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Course details
Explore comprehensive course materials and learning objectives designed for your growth.
About the course
A student arrives with a 108 on the TOEFL, watches films in English, chats easily with roommates — and gets a C on the first lab report. This happens constantly, and it is not a language failure. It is a register failure. Conversational English and academic English are close to two different dialects, and almost nobody is taught the second one deliberately.
This course teaches that second dialect. Not grammar drills, not vocabulary lists — the actual conventions of how Americans write and talk inside a classroom, and why they are the way they are.
How the subscription works
This runs month to month rather than as a fixed course, because the need is ongoing rather than finite. You get everything in the library while you are subscribed, plus that month's live sessions and feedback. Cancel whenever; nothing is locked behind a term commitment.
The full lesson library — around ninety lessons, growing every month
Two live discussion seminars a week, in the Asia-Pacific and Americas evening bands
Four written assignments a month, returned with line-level feedback
Two recorded speaking tasks a month, returned with audio commentary
A monthly one-to-one fifteen-minute check-in
The thing about translating
The single habit holding most strong students back is composing in their first language and translating. It is invisible from the outside and it costs perhaps forty per cent of your speaking speed, along with most of your natural intonation.
There is a specific set of exercises for breaking it, spread over about six weeks, and they are uncomfortable in weeks one and two. Nearly everyone who sticks with them reports the same thing: at some point they stop noticing which language they are thinking in.
First-language patterns
Article errors, aspect errors and preposition choices are not random — they are predictable from your first language. There are dedicated units for Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Spanish speakers, each targeting the eight or nine patterns that language actually produces, rather than a generic error list that is mostly irrelevant to any individual student.
Who this is for
International students applying to US universities, students already enrolled and struggling with written work, and students in US high schools who arrived in the last year or two and are being graded as though English had always been their academic language.
The first two lessons and one live seminar are open before you subscribe. Come to a seminar and say something — that is the whole course in miniature.
In this course you will be able to
Write a lab report, a literary analysis and an argumentative essay to US high-school and first-year-college conventions
Paraphrase a source properly and cite it in MLA and APA without a template
Take part in a seminar discussion — enter, disagree, build on someone else — rather than staying silent and hoping
Stop translating in your head, which is the single habit that keeps strong readers at a mediocre speaking score
Email a teacher or professor in a register that reads as neither rude nor strange
Take usable notes from a lecture delivered at native speed
Recognise and correct the specific error patterns your first language produces in English
Prerequisite
Roughly B2 English or above — you can already hold a conversation; this course is about register, not basics
Planning to study in a US high school or university, or already there and finding the writing harder than expected
A microphone. Speaking tasks are recorded and returned with audio feedback
About three hours a week; the subscription runs month to month and pauses whenever you need it to
No TOEFL score required to start, though many students are working toward one
Topics covered
The register gap between conversational fluency and academic EnglishHedging: how US academic writing signals confidence without overclaimingCiting, paraphrasing and the line between paraphrase and plagiarism as US schools define itWriting a lab report: sections, tense conventions and the passive voice questionThe five-paragraph essay, why it is taught, and when to leave it behindThesis statements that make an arguable claim rather than announce a topicTopic sentences and paragraph unity as a reader-service problemTransitions and cohesion without a memorised connector listDiscussion participation: entering a conversation, disagreeing politely, building on a peerOffice hours: what they are for and how to ask a professor a questionEmail register — the gap between too casual and comically formalPresentation language, signposting and handling questions you did not expectNote-taking from a fast lecture in a second languageReading academic text selectively instead of word by wordVocabulary from the Academic Word List, in use rather than in listsCommon first-language interference patterns for Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Spanish speakers
