One of the key features of the activity programme at Elac is that it provides an opportunity for students to practise their English, using it in real interactions with you and other students.

Please feel free to input, correct or shape the students' language without disturbing the flow of the activity to any significant degree.

However, we know you are probably not a professional English language teacher so here are a few hints for you in how to understand and, more importantly, be understood.

Even if you have worked with non-English speakers often, you may still find this section useful so please bear with us.

What is difficult to understand?

Which of these two sentences is more difficult for a low-level speaker of English to understand?

Please fetch the rackets.

Please go and get the rackets.

Well, it depends.  If you know the word fetch and you recognise it in the context, then there's no problem.  However, go and get are far more common verbs which almost all learners will understand so the answer is the second sentence is the easier one to understand.  That's the one to use.  You could use both, sneakily teaching fetch to those whose didn't know it.

Try another:

Which of these two sentences is more difficult for a low-level speaker of English to understand?

The racket's broken.

Someone has broken the racket.

The first one.  Why?  Three reasons – a) many languages (those of lots of our students) expect the topic of the sentence to be at the front of the sentence, b) the first sentence only has two parts, both of which mean something.  In the second sentence, the word someone doesn't actually mean anything and c) the second sentence contains a verb made of two parts (has and broken) and that's harder to decode.

There's a general rule here.  If you are giving instructions for something, make sure the most important information is right at the front of what you say.  For example, don't say,

Don't forget to be back here at 4 o'clock because the bus leaves at quarter past!

but

Please be here at 4 o'clock.  The bus leaves at four fifteen.

Not only have you avoided the difficult quarter past x construction but you have also put the information clearly at the front of what you say and broken it up into easily understood sections.  You don't need the because bit – that's obvious and students routinely misunderstand things like that, anyway (as well as constructions with expressions like if only, even if, however and so on).

How do you know you've been understood?

Certainly not by asking, Did you understand? to which you will almost certainly get a confident Yes!  People, especially teenagers, don't like to admit they may be the only one not to have understood.

The trick is to check and check again.  Select the student who you suspect hasn't been listening and ask something like What time does the bus leave?  If you eventually get the right answer, ask someone else What time must you be here?  That way, you have a good chance of not having to wait around at the bus stop for too long!  It's also given you a natural way of repeating key instructions.  This applies to almost any instruction you give – rules of games, times to meet, things to do and so on.

Stay cool and courteous

There's sometimes a temptation, in an effort to be clear, to slip into pidgin English or prison-camp-guard mode and start shouting curt instructions on the principle that foreigners understand loud words better and short commands more easily.  Neither is necessarily true.

Don't say, then, Come here!  Wait your turn!  It's much better, easier to understand and more courteous to our clients to say something like Please stand here and wait for your turn. in a polite way.  It's also more likely that you'll get things done.

Clearly, a lot of this is common sense but, in the heat of a busy summer activity programme, common sense is sometimes in short supply!