Our Philosophy: English for Humans

Yo. So in the last video, I told you about my story learning languages. Now, here is my story teaching them. 

I’ve been teaching English for almost 8 years, I’ve taught all around the world. I’ve taught little kids in a public elementary school in Spain, corporate executives in the US, rural farmers in Guatemala, and just about every type of Brazilian imaginable. 

For the last 3 and half years, I’ve focused specifically on teaching English to Brazilians. 

To my surprise, almost all of my students, literally 95% were suffering from the exact same thing that happened with my Spanish. They “knew” a lot of English, they could read and write really well, but they had enormous difficulties speaking and understanding native speakers. 

So I spent the last three years studying the sounds of English and how to teach them to people in a systematic, but engaging way: the result is the course you are starting right now.  

It’s pretty simple really. The traditional way is like this: 

• you learn how to read and write

• then you learn some vocabulary and grammar

• finally you practice speaking for like five minutes in a classroom full of students. 

Now, I recognize this is crazy. We are babies, we don’t start with reading and writing. We start with listening to our parents and imitating them. We only learner grammar years later. I mean seriously, when was the last time that you saw a baby reading the New York Times? 

So, we created a different method, which we call English for humans. 

We start with sounds. There are 44 sounds in American English. Most Brazilians have trouble with about 10 of these sounds. So we isolate them, focus on the most difficult, and train them. 

Then we give you precise feedback on how to improve your speaking and transform sounds into conversations. 

Finally, you talk to as many people as you can. It’s pretty simple really. Learn the sounds and connect with people. 

But to connect with people, we gotta understand the sounds. 

So without further ado, let’s get into Sound School.