Talk a Lot Foundation Course is for anybody who needs to better understand how to speak English like a Native Speaker. It will be especially useful for anybody who is studying with – or about to study with – Talk a Lot materials (i.e. Elementary Books 1-3 (https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/36-week-spoken-english-course-30-different-english-topics-covered-11157496) or Intermediate Book 1). The theory studied on this course will enable learners to get a lot more out of any Talk a Lot materials. The course is suitable for learners from Pre-Intermediate level (CEF B1) to Advanced (CEF C1) – and beyond. It can also be adapted for lower-level learners. It goes without saying that zero beginner learners will benefit from learning about word stress and weak forms as they take their first steps with vocabulary and sentence-building in English. The focus of this course is pronunciation – how we speak. The message of the entire course can be summed up in two words: stress and reduce – learners can improve their pronunciation by stressing the content words in a sentence and reducing the function words – then connecting the syllables together. The aim of the course is to teach learners how to do this. Learners will also develop their listening skills as they discover the techniques that English native speakers routinely use when speaking quickly. This is not a book to be picked up and read from beginning to end, but rather a collection of practical materials that need to be studied within the context of a course – guided by a teacher. This is not really a self-study book, although I’m sure learners could learn a lot from reading it on their own, and listening to the audio files (see below). The course is made up of four lessons of theory – Introduction and Basic Principles; Spelling and Sounds; Stress; and Connected Speech. There is also a fifth lesson with practical exercises, which can be repeated as often as you like – or have time for. This book contains the course material for each lesson, which may be given to learners on the course, and which the teacher can use to plan and facilitate the lessons. The materials in this course are fairly flexible. Each lesson has an outline of the main points, which are described in more detail in boxes, and then followed by examples and practical activities. You don’t have to follow this course as it is written word by word, doing every activity – although you could. You may decide to use the text as an outline, adding extra activities and examples that are more relevant for your learners, and taking away things that they don’t need. The timing of each lesson can vary – it will depend on the level of your learners, and how much time there is available. I would recommend a classroom session of at least 90 minutes for covering one of the theory lessons.

I collected together thousands of different report comments used by the QCA to describe learning outcomes and created a whole school report writing tool for every class in a primary schools. It will save you hours and hours when you write your reports. I can now write all my school reports in an afternoon or a couple of evenings. I have used this set of report writing comments for the last 10 years. I have included a link to help you download the freeware report writing software and also a step by step guide to help you get the most out of this wonderful software. I have gone through hundreds of different teaching schemes written by the QCA and I have re-written their learning outcomes as report comments. It is now possible to simply click the different things a student has achieved in a specific topic and cut and paste it into your school reports. I have made sure that for English and Maths, that it is possible to differentiate between high, middle and lower achieving children. Each report is still written with a single child in mind, and so every report still comes out unique and special to that student. The difference being you now simply add their name, their sex and click on the statements which are relevant to them. In the past, I have received great praise for this material and often it has been described as a life or career saver, when teachers needed to produce a complete set of high quality teaching resources in a very short time. Please note - due to the huge number of different files and comments I have produced, it is still possible there will be an occasional typo in the comments bank. Please read and check your reports after writing them to make sure they are perfect before sending them out.