These lessons are designed to be used by children and adults to learn new English ESL EFL vocabulary, phrases and simple sentences. The lessons are constructed so that any English learner can go through a simple series of steps to learn 10 or 20 new items of related English vocabulary in a topic. The lessons do not require the presence of an English teacher, and can be used by individual learners or by small groups.
The lessons use a technique called "3 stage questioning" to help ESL EFL learners to grasp the meaning of vocabulary and to start learning that vocabulary by heart. Each self-taught lesson begins with an introduction to a topic. The introduction shows a series of pictures which depict an item of vocabulary - either a noun, a verb or some other form of speech act. The English speech for that image is played, and the corresponding text is shown on the screen. The speech for each picture can be repeated by the learner. The learner is asked to repeat the spoken language a few times.
The learner is shown a picture and an English word or phrase is shown and played.
The learner must decide if the two correspond.
A picture is shown with two possible answers and the learner must say which answer matches the picture.
Finally a picture is shown in combination with all 10 items of English in the topic.
The learner must select the correct item of language.
The lessons can be studied mutliple times by the student, and English tests are also available if the student wishes to check their grasp of any particular topic.
You start the lesson with an activity that introduces the English words or sentences you will be learning. You will see a set of pictures one at a time, and for each picture you will see the written word and hear the English audio for that picture.
In this activity, you will be shown the pictures one at a time. A voice will ask you whether this is a picture of... then play the English audio and show the written English words. You must decide whether these words match the picture or not. If you think they do, press the tick button. If you think the words are for a different picture, press the cross button.
The final activity in the lesson shows you many possible answers for each question and you must choose the correct one. You are shown a picture and below it are a list of possible written answers from this topic. Rolling over an answer will play the English audio for that answer. For each picture, click on the writing that matches the picture. The program will tell you whether you are right or not.
When you complete the "What is it?" activity, you can choose whether to go on to play some games with this topic, or whether you want to repeat some or all of the activities in this lesson. You should expect to get 8/10 answers correct in most of the activities before going on to play the English games for this topic.