Therese - Level 4 - Intermediate - Lesson 1

What this episode covers

Therese is German and is staying in Weymouth so she can do the EOT speaking tasks face-to-face with members of the public. She is 17 and very shy although her English is around intermediate (B2) level. By her own admission she finds it difficult to speak to strangers and when I told her what we were going to do (i.e. study some language then she was going to speak to some complete strangers) she cried, which is the first time that has happened to me! Anyway, you can hear her first speaking practice session from lesson one here. She self-studied the target language using the worksheets, clarified just a couple of word meanings with me and then we did the Out There Task speaking practice together. She didn't read the instructions for the task carefully enough and we had to stop for her to write five questions down :-) After she'd done the speaking task for the first time with me I took her out to the seafront where there are always people sitting looking at the sea doing nothing (a great resource!). Again to ease her in I approached the first person, an elderly lady, told her I was an English teacher and would she mind having a practice chat with my student (Therese). She was fine and they did the Out There task together. I told Therese she had to do the next intro herself and use the 'magic words' clearly and SMILE at the same time! :-) She chose an old guy sitting on a deck chair on the beach by a beach hut. She did it and had a conversation with a complete stranger! I had to go and get Fred from pre-school so we stopped there for the day but my mum told me that when I was out Therese was excited and told her "I've just spoken to some complete strangers!" More to come....she's going to do a couple more Out There tasks for lesson one to get some repetition and will then move on to lesson two.

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