Love Speaking Training -...

Love Speaking Training Becoming a certified Love Speaking Trainer 27/12/2012 Ispeakuspeak & Love Speaking

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www.ispeakuspeak.com Tel +34 91 521 1554 | Fax +34 91 521 1553

Table of Contents

Orientation / Objectives ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Overall Training Goal .......................................................................................................................................... 3

Learning Objectives ............................................................................................................................................ 3

Certification Process ........................................................................................................................................... 3

Certification Validity: .......................................................................................................................................... 3

What is Love Speaking? .......................................................................................................................................... 4

Program Description. .......................................................................................................................................... 4

Love Speaking Blog, Twitter and Facebook ........................................................................................................ 5

Love Speaking Students ...................................................................................................................................... 6

Why Love Speaking is an excellent learning tool ................................................................................................ 7

What is Magazine ................................................................................................................................................... 8

Magazine and the Student.................................................................................................................................. 8

Magazine and the Trainer ................................................................................................................................... 8

Magazine Sections in Detail .................................................................................................................................... 9

Features Section ................................................................................................................................................. 9

Business Section ............................................................................................................................................... 10

Lifestyle Section ................................................................................................................................................ 12

Sport Section .................................................................................................................................................... 13

Principiantes Section ........................................................................................................................................ 15

IBM, PRISA… and Other Sections ...................................................................................................................... 16

Working with Love Speaking ................................................................................................................................ 17

Receiving a Booking .......................................................................................................................................... 18

The Love Speaking Virtual Session .................................................................................................................... 19

Preparing a Session ........................................................................................................................................... 20

Conducting a Session ........................................................................................................................................ 21

Completing a Session ........................................................................................................................................ 22

Sessions with TOEIC Students ............................................................................................................................... 23

About the TOEIC Exam ...................................................................................................................................... 23

Love Speaking and TOEIC Preparation .............................................................................................................. 23

Completing your Training ..................................................................................................................................... 25

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Orientation / Objectives

Overall Training Goal

To become a certified Love Speaking Trainer

Learning Objectives

1. To understand Love Speaking as a product and what your Love Speaking students are like

2. To become an expert in Magazine and know how to maximize its usage in virtual sessions

3. To be able to use all the functions on the ISUS platform to fulfill administrative

responsibilities.

Certification Process

1. Read the Training Manual

2. Look over the Love Speaking website

3. Watch the Love Speaking Webinar on the ISUS Community:

http://community.ispeakuspeak.com/news/love-speaking-and-magazine-webinar/

4. Spend a minimum of 60 minutes on ISUS Magazine

5. Take the Love Speaking Trainer Certification Test

6. Ongoing quality control monitoring by Mentors

Certification Validity:

Certification validation expires after 4 months of disuse.

http://lovespeaking.com/


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What is Love Speaking?

Program Description.

Love Speaking (www.lovespeaking.com) is our first ISUS product aimed at the consumer market. It

combines our exciting weekly online magazine with one-to-one virtual sessions with a trainer.

Magazine is what drives Love Speaking and magazine should play the biggest role in the virtual

sessions. The ‘Let’s talk’ communication activities that appear in all sections of the Magazine will

form the core curriculum of students on the Love Speaking program.

We understand that your average learner is looking to move away from traditional study in

classroom to a more dynamic and engaging way of learning. Love Speaking promotes customized e-

learning (students get to decide on their own materials for self study). Traditional e-learning makes

users access a linear and fixed program of study where they progress from step 1 to step 127 (for

example).

Love Speaking turns e-learning on its head by making a program that adapts itself to the user!

Learning with Love Speaking copies the techno habits of modern tech users (ie. they reach out and

choose contents that they are attracted to and motivated by, they are hooked by the headlines and

then choose to explore further, etc.) The Magazine being Love Speaking’s e-learning portion of the

http://www.lovespeaking.com/

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students’ course means that this program is very much in keeping with the navigational habits

of today's users who are so comfortable with social networking and community learning. Users

prefer to have small starter size units of study rather than too much information and detail. This is

especially important in the weekly workout sections of each tab.

What we are providing is the unique opportunity for students to choose contents that they are

interested in and need by offering varied, stimulating, up-to-date content via the Magazine. This

leads to more engaged learners on a customized program which guarantees better results.

Love Speaking Blog, Twitter and Facebook

Love Speaking is all about connecting people quickly and easily to content that they would search

for on their own, but that they might not search for in English. They can connect through Twitter

to Love Speaking; they can read the Love Speaking daily blog; and they can have Magazine

delivered straight to their inbox on a weekly basis.

We blog every day on a different subject to keep students feeling that they are reading FRESH

content every day. We kick off the week by blogging about the Magazine contents to hook them

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in, on Tuesday we blog about a grammar point that most students still have problems with,

Wednesday is TOEIC tip today, Thursday we include a video and on Friday we review a film, an

album, a place, something happening! Check out the blog at http://blog.lovespeaking.com/.

Love Speaking Students

Love Speaking is aimed at students in the 18-30 year old age range. These are normally young

professionals who recognize the need to gain confidence in their speaking, hence the name Love

Speaking!

One of the major problems that we have identified with learners of English is that people have a

lot of knowledge but don’t know how to use it. So, our fundamental aim is to activate this

knowledge in order to develop their communicative competence.

According to contextual learning theory, learning occurs only when students process new

information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them in their own frames of

reference (their own inner worlds of memory, experience, and response). In other words, we learn

best when what we’re learning makes to how we would implement that knowledge in ‘real life’.

The trend in the last 5-10 years has been to look towards the CEFR (the Common European

Framework or Reference for language levels). The CEFR bases a student’s level on their skills and

abilities and what they are “able to do” in the target language. This means that contextualized

learning, since it gives them real world scenarios that use the language they’re learning, is the best

way for skill and ability based learning. With Love Speaking, we have endeavored to cover these

bases using the combination of Magazine and virtual sessions.

There are multiple types of learners, and it’s important to address all of their learning needs. Think

about visual learners, for example, who learn best through images and video. This student’s needs

are addressed in the imagery and video present in the Magazine. Think experiential learners who

learn by experience, trial and error. They want to hear and practice authentic dialogues that deal

with situations that they may need to handle. These learners are motivated by the need to speak,

so the contextualized learning that occurs in virtual sessions surrounding the content from articles,

blogs, and videos they’ve accessed via the Magazine is the best possible tool for their needs. This is

just to name a couple of examples.

Essentially, Love Speaking provides the student with enough structure to keep their studying on

track and enough freedom to work creatively and flexibly on the course, while at the same time

addressing the needs of the variety of different learner types, and all in a contextualized format. In

order to help your students take full advantage of their learning experience, encourage them to

make the most of their Magazine subscription, including doing all the interactive activities

http://blog.lovespeaking.com/

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available and meeting their own personal goals. Different students will have different goals, so if

you don’t see these noted in their student profiles, be sure to ask them and to note them down.

Different students will also have access to different sections of the magazine. You can see what

sections they have access to in the session details screen.

Each Magazine section (Features, Business, Lifestyle, etc.), has 3-4 parts with interactive exercises.

Each part should take them approximately 15 minutes to complete. Be sure to look at their

activity progress to see if they are doing their activities in the various different Magazine sections.

If they aren’t, you’ll want to encourage them to do so.

Why Love Speaking is an excellent learning tool

Customized – Students get to decide on their own material for self study by browsing the Magazine

by sections and topics.

Suited to Users Habits – Love Speaking recognizes the habits of modern tech users (ie. they reach

out and choose contents that they are attracted to and motivated by.)

Communicative – The ‘Let’s talk’ communication activities are the perfect way to blend their own

self study into their active speaking sessions, providing interesting and relevant session content for

both trainer and student.

Skills focused – With contextualized content and virtual sessions, students use real-life language

and skills that are immediately applicable to their real life.

Varied- Multiple Magazine sections cover different areas of interest: Features, Business, Lifestyle,

Sport, TOEIC and TOEFL.

Interactive - 7 different interactive question types to maximize motivation.

Weekly Magazine -The Magazine comes out with a new edition on a weekly basis, and learners

receive a weekly courtesy e-mail informing them of the headlines and encouraging them to go see

what’s new. Headlines in the news feed in various sections, however, are updated daily!

Daily Blog - The Love Speaking Blog offers daily access to English for all students.

Anytime, Anyplace – Students can learn anywhere in the world and at whenever they want. It’s

flexibility and availability at its best!

Real language, real-time – Up-to-the-minute videos, blogs, news etc. from across the web.

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What is Magazine

Magazine and the Student

Magazine has been proven to work on the following key skills:

Vocabulary

Observation powers ( using images as a focus in virtual sessions)

Listening comprehension - Exposure to different accents, listening for gist and for concrete

information, learning to predict topics of conversation in listening

Reviewing knowledge of grammar

Skimming and scanning for information

Confidence when speaking

Magazine contains a variety of different areas for study that are useful to students. Amongst these

your students may have access to any combination of the following Magazine features:

Any combination of the tabs Features / Business / Lifestyle / Sport / TOEIC / TOEFL

Each section tab contains four sections which provide a minimum of 45 minutes study.

Weekly articles and videos with new vocabulary, useful expressions and practical grammar

points.

Amusing tips, facts, suggestions and advice from the ISUS Magazine editor

Interactive activities from the ISUS core curriculum providing comprehensive coverage

from pre-intermediate to advanced levels. (Business section only)

Up-to-the-minute news from English-language sources

Magazine and the Trainer

One of the tabs at the top of your ISUS page is Magazine. When you click on this, you will see all

Magazine sections available.

Remember: You have access to all sections, but your students do not. You will only be able to

assign activities to your students from a particular section if they have access to it.

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Magazine Sections in Detail

Features Section

Each new Magazine edition boasts a new theme in the Features section of the magazine. All articles are based on hot topics taken from current affairs, twitter trends and so on; any subject which is creating a bit of a buzz. We like variety, so we have recently had issues on wine, the God article, freedom of speech and the Olympics. We like to think that these articles cover topics that aren’t only interesting to students, but that we would be interested in reading about ourselves. The four areas of the Features section are interlinked in terms of the content. Students can choose which section to try first depending on what skill they are intent on improving. The Features section contains the following four areas:

Feature Article

Each article comes in three levels (Low / Intermediate / High). They are accompanied by a

vocabulary section and 10 comprehension questions. Direct your student to try the article for their

level to start with and then encourage them to challenge themselves and go a level up.

Key skills covered: Improving Reading Comprehension – Scanning for information /

Skimming for information / Dealing with long texts / Vocabulary Building

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Editor’s Round-Up

This section features a listening activity with both vocabulary and comprehension questions on

the featured topic. This area also contains a tip of the week for improving your English, an

amazing fact and a phrase of the week. Recommend your student to listen at least twice to the

listening activity.

Key skills covered: Improving listening comprehension / exposure to different accents /

natural speech connections / listening for gist / listening for content

Featured Video

Students can watch a video on the featured topic and answer comprehension questions. Videos

are chosen to appeal to students from level 4 +.


natural speech connections /listening for gist / listening for content

News Headlines

Students can click on any headline and read about it. The headlines are updates with the latest

breaking news in current affairs.

The headlines are from The Week which contains the best of both British and American current

affairs and news.

Key skills covered: Improving reading comprehension / scanning for information / skimming

for information / dealing with long texts / vocabulary building

Business Section

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The Business section of the magazine concentrates on professional English for business. It is aimed

at those wanting to improve their communication skills for all types of business situations. You will

see that in one of the Business section areas, we give students access to certain Core Curriculum

activities. Please note that only students who have access to this section will be able to access the

core curriculum materials in ISUS. The Business section contains the following four areas:

Skills for Success

Student’s can read a short article on professional skills. They will find tips for dealing with different

professional situations, honing their managerial skills by learning target phrases in English.



Weekly Workout

Students can listen to a conversation between two professionals putting to use the target

language and answer questions on it. They can also find an amazing fact of the week, and a

business tip, which is both professional and linguistic. There is both a phrase of the week and a

business phrase of the week for the student to learn as well.


natural speech connections / listening for gist / listening for content

Premium Activities

Choose your level and you will be taken to an ISUS core curriculum unit which offers you the

chance to study grammar, vocabulary, reading or listening and writing. These premium activities

cover a wide variety of communication skills and are aimed at making sure the student can

communicate effectively. There are 2 hours of study in each core curriculum activity.

Key skills covered: Reviewing and recycling grammar / Vocabulary building / Listening

comprehension

BizVid

The Biz Vid gives students the chance to be exposed to authentic speakers and to see how key

language can be used. Each video is accompanied by a comprehension section.

Key skills covered: Listening comprehension / Exposure to different accents / Real English.

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Lifestyle Section

Lifestyle is light-hearted, fun, fresh and cool. It should become your student’s guilty pleasure. It

talks about what’s hot and what’s not. You can find the latest reviews of films, hot couples, books,

restaurants, exhibitions, music festivals and so much more! Its content is spicier than either

features or business and can contain some stronger language. It has four different areas that are as

follows:

Word up!

In the Word up section there is a grammar point for those students who feel the need to brush up

on their knowledge; but in this grammar point, the language is real and the examples are more

authentic than you would find in a grammar book. There are at least 10 questions testing the

student’s understanding on this section. There is a quote of the week and a section called Cool

English for students who are interested in slang.

Key skills covered: Improving grammar / vocabulary building / Idiomatic expressions /

What’s hot! This next area of the Lifestyle section allows the student to read about the most happening events

/ people / scandals / artists etc. In this section you can find lifestyle reviews, book reviews, bar

reviews, music reviews, prize reviews…anything that catches the editor’s attention goes! All have

a vocabulary section to help the student understand the gist of what they are reading. There is

also a mini quiz to test their understanding at the end.

Key skills covered: Reading comprehension / Vocabulary Building / Exposure to

conversational English

What’s on!

This section, which is sponsored by Canal+, is all about the latest releases in films, series and

documentaries which should encourage students to watch them in their original version. This

section is especially important for those who come through the Canal+ promotion.

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natural speech connections /listening for gist / listening for content

Word on the Street

Word on the street takes an issue that is causing a lot of debate and shows both sides of the

argument. There is also a video which looks at a trending topic for those students who want to be

in the know.

Key skills covered: Improving reading comprehension skills / Language for expressing

opinions / listening comprehension

Sport Section

For those students who live and breathe sports, this is an ideal Magazine section for them as it

gives them a round- up of what’s been going on in the sporting world with vocabulary. There is also

a top sport which gets highlighted and explained to the novices plus a recommended sports video.

Plus for those students who get a kick out of testing their trivia, they can also find quick quiz.

Sections in this tab are sponsored by Canal+, a cable TV company based in Spain. The main focus of

this section will be football (soccer) and the competitions. The Sport section contains the following

four sub sections:

This Week in Sport

This week in sport is a general round-up of what has been going on in the sporting world this week.

You will find short news reports on a variety of popular sports ranging from tennis to rugby to

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swimming to football. There is a comprehension quiz and vocabulary sections which will

encourage the students to test their understanding.



In the Spotlight

In this section, you’ll find our chosen sport of the week along with a range of interesting facts and

stats about sport. All of them are accompanied by a vocabulary section and there is a

comprehension quiz to test the student’s vocabulary and understanding of this.



Sports Headlines

Students can click on any headline and read about it. The headlines are updates with the latest

breaking news in the sport world.



In the game

This is our football (soccer) section. All the material in here will be related to football competitions

around the world. The most well-know being La Liga, Premiere League, Bundesliga, and Series A.

We will also be concentrating on competitions such as La Copa del Rey (Spain), Champions League

(Europe) and Europa League (Europe).


for information / dealing with long texts / vocabulary building / Listening comprehension /

Exposure to different accents / Real English.

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Principiantes Section

This section of the Magazine is, which literally translates as ‘Beginners’ in Spanish, specifically

designed for Beginners in their English studies who are native speakers of Spanish. You’ll see that,

for the student’s ease, titles and translations are offered in Spanish. If you have a student who has

access to this section of the Magazine and if you are a Spanish speaker, feel free to use a little

Spanish during the session if they’re not able to understand you in English. However, as always, try

to use English as much as possible. The Principiantes section contains the four areas:

Primeros Pasos en Inglés

In this section, we’ll find language and grammar with explanations and exercises. A pronunciation

section also helps beginners with difficulties saying those hard to pronounce English words. This

area contains interactive activities to practice the grammar point and to test the student’s

comprehension.

Key skills covered: Improving grammar / vocabulary building / Idiomatic expressions /

Improving reading comprehension / Listening comprehension

Habilidades Básicas de Superviviencia

This area of Principiantes covers basic survival skills in English including key phrases for different

situations, such as telephone calls, asking for directions, etc. This area offers explanations and

exercises for these survival language skills as well as a phrase of the week and a word of the week.

PRINCIPIANTES

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Key skills covered: Improving reading comprehension / vocabulary building

¡Escucha, Lee y Aprende!

Here students can read and listen to improve their vocabulary base. Students can read and listen

to dialogues, read explanations of the language used, and complete exercises on what they’ve

learned.

Key skills covered: Listening comprehension / Exposure to different accents / Real English.

¡Hora de Escribir!

This area is focused on writing skills and asks students to hone in on their analytical view as regards

English for completing activities that require them to find the error, put words into the correct

sentence structure, etc.

Key skills covered: Vocabulary / Writing / Sentence structure / Error recognition

IBM, PRISA… and Other Sections

These sections, of which there will be more coming in the future, are Magazine sections that are developed

specifically for students at a particular company. For example, only students from IBM will have access to the

IBM Magazine (but not necessarily all of them). These sections will vary in content, but will always be geared

in part at least to company-specific information.

Should you have a session with a student with access to a corporate Magazine section, feel free to use these

activities in session with them.

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Working with Love Speaking

As regards your work as a trainer with Love Speaking, there are a couple of important items

regarding the program itself that you should know:

1. Love Speaking is on-demand. This means that your students will book sessions with you or

any other trainer available at the time they wish to have their session. They will have no

session schedule, but will instead set up sessions as they need or want them.

a. IMPORTANT: You must accept on-demand scheduling if you are to work with Love

Speaking students. This means keeping your standard and weekly availability 100%

up-to-date at all times, and it means checking your schedule on ISUS at least once a

day so you know when people are booking and cancelling sessions with you on-

demand.

2. Students will choose the trainer for their session based on the trainer’s ratings and the

trainer’s accent if they know they want to practice with a specific accent. They can choose a

different trainer for each session although any trainer they have previously had sessions

with will be highlighted as a first option. The screen they see when booking a session looks

like the one here:

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3. You receive confirmation via e-mail of new bookings. You can see an example of this e-mail

below. We notify you of new bookings automatically via e-mail so that you have an extra

notification since you have to prepare the session as quickly as possible.

4. There is no confirmation of cancellations. Just as students can book sessions on demand,

they can also cancel them on-demand. If a session has been cancelled within the student’s

allowed cancellation notice time, it will be marked as cancelled and not recoupable. If it is

not cancelled within the allowed time, it will be marked as absent. You will not be notified

via e-mail of cancelled sessions. You will need to check your schedule for any cancellations

from your Love Speaking students.

5. There is no recouping. Students cancel and create a new session. Cancelled Love Speaking

sessions are not recoupable. Students simply book a new session.

6. Magazine activities should be assigned to approximately 85% of your Love Speaking

sessions.

Receiving a Booking

When a student books a new session with you, these are the steps that you will follow:

1. You will receive an e-mail that lets you know a new session has been booked. This email

doesn’t give you information about whether this student is a Love Speaking student or not.

Once you click on the link in the e-mail, you’ll be taken to the session details page where you

can prepare the session.

2. Click on the ‘view’ button next to the student’s name in the session details page to go to the

student profile to see if the student or previous trainers have left any comments about their

interests, their preferences, or their objectives. Please make as much use as you can of

these notes in preparing and conducting your session as it is invaluable for high levels of

student satisfaction.

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3. View the student activities to see if the student has already taken any Love Speaking

sessions or completed any Love Speaking activities.

a. If this is their first session, be prepared to help them with Love Speaking by making

sure they know how to access the Magazine and their session calendar.

b. If this is not their first session then chose an activity from the Magazine based on

their preferences or from the current edition of the Magazine.

The Love Speaking Virtual Session

How you handle a Love Speaking virtual session will obviously depend on what your student’s main

objective is for the session. In order to be prepared to cater to any variety of your students’

objectives, you should be aware of all the different material available for your sessions. Here, you

can find a brief overview of what you might use with general Love Speaking students (those without

access to the test preparation content such as TOEIC).

As previously mentioned, you will know what sections of the Magazine your students have access to

by looking at the session details page on ISUS as you can see in the screenshot here:

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Preparing a Session

When preparing your session, you should always:

1. Choose an activity from one of the sections to which your student has access

2. Choose an activity from the current edition of the Magazine (preferably). Exceptionally, you

can use an activity from a previous edition since the student has access to these activities via

the archives as well. But since the goal is to drive students into using the Magazine,

whenever possible, you should use a current activity.

3. As a general rule, only use Magazine activities with Love Speaking students. Though you

can also use Core Curriculum activities on occasion if the student has access to the Business

section of the Magazine, it is preferable to drive students into the latest edition of the

Magazine sections they have access to where possible.

4. Choose an activity based on your students’ needs and objectives. Be sure to check their

profile before preparing the session so you know what to look for and what to avoid in the

preparation.

5. Ensure you’ve prepared the session at least 48 hours in advance of the session where

possible. Sometimes this won’t be possible since Love Speaking students can book a session

24 hours in advance. In this case, try to prepare the session as soon as possible so that your

student has enough time to do the preparation.

6. Ensure that you are familiar with the content you’ve assigned to your student before your

session. Again, this should go without saying, but you should be familiar with the activity

you’ve assigned and others in the Magazine so that you’re comfortable with the content and

confident speaking about it with your students.

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Conducting a Session

As you’ve probably realized by now, Love Speaking students are very different from corporate

students. They will all have different interests and objectives, will come to the session with

different concerns, and may or may not come to the session prepared. This is why it’s important to

be prepared for a variety of different scenarios in your virtual session.

In general, when conducting your virtual session, you should always:

1. Be sure you are on time to the session (this should go without saying, but you should be

aware that tardiness of the trainer is not tolerated).

2. Try all possible contact methods if you’re not able to reach the student on the first try.

3. Start with a brief introduction if you’ve never had a session with this student before.

4. Let the student know about the activity you’ve prepared for them and ask them if they’ve

read it already and if they’re comfortable doing this activity or if they’d like to do a different

one. (This allows you to move to a session alternatives for students who have not done the

preparation, and which would make the speaking activity quite difficult.)

5. Base the session around the Let’s Talk communication activities that you will find in every

section of the Magazine. As pre-session preparation, you should be asking your student to

complete sections of the Magazine section (at the very least, the activity you’ve assigned) in

preparation for the communication portion you will do together.

6. Explain to your student at the end of the session that they can book another session with

you if they would like. Explain that they can see your agenda specifically by selecting the

option ‘Choose a trainer and then a time’ in the booking process and by selecting you as

their preferred trainer.

It is, of course, very important to provide consistency in your sessions as compared to other

trainers, so using the Let’s Talk portion of the Magazine activities is essential. You can, of course,

go a bit off-piste, asking questions directly related to the article that are not present in the Let’s

Talk section, especially for higher level students, but please ensure you’re using the Let’s Talk

content as the center of the conversation in your session.

Here is an example of a Let’s Talk communication activity from the Features section:

Here is an example of the Let’s Talk activity from the Business section:

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Completing a Session

Since some Love Speaking students will have session reports while others will not (i.e., those who

have 15 minute sessions), you will sometimes need to complete a session report for your student

and sometimes you will not. Be sure to notice this at the beginning of your session so you aren’t

surprised after the session by needing to complete a session report.

If a session report is required for the session, then the session will be marked as completed simply

once you have completed and submitted your session report. If the session report is not required,

you will have to change the session status in the session details screen as shown here:

Simply select the ‘Complete’ session status and then click on the ‘Register’ button.

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Sessions with TOEIC Students

Some of your students will have purchased

the TOEIC preparation pack (The TOEIC

Magazine section) as part of their Love

Speaking subscription. These students will

be preparing for the TOEIC exam and will

expect you to be able to help them with this

preparation, so it’s good for you to know a bit about this exam. Here are a few key facts regarding

TOIEC and how you should work with these students:

About the TOEIC Exam

The TOEIC exam (The Test of English for International Communication) is a standardized exam

which evaluates testers’ business English abilities. It contains a Listening and Reading test as well

as a Speaking and Writing test.

The TOEIC Listening & Reading Test is a two-hour multiple-choice test consisting of 200 questions

evenly divided into listening comprehension and reading comprehension. The TOEIC Speaking &

Writing Test was introduced in 2006. Test takers receive separate scores for each of the two tests,

or can take the Speaking test without taking the Writing test. The Speaking test assesses

pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and fluency, while the Writing test examines vocabulary,

grammar, and overall coherence and organization. The tests are designed to reflect actual English

usage in the workplace, though they do not require any knowledge of specialized business terms.

The TOEIC Speaking Test takes approximately 20 minutes to complete; the TOEIC writing test lasts

approximately 60 minutes.

Love Speaking and TOEIC Preparation

We want students to work on a number of exam strategies and learn large quantities of vocabulary.

Oral production and interaction are natural and powerful ways to practice and reinforce key

information and skills that your students will need in order to succeed on the TOEIC. Students will

access the Magazine which provides a variety of reading and listening material. They will have

access to the TOEIC Magazine which offers them the chance to test their knowledge with TOEIC-

style interactive questions.

What we need to accomplish to help our students do well on the TOEIC exam is not that

different from the aims of any language program: develop active and practical reading and listening

skills, raise student awareness of natural English usage, build vocabulary, etc. Although it may at

first seem strange to use speaking and discussion work to prepare for a test that is mostly

restricted to receptive skills (listening and reading), the bottom line here is that we want students

to retain a number of techniques and learn a large quantity of vocabulary. The best way to do this

is to have the students interact with the techniques and language in as many ways as possible.

Oral production and the types of interaction common to one-to-one sessions, though not directly

tested in the TOEIC exam, are natural and powerful ways to practice and reinforce the key

information and skills students will need in order to do well on the TOEIC. As such, the aims of a

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virtual session with a TOEIC student are not any different from the aims of any other virtual

session. You need to work with your student on improving their listening and reading

comprehension, and their ability to produce meaningful language in English on a given topic.

Apart from doing what you would normally do in a Love Speaking session, please focus a bit more

on the following areas, in order to really help your TOEIC students in their preparation for this

exam:

1. Be prepared to help your students with any activities they may not have scored highly on in

the TOEIC Magazine. Offer your assistance to them if it looks like they may need it.

2. Help students in session with their awareness of the sound changes that occur in natural

English speech as opposed to written speech. Many learners are unaware that the sound

of words spoken in natural conversation can differ dramatically from words spoken

in isolation (e.g. going to and gonna). Helping students become aware of the ways

that sounds are combined, dropped, and changed in natural speech can

significantly improve their listening comprehension, both for the TOEIC test and in

the real world.

3. Help students understand conversational language in use. The English used in the TOEIC test

reflects everyday usage as encountered in offices, shops, and on the street in English speaking

environments around the world. In the test this is apparent in the use of natural responses in

the Listening Section that may at first seem grammatically unrelated to the question the

speaker asks. In order to do well on the test students must be given exposure to English as it is

really used, so don’t ‘dumb down’ your natural speech unless it’s absolutely necessary. Here’s

an example from Part 2:

Q. ‘How many people applied for the sales position?’

A. ‘Well, we haven’t received as many résumés as we wanted.’

4. Help students with their vocabulary and grammatical understanding. Success on the TOEIC

test requires an extensive range of vocabulary and knowledge of how these words change and are

organized grammatically. Vocabulary is arguably the single most significant factor in doing well on

the test, and any effective study program should include an organized system for noting and

reviewing words and phrases that students encounter as they study. Be sure to insert into

your session reports any and all new vocabulary covered in session.

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Completing your Training

Now that you have read the training manual for Love Speaking, you’re ready to complete the rest

of the training process:

1. Read the Training Manual

2. Look over the Love Speaking website

3. Watch the Love Speaking Webinar on the ISUS Community:


4. Spend a minimum of 60 minutes on ISUS Magazine

5. Take the Love Speaking Trainer Certification Test

6. Ongoing quality control monitoring by Mentors

http://lovespeaking.com/


Love Speaking Training -...

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