Learn English
I just visited Google Analytics for the very first time, and I was happily surprised to see that visits to the Real English site have increased by 200% during the last 30 days. Maybe it's because I have been doing online presentations about the site. Maybe it's because David has generously helped me create some buzz about Real English on his popular site the EFL 2.0 Classroom. Or maybe it's because I've recently begun using the English Star player, with a choice of subtitles in English, French, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, finally enabling me to begin attracting a few visitors from 3 Asian countries. Probably a combination of such things.
I looked deeper: only 4% of the visitors are doing the Real English LESSONS, while 27% of visitors come to my old wordpress blog, which I don't even update regularly!
This is crazy. The best thing about the RE site is that students can actually learn English with a tiny bit of motivation. I spend almost all my time improving the lessons, and improving the videos for the lessons, to capture students' interest, increase their motivation (I hope), encouraging them to get to work. But most students only look at the index type pages with videos, apparently, and go no further.
Excuse the tired adjective, but it really is fun to learn English on the RE site.
Here is a 3-step procedure I recommend, and it's really simple:
Teachers, could you explain this to your students? (I thought the navigation on the RE site was intuitive, but I'm obviously wrong):
1 - When you arrive at the Real English site, click on the "New Lessons" link. There's a really big one in the upper right corner:
2 - From this "New Lessons" page, choose ANY lesson you like.
3 - You arrive at a Lesson Home page, for example lesson 24:
Now, just click on "Lesson 24 Exercises" or "Exercise 1" or the picture under "Exercise 1", or even the Real English logo on the left.
Any of these links will bring you to Exercise 1 of the lesson where the fun begins.
- Real English® Mobile
Screencast / Brief Demo of Real English® Mobile It's a bit early for me to be presenting the new Mobile version of Real English®. Only a quarter of the Lessons are finished. On the other hand, the numerous videos and quizzes which have been completed...
- Real English Mobile Update
I have not finished the new Mobile site yet, but there are already 15 complete lessons up, with quizzes (about 80 hours of work for real beginners). You are more than welcome to use it now, while it is still under construction. I have added most of...
- 30 Languages Of Instructions For Beginners
See all the translations here. Thanks to George Machlan, & his friends and students, and thanks to my friends from around the world, we now have 21 languages of instructions for Beginners. So, if your students need help in their native language, there...
- I Sued The Bbc
My lawyers did indeed send a registered letter to the BBC World Service in reference to thier use of "Real English" as a title of "their" English language learning program which they decided to call "Real English". More specifically it was a Chinese-orientated...
- How Do The Real English Lessons Work With Internet Explorer 6?
UPDATE June 18, 2009: There are no problems running the Real English lessons in IE6 that I can see, as long as you install Java and Flash, and then reboot. I set up a dual boot system on my computer and I am running IE 6 (6.00.290.5512) in XP, in order...
Learn English
Students: try the lessons, not just the videos!
I just visited Google Analytics for the very first time, and I was happily surprised to see that visits to the Real English site have increased by 200% during the last 30 days. Maybe it's because I have been doing online presentations about the site. Maybe it's because David has generously helped me create some buzz about Real English on his popular site the EFL 2.0 Classroom. Or maybe it's because I've recently begun using the English Star player, with a choice of subtitles in English, French, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, finally enabling me to begin attracting a few visitors from 3 Asian countries. Probably a combination of such things.
I looked deeper: only 4% of the visitors are doing the Real English LESSONS, while 27% of visitors come to my old wordpress blog, which I don't even update regularly!
This is crazy. The best thing about the RE site is that students can actually learn English with a tiny bit of motivation. I spend almost all my time improving the lessons, and improving the videos for the lessons, to capture students' interest, increase their motivation (I hope), encouraging them to get to work. But most students only look at the index type pages with videos, apparently, and go no further.
Excuse the tired adjective, but it really is fun to learn English on the RE site.
Here is a 3-step procedure I recommend, and it's really simple:
Teachers, could you explain this to your students? (I thought the navigation on the RE site was intuitive, but I'm obviously wrong):
1 - When you arrive at the Real English site, click on the "New Lessons" link. There's a really big one in the upper right corner:
2 - From this "New Lessons" page, choose ANY lesson you like.
3 - You arrive at a Lesson Home page, for example lesson 24:
Now, just click on "Lesson 24 Exercises" or "Exercise 1" or the picture under "Exercise 1", or even the Real English logo on the left.
Any of these links will bring you to Exercise 1 of the lesson where the fun begins.
- Real English® Mobile
Screencast / Brief Demo of Real English® Mobile It's a bit early for me to be presenting the new Mobile version of Real English®. Only a quarter of the Lessons are finished. On the other hand, the numerous videos and quizzes which have been completed...
- Real English Mobile Update
I have not finished the new Mobile site yet, but there are already 15 complete lessons up, with quizzes (about 80 hours of work for real beginners). You are more than welcome to use it now, while it is still under construction. I have added most of...
- 30 Languages Of Instructions For Beginners
See all the translations here. Thanks to George Machlan, & his friends and students, and thanks to my friends from around the world, we now have 21 languages of instructions for Beginners. So, if your students need help in their native language, there...
- I Sued The Bbc
My lawyers did indeed send a registered letter to the BBC World Service in reference to thier use of "Real English" as a title of "their" English language learning program which they decided to call "Real English". More specifically it was a Chinese-orientated...
- How Do The Real English Lessons Work With Internet Explorer 6?
UPDATE June 18, 2009: There are no problems running the Real English lessons in IE6 that I can see, as long as you install Java and Flash, and then reboot. I set up a dual boot system on my computer and I am running IE 6 (6.00.290.5512) in XP, in order...