With the goal of providing engaging and personalized lessons, we encourage coaches to curate materials from various sources and to create bespoke activities based on each learner’s needs. Important considerations are real-world applications for learning while focusing on task-based activities incorporating industry-specific jargon/vocabulary using the English for Specific Purposes approach. 

If you’re unfamiliar with these teaching terms, that’s okay. Task-based learning can be something as simple as setting up an activity where your student needs to interact in a hypothetical situation with you that would be common in your industry. These could be speaking or writing activities. Examples include: patient intake or giving care instructions (healthcare), writing a professional email or giving a pitch presentation (business management), or doing a product demo/walkthrough or writing software documentation for an existing product (technology.) English for Specific Purposes is about presenting targeted vocabulary and situational language in an authentic way. This could be accomplished by going over real-world documents, career-specific training manuals and videos, etc with a focus on expanded vocabulary and improved pronunciation. The end goal is always communication and improving the learner’s confidence to use English at work and in their day-to-day lives. 

There may be cases when it’s necessary to present a grammar point that the learner struggles with consistently (the irregular past tense or conditional statements) but the majority of lessons should be more practical and less like traditional classroom ESL/EFL. 

Be sure to ask each learner about their goals to help guide your lesson preparation process. If a learner is preparing for a certification test or other training program, incorporating materials related to those goals is very important.