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IELTS with friends

I'm here with Sandra Pyne today. Sandra, are you in Germany now? 

I am in Berlin in Germany. I'm British but I'm over here in Europe and it's a beautiful sunny summer day today. 

Was it because of English teaching that you're in Germany?

That's a good question. I actually, no. You know, often I think we marry somebody who is of another nationality and then we shift over to a different country. So I've moved over from Oxford to Germany a good few years ago now and my children were born here so I also have bilingual children. I spend most of my life functioning in another language and I've got children who are bilingual and I spent a lot of time teaching bilingual and native English -speaking children here as a school teacher in Germany in an international school. So being bilingual, learning English, speaking another language, this is my, this is my life.

You're an English teacher. I think you're about to start a new project. Can you tell me a bit about that? 

I am. I am collaborating with my business bestie Rebecca and we are at the moment putting the final touches to our IELTS course. It's an academic IELTS course to help students who want to go to university in English -speaking countries to pass the exam and what's really exciting about it is it's an online course and once you tap into the power of working online, you can just add so much more value beyond the live lesson. So, we're very excited to produce a course that obviously has all the live lessons in it, but each lesson comes with a fillable booklet that you don't even need a printer for, so there's extra value there. And we've also created a study course, a study skills course to get started because it's a big thing. How can you really integrate learning English fairly painlessly into your everyday life so you can do something every day to make good progress? So that's at the beginning before we even get started learning English and then at the end we've got a transitioning into university course where I'm talking to an Oxford University student who came from abroad to study in the UK and I'm asking her all the questions that students who are transitioning into university will have and she will answer them and then it will be a good kind of roadmap for the things that you need to know if you're going to study abroad. So there's so much more I think you do online than you can do in a classroom or one -to -one and that's really exciting. 

In the course will you have one -to -one tutoring or is it groups? How does that work? 

It's groups. I think lots of students think the gold standard is one -to -one but that's really not the case. If you've got groups you've got lots of advantages with groups. It can be very speaking based. So, you know, you can spend the time really practising your English. And we make our lessons speaking based because the writing you can do outside of the lesson, there's no point in being silent writing in a one hour class. So lots of speaking, lots of interaction that you can do. And also with groups, it's great. You know, you can actually see six people. We take a maximum of six in our group. When you're online, you can see six people kind of intensely face to face. That's not possible in a classroom. You know, you people get lost there at the back. You don't see them so well. You can also integrate lots of other things into your online lessons. You can quickly have a look at something that's online. You can have access to all kinds of things. So groups are just amazing. And they also save lots of travel time as well. I mean in the days when you used to have to spend an hour getting somewhere to do the class and then an hour getting back you know so online is really really effective. 

I think and I think doing groups when you're doing university preparation is really important because at university it's all groups isn't it, you never get a one -to -one lesson in a university so you have to get used to get the group dynamic in English. 

Exactly, exactly And also, because with our course there are booklets that you can work in, you can effectively, you can flip the classroom. You'll have access to all the lesson materials a week before the live class happens. So, if you want to study before the lesson happens, you have the option to do that and then practice what you've learnt already. So, it's really, really valuable to be online these days.

Is the course aimed at any particular level, If you're starting out, what sort of level would you start from? 

You definitely need to start at B2. So if you're a complete beginner, it wouldn't be for you. But then if you're a complete beginner, you're probably not planning to just go and study at an English -speaking university. So B2 onwards. 

OK, and that's an intermediate level? 

That's a kind of intermediate level. That's a level where you can function pretty well in English in your daily life. And what you need for IELTS are specific skills and structures, and that's what we teach. 

That sounds awesome. Yeah, I'm sure learners are going to have some more questions for you. So, I will link to your website and you can get in touch with Sandra and ask any questions about The IELTS preparation course, sounds great. 

And we're opening, the waitlist is already open, and we get started currently. We're in June, so next month in July.

So this is the first time you've run the course in this way, but you've taught IELTS before? 

Yes, I've taught IELTS a lot. I've taught all sorts of English. I've taught everything from the very youngest learners, the five -year -olds, all the way through to the adults, to the business executives. Yeah, I've done all kinds of English. I started as a TEFL teacher teaching English as a foreign language a long time ago in the UK to students who used to come to the UK for language holidays. And then I moved actually into educational publishing and I was a lexicographer on the Oxford Dictionaries, the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, Oxford University Press. And then I moved back into teaching again, and I've also created learning materials. So my whole career has been in education and teaching English, either directly in the classroom teaching learners or creating the resources and the materials around English language teaching. Having said that, though, I'm not the biggest fan of course books. We really don't need to get too involved in fictional Jonathan passing fictional driving test. So course that we've created is very much around what is interesting for the learners in the course. We don't want you to really care about Jonathan and his driving test. We really want to hear, you know, some authentic English. Here's the topic. What do you really think? What do you really feel? And that just keeps it interesting, I think, for everybody, because coursebooks, I think, up to a point have had their moment. Right. That's really interesting to hear. And it's, yeah, as self -employed teachers, we can do what we like, can't we? What the learner really needs. We are so flexible in that way. Exactly that. And we've seen very much what hasn't worked in the past. And, you know, we can take all of that learning and we can turn it into something that really does work right now. True. Yeah, so true.

Tell me some stories about your learners then. Any particular memorable learners that you've had? 

There was one a good while ago, actually. And I don't know if you know these very enthusiastic, very dedicated learners. She had a brain that was going at about a thousand kilometres an hour and every time she came into class she had about a million questions about every aspect of English that you could possibly imagine and she was stressing herself out endlessly. All the best intentions, really ambitious and she kept asking and asking and asking and I just said to her at one point, hey just relax, let's get this point sorted and solid and then let's move on to the next things. You've got great questions but you don't need to know the answer to that now, let's just do this. And you could see the kind of relief, her shoulders kind of dropped and she kind of breathed out and she relaxed and I think that was such a good moment just to be able to just calm her down and just to tell her it's it's okay you've got these good questions, but you just don't need to stress so much. And I think that's, you know, what we can do as teachers. We've got a good idea about what a student needs to know and when they need to know it. So if you can kind of break it down and scaffold that learning for them and just kind of relax them in the process, I think that works really well. So that was, I a really, a really good moment for me. And I think she was relieved as well.

That's an answer to a question I've been thinking about, which is what's the difference between a human teacher and an AI teacher. And I think you've summed it up there, you know, humans know, this is the next step. You don't need to jump all the way to the top yet. You've got to, as you said, scaffold, build your way up there. And AI, can't do that. 

I think about AI is it's only useful as a resource if you actually know what you're doing. You've got to be able to kind of filter the output of AI and I also don't think that AI would spot sort of anxiety and stress and worry and nerves. You know those are all the things that we can do as as human to human. We can we can calm you know students down and also perhaps I'm a qualified dyslexia and literacy specialist as And perhaps, as a human being, if somebody has those difficulties or challenges, I think it's probably a human being who will spot that. And it's a human being who will say, hold on a second, I can see this is a bit tricky for you. Let's try doing it this way and let's see if that helps. And I don't know how the AI would do that, really.

So, I think I know the answer to this question, but what keeps you being a teacher? Why are you still an English teacher after all this time? 

I think you really have to love language. I mean, I studied right from the get -go when I was a university student. It was always really clear to me that I wanted to study language, but not English literature. I think English literature is a fabulous thing to study. But I was really interested in the nuts and bolts of language, so I went to study linguistics and phonetics. And even when I was working on my master's degree, I have a master's degree in lexicography, I was actually using the students I was teaching because I was interested in pronunciation, how pronunciation, this is very niche, how pronunciation was represented in dictionaries and whether students could actually use the International Phonetic Alphabet or whether they used a re -spelling system to help them with pronunciation. Now, this is a long time ago. These days, you just click and you hear the word, which solves all those problems. But I think it's got to be a general interest in language, I think, and an element of nerdiness, which I fully embrace my language nerdiness, And also just enjoying meeting people, chatting to people, supporting people and helping people. I think if you've got those two elements, if you really love your subject and you really like working with and helping people, I think that makes you a teacher.

I fully agree. Yes. Thank you very much, Sandra. 

You are very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Get in touch with Sandra and learn about her new course Atomic IELTS, so you can study IELTS with friends, in the Elevate directory of English language teachers.