As tutors ourselves, we know how hard it can be to have a conversation with an absolute beginner. But fear not! Our updated absolute beginner conversation materials (“Getting Started”) are here to help! You can find them at the top of our Conversation Materials:

We've now officially replaced our last PDF materials, which means that all original lessons are now compatible with the new lesson system.

Behind the Scenes

Now, let’s take a look behind the scenes! The chief instructional designer for these “Getting Started” lessons is Kate Absolum. (Those of you who’ve been following our blog will have seen her in this blog post.)

In addition to nearly two decades of teaching experience, Kate has also been an absolute beginner herself, having studied Te Reo Maori, Mandarin Chinese, French, and currently Japanese. So she has solid insights into what works best for both teachers and students, namely ...

1. The importance of making sure learning materials aren’t patronizing or childish.
2. The difficulty of learning to speak in another language and therefore the need for sufficient scaffolding and practice, and
3. The need for learning content to be practical.

Building on the third point, Kate added, “I remember studying French in school and having to memorize ridiculous sentences like “My aunt’s pen is behind the piano” that I would never use in real life. So, I avoided anything like this, and focused on what people most like to talk about and will remember: themselves!”

Lesson Flow

Now, Kate will walk us through the basic structure of the lessons.

“Each of these beginner conversation lessons is centered around teaching the students how to ask and answer two or three common questions that a beginner might encounter when having a conversation.

“For example, in the ‘What do you do?’ lesson, the core questions are ‘What do you do?’ and ‘Where do you work?’”

“The different exercises in each lesson focus on different skills that a learner needs to successfully ask and answer these questions. The first two exercises model and drill pronunciation and useful vocabulary. Here’s “Exercise 1: Warm-up”:

And here’s “Exercise 2: Vocabulary”:

“As you can see, both exercises include ‘Let’s Practice’ sections to make sure students aren’t just listening and repeating, but also putting these new words and phrases into use.

“Then, the ‘Dialogue’ provides model answers while the ‘Matching’ and ‘Fill in the Blank’ exercises focus on making sure the student masters the responses.

“Next, the ‘Ordering’ exercises focus on the correct grammatical structures used to make both the question and the answer.

”And the final exercises are: ‘Your Turn to Ask’ and ‘Your Turn to Answer.’

• ‘Your Turn to Ask’ has the student ask the tutor the questions practiced in the lesson. This gives the tutor the opportunity to share a little something about her/himself, gives some real and personalized listening practice and provides a model answer for the student.
• ‘Your Turn to Answer’ is when the tutor asks the student these questions, and at this point, the student shares some information about themselves.

“In my experience as a teacher and learner, we want to use language to listen and talk about real topics that are meaningful, regardless of level. So, ending the lessons with personalized questions and answers provide an opportunity for the student to share something authentic about themselves.”

“Hopefully this will leave your students feeling happy, connected and satisfied they are making good progress in their English learning journey!”

👋 That’s it for now!

We hope this post has given you a taste of our new materials for absolute beginners. Make sure to recommend them to adult beginners and even younger learners who are ready to start their journey through the world of English conversation! Happy tutoring!