hello and welcome back to real English with real teachers with Harry and
Charlie three months ago we published this video in which we propose to you
our beloved subscribers the idea of running a real English immersion course
here in the UK at the time it was just an idea we had no idea idea idea idea we
had no clue if any of you would actually be interested in coming here living with
us for four nights and learning with us in the flesh meaning in person but
surprisingly the response was incredible and we had hundreds of emails from
people saying that they would be interested in such a course so three
months later on the 7th to the 11th of August 2017 Harry and I did our first
real English with real teachers immersion course and we had a blast a
bloody good time and we think that our students really enjoyed it as well and
since some of our fans on our page are asking for details of how the trip went
we thought we would make a montage of what we did and what to expect on our
trip including all of the fun adventures and the classroom ideas that we had so
we hope you enjoy it so on the first day we picked everyone up from Brighton
station at 4 p.m. and got everyone back to the house for some prosecco and flap
Jack cake and a home-cooked meal everyone was getting on like a house on
fire and we had a fantastic night of getting to know each other and playing
some games the daily lessons started at 10:15 after
everyone was dressed and fed and lasted for around three hours for the classes
of the immersion course we decided to employ a DOGME teaching approach which
is a method of teaching which minimizes the importance of textbooks and pre
planned curriculums and emphasizes or stresses the value of communicative
competence over everything else on this course our main goal was to make
non-natives better speakers of English to increase their confidence when
talking build their vocabulary and help them to be better understood by others
therefore our lessons typically consisted of a range of different
communicative activities that would stretch the students speaking skills and
provide us the teachers with an idea of what new language needed to be taught in
these pictures you'll see that we always had our laptops to hand during class
this was me and Charlie taking notes on everyone's use of English so that we
could then review this language around the whiteboard to suggest new
expressions and vocab to help everyone on the course express themselves in a
more effective manner we also took this time to review some tricky irregular
verbs and grammar structures that students were really finding quite
difficult during the class activities so this was our official lesson time and
this took place every morning after which we would take an hour break for
lunch and then head out on a trip during the break students were free to do
whatever they pleased more often than not they would take a two minute stroll
into the center of the village for lunch where they could find a variety of pubs
cafes and cute little independents as well as being the real teachers on
the course Charlie and I were also the real chauffeurs there was no waiting
around for buses or taxis as we were the ones taking everyone from place to place
the car was also a great place to stay immersed in English as we often found
ourselves explaining the surroundings to the students and having nice
conversations as we drove around from place to place we went on three trips
the first was an exploration of the South Downs National Park the second a
day out in Brighton and the third and possibly my favorite was an afternoon
and a spontaneous race along the Seven Sisters cliffs in addition to being an
opportunity to experience some of the most beautiful areas of the country
these trips also provided lots of time to continue chatting and learning new
vocabulary and moreover to challenge everyone to step outside of their
comfort zone of speaking English to do this we set daily language challenges on
our trip into Brighton for instance we divided students into three groups of
two and gave each pair a language challenge which had been designed based
on the students personal goals for coming on the course after getting back
from the trips we had around an hour of downtime usually during this time people
would go off to their bedrooms or sit around in one of the communal rooms of
the house chatting
on the first night it was Charlie and I who cooked on the second night we went
to a local restaurant but on nights three and four it was team cooking time
the team cooking was a real success as a speaking activity it was perfect because
it required everyone to communicate effectively using everyday vocabulary to
achieve a shared goal of course Harry and I were there to help out with the
vocabulary of the kitchen as and when needed but it was the chef's of the
evening who were in charge of hosting and serving their guests as if they were
in a restaurant and it was their responsibility to work together as a
team to make it all come together it was brilliant and the food they
cooked was genuinely really tasty after dinner we would lead into an evening
speaking activity which either took place around the dinner table in the
living room or in a local pub the evening speaking activities were
typically about an hour and a half to two hours in length depending on how
much energy we had left in the tank the main purpose of these activities was to
get everyone talking and reviewing the vocab and expressions that had come up
during the course and we did this through fun and amusing games normally
we found ourselves still sitting around and chatting until after midnight but of
course everyone could retire to bed whenever they wanted I think my favorite
moment of the course was on the last night when we sat around the dinner
table for hours playing a game which combined taboo and charades
as a way of revising all of the idioms and vocabulary from the course not only
was it hilarious to see everyone trying to act out idiomatic expressions in
charades but it also delighted me to see the sheer amount of language that
everyone had been able to absorb throughout the course it was an
incredibly gratifying end to our immersion course on the last day
everyone was presented with certificates for their participation and personal
achievements of the course and we went out for a lovely English breakfast in
Alfriston as a final farewell so that was the
experience and as it was a success and so much fun we are going to be doing
more courses in the future so if you are interested then you need to click here
to find out when our next course dates are and join our email waiting list
thanks for watching and see you soon