was EOT created?
• Lateral thinking
– “Why can’t students speak after years of teaching?”
– “Why do many learners’ minds go blank just before they try to
speak?”
– “How do we make it real and more relevant to the core aim,
communication?”
• Research
– Psycholinguistics (e.g. Skehan, Krashen, Vygotski, Pinker, Ellis, Kuhl, Proulx & Heine)
• Real feedback from students and teachers
– teach, adjust, teach, adjust...

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What method is it based on?
EOT is based upon the Communicative Method (used by
most language courses in the world), but it uses a redesigned
lesson plan format that is used in every single session.

This new format means that real practice of the target

language happens minutes after the language has been studied.

The course includes elements of psycholinguistic research

and the application of practical memory enhancing techniques that
lead to improved ‘memory mapping’.

All of this helps learners to remember the target language

better and to feel much more confident.
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How research-based
EOT works

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What is Constructivism and how does it
relate to EOT? Links that create
understanding and help recall.
i.e. “This new language…”
EOT
• ” is similar to…”
language
• ” is related to…”
focus i.e. • “is because….”
language
studied

Sounds, images,
emotions and
context.

Original source: www.geoffpetty.com

Existing language + Out There Task for the session or in Mujis, D. & Reynolds, D. (2001)
+ the real experience of what was actually said and
understood. EOT is a copyrighted Languages 10
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The Learning Pyramid: The recall rate of different
teaching strategies. The National Training
Laboratories (US) Source: www.geoffpetty.com or in Mujis, D. &
Reynolds, D. (2001)

Student’s
recall rate

Listening 5%
Students Receive
Information
Reading i.e.Conventional
classroom based
10 %
teaching
Students are
Increasingly Audio -Visual
active, and 20 %
challenged.
Experience is Demonstration
increasingly 30 %
practical, social and
multi-sensory Discussion groups 50 %

Students Apply
Practice by doing 75 % their
Learning i.e.

Teach others/immediate use of learning 90 % EOT

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Latest research into 'social learning‘
• Dr. Patricia Kuhl (Institute for Learning and Brain
Sciences at the University of Washington) 'a new view
of language acquisition‘ which was followed by 'Neural
substrates of language acquisition‘ (Kuhl & Rivera-
Gaxiola 2008)
"Which causal mechanisms underlie
the critical period for second
language acquisition - why 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?”

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Latest research into ‘implicit learning‘
• Proulx & Heine - 2009 'Exposure to Meaning Threats*
Improves Implicit Learning of an Artifical Grammar
(Connections from Kafka)' (click)

“Priming motivational states has been

found to improve performance on
implicit-learning tasks.”

“..the cognitive mechanisms

responsible for implicitly-learning novel
patterns of association are enhanced
by the presence of a meaning threat.”

* Trying to communicate in a second language

involves naturally occurring meaning threats

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EOT is both a pedagogic ‘Bonjour, deux
and a psychological baguettes, s’il vous plait’
process…It proves that good Or ‘Doh!’ (i.e. no sound
preparation before socialization or slow, faltering and
quickly helps learners to speak hesitant speech)
with more confidence
and fluency

"Monitor "overusers" are performers who feel

they must "know the rule" for everything and
do not entirely trust their feel for
grammaticality in the second language. One
case, "S", described by Stafford and Covitt
(1978), remarked: "I feel bad... when I put
words together and I don't know nothing
about the grammar." In Stevicks terms
(Stevick, 1976, p. 78), overusers may suffer
from "lathophobic aphasia", an "unwillingness
to speak for fear of making a mistake"."
Stephen Krashen

Yerkes-Dodson law (first observed by

Robert M. Yerkes and John D.
Dodson, The Relation of Strength of
Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit- 14
EOT © Languages Out There Ltd Formation (1908) Journal of Comparative
Neurology and Psychology,18, 459-482)
Does it work?

1 day = a 3 hour lesson

1 week = 15 hours
Sample size 726
Age of clients: 14-65
Nationalities: 35
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 Regular feedback comments
about EOT:
“not boring”, “exciting”, “helps me to
memorise”, “it helps me to speak after
class”, “real English”.
First independent review:
“These materials have an extra dimension …the
Out There tasks encourage students to speak
with others, either face to face in a public venue
or using VoIP technology such as Skype in order
to speak with a partner or small group.

There are many things that I like about these

well-structured worksheets. There are a mixture
of activities, such as work-definition matches,
sentence gap-fills and picture descriptions which
get the students practicing the target language.

Vocabulary expansion and speaking skills are

core components of this course which I think
would be very useful to many students.

The topic areas covered are interesting and

relevant, introducing everyday language and
colloquial and idiomatic expressions to students.
The thematic worksheets include a wide range of
topics including travel, music, technology, beauty,
fears and idioms/slang...”

(TEFL.net, October 2009)

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http://tefl.net/reviews/english-out-there 16
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 The EOT course
• Highly flexible – three styles
• TD (group taught), SS (self-study) and new OO (1:1) style lesson plans
• Real world or online use, or a combination
• Allows learners to get focused real practice of language studied
• Works in different ways at different levels:
• Beginner – increases confidence and helps ‘survival’
• Advanced – very high level language + real ‘street’ vocabulary
• Six levels
• 60 hours per level
• 3 hours (approx. per learner session)
• 50% input, 25% activity, 25% result
• Tried and tested and now ready to market
• 6 years of teaching, 2 of editing, 250,000 contact hours, 85,000
lessons

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Stage 1-
Input
• Classroom,
Virtual classroom,
Self study
• Grammar
• Vocabulary
• Skills
• Controlled practice

18
Stage 2 - Speak
• Use language just learnt by talking to people on the
telephone, online or on the street
• Enjoyable, exciting and memorable learning experience
• Real focused practice of listening, speaking, reading
and writing

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Stage 3 - Result
• Focused conversation becomes free conversation
• New language and vocabulary are heard and explained
• Correction happens naturally
• Personal contextualization of the learning experience
makes it much more memorable
• Social learning ‘buzz’

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What EOT looks like

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Meet the family

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I do some self-study or
a teacher guides me
through the EOT
materials..
..then she talks to me
on the telephone,
online or in the street.
We start by using the
language from the
lesson.

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Clear instructions for
both teachers and
learners
Six levels:
1.Beginner (A1)
2.Elementary (A2)
3.Pre-intermediate (B1)
4.Intermediate (B2)
5.Upper-intermediate (C1)
6.Advanced (C2)

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Student worksheets
20 lessons per level
Each input session lasts
approximately 1.5-
2.5hrs*
Unlimited speaking time

* self-study and 1:1,

depending upon the individual
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 Out There Task
Gives you a way to start
talking
Uses the language in the
lesson
Speak for as long as you
like with as many people as
you want – on the phone,
online or on the street
Let the conversation take
its own course
Have fun and connect
socially

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What makes EOT so different from other courses?

• Integrates structured listening and

speaking practice using social
media (USP)
• Motivates and boosts confidence,
lowering the student’s anxiety level
and creating a ‘buzz of success’
• ‘Passive knowledge becomes
active knowledge’ – Belgrade Univ.
ELT students
• Quickly improves speaking and
listening skills
• Totally flexible - works in all social
and technological environments
• Global English – hear modern
language use from fluent English
speakers of all backgrounds
• Tried and tested over 250,000
hours
• Lots of fun and never ever boring

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How does the social
media practice in EOT
work?

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 Simple steps to creating a
Personal Learning Network
1. Join an international social network and make some online friends
2. Contact them using the words “Hi, I am doing English Out There can I
practise with you, it will only take a few minutes each time”, in the text chat
system and using the special pre-written EOT message
3. Make as many English speaking friends as you can, preferably in different
time zones and with different accents
4. The more practice partners you have the more likely you will be able to
practice 24/7 and be able to hear global English
5. Do the lesson and prepare the Out There Task questions
6. See who is online and text them to see if they can talk
7. Call those who say ‘yes’ and use the language from the lesson to break the
ice and get going

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EOT tools

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 Future proof
• Consumer and Institutional product
• Current file formats
– PDF, MP3, print
• Environments where EOT can currently be used
– real classroom, virtual classroom
– free web telephony (Skype), PSTN telephone (landline)
– free online social media (Facebook), face-to-face social interaction
(street)
– virtual worlds (Second Life)
• Future file formats
– XML, SCORM, SWF and so on...
– Ebook
• Future environments where it will be utilised
– any and all
– we have plans that we prefer not to divulge at the moment

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The last word…from a student…

“I’ve never thought that I would enjoy this

school this much. I think everyone must
try something like that once in a
lifetime, it is just not good for your
English, it is also good for your entire
life.”
Arda Ozdemir, Turkey.

www.languagesoutthere.com
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Useful links:
Listen to some students doing some EOT by phone in these case studies:
http://languagesoutthere.podomatic.com/

Watch some video presentations about EOT, video newsletters and meet some
learners:
http://www.youtube.com/user/LanguagesOutThere
http://www.facebook.com/EnglishOutThere

Using EOT materials to guide learners in a virtual classroom:

http://www.wiziq.com/English-Out-There-Intermediate-lesson-3

Real world social learning using EOT materials:

http://www.meetup.com/English-Out-There-London-English-conversation/

Download a free EOT ebook endorsed by Professor Steven Pinker:

http://www.scribd.com/For-Want-of-a-Better-Word-endorsed-by-Steven-Pinker-

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