Fluent Conversation

If you want to learn to dance, dance. If you want to learn to sing, sing. If you want to learn to speak English, speak English. We learn by doing. That’s why every AEVIC class ends with conversation practice.

Nice to meet you.

Hello. My name is Michael Brock. When I was 12 years old, I was watching television one day when I discovered the music video for the Spanish song “No Me Ames” by Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Ever since that day, I’ve been interested in learning about new languages and cultures. That’s why I studied Linguistics (the science of language) at Michigan State University, where I got my degree. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of living in Brazil for three months and teaching English in France for seven months.
In 2020 (during the Coronavirus pandemic), I started teaching English online. Much to my surprised, I loved it and I want to keep doing it. Only now I want to do it at a bigger level with more students. The reason why is because it’s very difficult for English students at an advanced level to find good teachers and resources to help them become fluent. Most of the online resources are for beginners. With my background in Linguistics, it’s only right that I use my special knowledge of English to help the students who need it most – the advanced students.

What exactly do I teach?
Pronunciation – Using phonology (the study of sounds), I will teach you how to physically say sounds in the way that Americans say them. For example, most English language students can’t correctly say words that begin with (th-). In France I taught high school students who had studied English for over 10 years, yet instead of correctly saying a word as simple as “the,” they said “za” or “da.” Because I studied Linguistics, I was able to teach them how to correctly say (th-) words in less than two minutes. (It’s actually easy, but unless someone shows you, then how would you ever know)?
Informal English – If you say, “hi” to me, I will answer back, “hey.” Nobody speaks formal textbook language at all times in their native language. In fact, I never thought about this until I was living in France and someone asked me, “Why do all foreigners speak that way?” 
The answer is because school teachers only teach formal language (I studied French for three years at college). Now that I know better, I make sure that my students learn the formal English they would need to speak to the President of the United States and the street language they would need to speak to their friends casually.
Idiomatic Expressions – Have you ever been “stuck between a rock and a hard place?” Are you “as cool as a cucumber?” Yeah, strange English, right? Those are idioms. Idioms don’t have to make sense. Yet if you’ve ever watched a movie in English and heard a phrase that you don’t understand at all, then it was probably an idiomatic expressions. Idioms have a cultural meaning instead of a literal meaning. That’s why I will teach them to you. I don’t want you to think that the apocalypse is happening when somebody says, “it’s raining cats and dogs.”
Conversational Fluency – LISTEN TO ME RIGHT NOW. If you will study English for at least 2 hours each week and do 20-30 minutes of conversation practice every lesson, then in 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year, your English will be completely different. The transformations that my students make in their English ability even amazes and inspires me. That can happen for you too, but the most important thing is CONSISTENCY.
Literature – I like to have fun and torture my students. Once you reach a high enough level, I’ll introduce you to American literature. Imagine trying to learn the famous poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe in the original English. We do that here at AEVIC.
(You should see how proud students are when they can understand every single word of one of America’s most famous works of literature).