Why take students to Camden Market?

It's not just fun but important in developing your child's fluency.

Camden Market is a famous place in London. We visit Camden during week 6 of our summer school. But how does it help improve our students English?

The answer: immersive language-learning. This means to learn a language in a natural and authentic way. For example, you learn the vocabulary and grammar in the classroom for shopping. Then you apply this knowledge in the real world, at Camden Market.

Students who learn English through immersive language-learning show higher levels of fluency (Kinginger 2011). This doesn't just apply to our weekly excursions but the whole SKOLA experience. For example, at lunch students order their food in English. Also, they will communication through English in the afternoon in sports, arts and other creative lessons.

But the immersive language-learning approach shares similarities to other approaches. For example, the communicative approach. Although this is common in education and especially English as a second language teaching.

Below is a summary of the immersive language-learning approach:

1. Immersive language-learning aims to create a real-life language environment in the classroom. At SKOLA our students come from over 50 different countries. So the common language is English. This creates the real-life environment of speaking English to communicate. Also, our teachers don't just follow a book. They make activities which the students would use outside of the classroom. For example, creating a review of the British museum and presenting it. So students develop their English skills in an authentic and meaningful way.

2. The teacher acts as a facilitator, encouraging students to interact with each other and the language. This is a key element of SKOLA: using the language. This increases fluency and motivations students. Group activities and peer-to-peer interaction and important methods in our teaching.

3. Authentic materials and real-life situations are used to create a dynamic and engaging learning environment. We find many materials in course books are boring. Why use a fake conversation from a book when we watch part of a real interview?

4. Technology, such as virtual or augmented reality, can enhance the immersive experience. Teachers are encouraged to be advantageous in the lessons, to make the best lessons possibles. Although we haven't used augmented reality - just right.

References

Willis, J., & Willis, D. (2007). Doing Task-based Teaching. Oxford University Press.

Littlewood, W. (1981). Communicative Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Long, M. H. (1991). Focus on Form: A Design Feature in Language Teaching Methodology. In K. de Bot, R. B. Ginsberg, & C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign Language

Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective (pp. 39-52). John Benjamins Publishing.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Prentice-Hall.

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 235-253). Newbury House Publishers.

If you have any questions or enquires then message our Director of Studies Connor@skola.co.uk. You can also visit our website here.

We are an English language school in London. Our school is based in Regents Park. We teach English to children aged 5 to 17 years old.