ESOL with the Callan Method™

Description

Most of our students come to us specifically to improve their speaking and listening skills and we help them to do this by using the Callan Method (see below for further details). BSGS is an accredited Callan Method school. We provide experienced and friendly teachers. Moreover, our prices are very competitive!

The Callan Method is a carefully designed form of direct method which focuses on listening and speaking. It teaches language as a reflex and encourages students to think in English, without translating. There is a lot of repeating in order to help students memorise vocabulary and grammar.

Callan classes are delivered by the teacher asking students specific questions from the relevant Callan book (Stage 1-12).

The student must answer according to the given answers in the book and is helped by the teacher. Typically, the method makes the student give full sentence answers, often starting with the negative sentence first, followed by the positive e.g.

Question: “Is the pen in the book?”

Answer: “No, the pen isn’t in the book, it’s under the book.”

Notice also that the method generally uses contractions wherever possible as is common in spoken English (it is > it’s). 

Another important aspect of the method is correction – the teacher will correct all the mistakes made by the student immediately, whether with pronunciation or grammar.

There is a lot of revision and repetition involved in the method and it is done systematically where words and grammatical items reappear in different contexts as the student progresses through the different stages of the course. It is not important for the student to understand all the questions and answers straight away as the material gets revised several times, so each time it gets easier and easier to understand. This is the natural way to learn a language.