Real English® is a Trip for students of English as a Foreign or Second Language. The CD-ROMs and Video Cassettes guide beginners and more advanced students through a functional and grammatical learning experience in London, New York, San Francisco, Dublin, Atlanta, Edinburgh and dozens of other towns and cities throughout the English-speaking world in both hemispheres. It is the 1st method that has dared organize spontaneous speech. Why bother to organize spontaneous speech? What’s the point? What’s the advantage for the learner? These are indeed the key questions, but first a few essential facts: Real English® is based on interviews of people we have met on the streets of English-speaking towns and cities throughout the world. The people who answer our questions speak real English because they speak normally. They make no effort to speak clearly. They are not actors, or actresses. They speak naturally, spontaneously. This is a rarity in the world of English-language training if it exists at all. We asked questions so as to elicit most of the major grammar structures and survival functions that a beginner needs to learn to get started in the language. As English teachers, we have too often heard our students come back from their first trip to the US, UK, or Australia, etc., saying "I can understand my teacher, I can understand my tapes and my CD-ROMs, but I couldn’t understand those Americans (or British, etc.) when I arrived." So we asked ourselves: how do you build language shock into the language learning experience? How do you make reality part of the initial learning phase? The first obvious answer: use authentic materials. OK, but "authentic materials", such as a film or a CNN or Sky news report, for example, are almost always advanced, certainly not suited for beginners. Real English® is our contribution to making the reality of everyday English accessible to learners at the elementary level. The material is authentic, the diversity of Anglo-Saxon accents and cultures is extremely rich, but it is broken down into universally recognized structures, from the simplest to the more advanced. The material is authentic, the language is real, but this reality has finally become manageable, i.e., useable for students working alone, and a godsend for teachers. The objective is also to get the student used to several accents from the beginning. Even if he plans on a career in a company on Main Street, he’s bound to hear colleagues who come from the High Street. Diversity from square one is vital. And let there be street noise and other normal, extraneous sounds! Just be sure to use professional microphones so the best ears can hear everything that can be heard. And make sure the microphones are directional, pointed straight at the interviewee. In short, let the learner hear real English from the beginning as if he were having the conversation himself. Finally, make it a fun experience. That's Real English! Reel English: CD and Video by Elizabeth Hanson-Smith Ph.D. Elizabeth Hanson-Smith Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento, director of the graduate TESOL Program, has written the following article for ESL magazine concerning Real English Video and CD-ROMs. She also makes some comparisons between Real English and some of the other ESL products available. "When I was teaching in China back in 1979-80, one of the most interesting and useful materials I brought with me was a set of audio-tapes with little mini-conversations, for example, between a father and teenage daughter who wanted to stay out late, or between a disgruntled home-owner and his dog-owning neighbor. The dialogues were "semi-improvised," that is, performed by actors with a scenario, rather than a script. The tapes were amusing and popular with our teachers-in-training, because they gave a little peek into real life in then-modern America. Fast-forward twenty years, and we have a number of computer programs that use video dialogues for similar purposes--to see and hear contemporary life, but now in color, full-motion, and interactivity. Digitized video is getting better and better, and it gives the user more options than audio- or video-cassettes: instant reply with no tape stretch, rewinder or slide bar to see and hear small segments at a time, and a script alongside on the screen. The student controls play. Exercises, including speech recognition of answers, can be set on the same screen as the video, and the film clip used to review answers. Several CDs do an excellent job with this approach. ELLIS (CALI) was one of the first to use video with computer controls, but until very recently also had to sell the user rather expensive high-end equipment to ensure that the there was sufficient power to run the software and drive the sound engines. Now on CDs, ELLIS for several levels, beginning through advanced and pronunciation, targets young adults in high school and community college. Another software program that uses video technology is Quick English (LinguaTech/Delta systems). Their twist is to allow user-initiated branching. The learner can see and hear the video, and also see the script when desired. During the interactive exercises, the user can decide whether to answer positively or negatively to a question from the video. Depending on the answer, the video will branch to a different sequence. This means the program motivates the student to use it several times, expanding on similar vocabulary and grammar. The target audience here is adult/ESL for business purposes. One feature I didn't even know I was missing in other CD-Video programs, until I saw it with my own eyes, is provided by Real English® (The Marzio School). In this series (which includes both video cassettes and CDs with digitized video), the language content is not provided by actors, but by real people. The producers of the program went out into the street in the major English-speaking countries--Canada, Scotland, England, the U.S., Australia--and asked people questions: How ya doin'? What's your name? How old are you? According to the creator of the approach, Michael Marzio, the producers collected 850 interviews and 90,000 lines of speech, an impressive database from which to select hundreds of clips of people using a wide variety of accents in a range of Standard English acceptable to (that is, readily understandable by) native speakers from many countries. The Real English® approach is fascinating because it is perhaps the only CD or video-based series that makes use of a little-understood facet of linguistics: learners need to have _variety_ of input to understand what the range of real speech entails. While most of the big publishers are careful to eliminate dialect variations from their video and audio, what the learner encounters in real life is precisely that wide range of dialect and ideolect. The value of authentic language input is most telling when it is truly authentic, not acted. The Real English® product is fascinating--to the extent that even native speakers enjoy listening and watching. If you are familiar with the TV shows, Candid Camera or Funniest Home Videos, you will get the idea: Here are people speaking ingenuously about themselves, making little social pleasantries about the weather, saying hello as if they were absolutely delighted to meet you, and so on. You just can't stop watching, even when people in the street are reciting the alphabet! Real English® has all the apparatus for grammar practice a teacher could possibly want: each set of phrases receives a share of multiple-choice questions, choose-the-answer, drag-and-drop response, and speech recognition activities. Target structures are "recycled" throughout the product for reinforcement. Also, the videos and accompanying workbooks provide a very full curriculum. But finally, the real value is in those video clips. Possibly we are all voyeurs at heart, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is one of the best new products to come out on CD since all of National Geographic. Virtually yours, Elizabeth Hanson-Smith Computers for Education EHansonSmi at aol.com References for Dr. Hanson-Smith's article: ELLIS, Mastery Series [Computer software]. (1998 - 2008). American Fork, UT: CALI. Quick English (Demo version) [Computer software]. (1977 - 2008). Orem, UT: LinguaTech. International. Real English Series [Video, Workbooks, and Computer software]. (1999 - 2008). Istres, France: The Marzio School. " (end of Dr. Hanson-Smith's article)  Prix: CD-ROM Real English® Real English® CD-ROM 1 et 2 (un ensemble de 2 CD): 49 Euros + Frais d'envoi Real English® CD-ROM 3: 49 Euros + Frais d'envoi Real English® CD-ROM 1, 2, et 3 (un ensemble de 2 CD): 59 Euros + Frais d'envoi Veuillez contacter mike at real-english.com pour toutes commandes.   Infos CD-ROM en langue française - Home - Accueil langue française The Marzio School 7, rue des Baumes 13800 Istres, France Phone: +33 (0)4 42 55 16 82 Fax: +33 (0)4 42 55 10 83   Would you like more information? We always answer asap: Mike at real-english.com   Would you like more information? We always answer asap: Mike at real-english.com The The Marzio School was founded in 1976. Real English was created in 1992. Copyright © 1992 - 2008 The Marzio School. Real English® is a registered trademark of The Marzio School. All rights reserved.