At The English Farm, we encourage good learning habits inside and outside the lesson. Student success depends not just on our teaching, but we should also coach students to excellence.

Orientation Course 

This course is a simple guide for excellent learning. 

There is a good chance your student has bad learning habits. Here's an easy way to find out: if you've been studying English for more than 10 years, you should be fluent.  

Ask your student, "How long have you been learning English?" And, "What's stopped you from achieving fluency?" Then get them on the right track.

• Lesson 1: Be awesome at learning. 
  • There are 4 rules for good material. If the things you learn break any one of these rules, you are unlikely to succeed. 
    1. Understandable—at first glance, you should understand 90%. It should feel easy. 
    2. Interesting—you have to pay attention and remember. Boring things are exhausting. 
    3. Focused—new language should be repeated. You have to see a new word 10 times at least to remember. 
    4. Plentiful—learning takes time. 
  • Remember high school language class? Was it easy and interesting? Probably not. And that's probably why it didn't work! 
  • Students can learn from anything—books, podcasts, TV, textbooks and more.
    • The point isn't what you study, it's how you learn. 
• Lesson 2: Active learning. 
  • Do physical actions. Actively engage with new language. 
    • Shadow 
    • Take notes
    • Ask questions 
  • Do mental actions too. 
    • Think critically. 
    • Experiment. 
  • For example, go back to a phrase the student learned passively: "How are you? I'm fine, thank you." Ask, what does "fine" mean? Is it positive? Why can we say the neutral, "That's fine." But also the positive, "fine weather." How is it both?! 
• Lesson 3: Good practice. 
  • Stick with it until you succeed. 
    • For grammar, learn the rule. Notice the grammar point in the real world. Experiment. 
    • Use the grammar rule to make easy and then interesting sentences.
• Lesson 4: Mastery. 
  • You've mastered a point when you can access it effortlessly. 
    • Mastering a point is not about definitions—what does "egg" mean?
    • Mastering a point is when you have a rich web of interlocking ideas. 
      • So, when you teach a word, give and get many examples. Send pictures. Use it in a story. 
• Lesson 5: Good study plan 
  • A good study plan has almost zero decision cost when executing. You decide now when, what, and how you study. 
    • Study at the same time, read or watch the same thing, and stop before you are even a little tired. 
    • "I get up at 7 am and read a graded reader for 20 minutes. I make a note of new words in a notebook that I check through the day." That's a great plan.
  • A bad study plan puts off decisions.
    • "I should study this weekend" is a terrible plan.

Orientation also takes the student through key skills. They will get a sense of how to improve each point.

1. Set phrases
2. Pronunciation and spoken English 
3. Grammar 
4. Vocabulary

Finally, Orientation helps students make use of The English Farm.

• Find and use the homework system
• Find out different styles of homework
• Get a sense of the courses
• Review previous lessons

T-shaped learning 

Every lesson has two key elements: 

• — is shallow and wide.
  • It is light, it connects with things. It puts learning into context.  
    • You might talk about sports, or business, or the weekend. 
• I is narrow and deep.
  • It is back and white. It's rules-based. 
    • You might talk about the present perfect continuous tense. 

Connecting I and — is simple. For example, "Which sports team do you like? How have they been playing lately?"

If you just have —, that's a conversation. It's not a lesson. 

If you just have I, that's boring and disconnected from contextual use. 

The T-shaped lesson is based on the idea of a T-shaped person, a common idea in consulting. 

Coaching plan

The English Farm offers free coaching plans to students. It is an excellent way to learn. 

The goal of The English Farm is not to have students each take thousands of lessons with us. Rather, we want students to eventually not need us. We encourage self-sufficiency. We believe you can finish learning English. 

Think of it like this: a personal trainer doesn't need to be next to you at the gym every time you work out.

The best we can hope for is for students to use The English Farm to achieve their language goals quickly and efficiently, then go and tell people to learn with us. 

That's not to say students should leave quickly. Some students' goals are so lofty that they need support from us for a long time.

Good coaching:

• First, learn rules and strategies.
  • Find out what's right and wrong, or good and bad. 
• Then, train in the technique. 
  • You know what you want to do, so keep training until you can do it. 

Bad coaching 

1. The learner doesn't know the rule and strategies, so they develop bad habits. 
2. The learner ends when they understand, but can't yet do it.