A better online English course for individuals

If you are a low beginner (A1) this course will probably be too difficult for you. And if your English is already too good (C1/C2) it might not be enough of a challenge for you. The course will be too difficult for you if you cannot understand slow spoken easy to understand English in the videos and during the Zoom webinars. It will be too boring if you have already mastered most of the things you will learn in the course.

Check out this helpful level chart to help you decide. Or, if you need more detail, here is the official CEFR chart in English and in German.

The more you need English the more your English will improve in the course. Our experience tells us that it might be too difficult to motivate yourself to do what you need to succeed in the course if you do not need English at work or for an urgent private event or relationship.

The following bad 'joke' can help make the point: How do you get an 80-year-old to learn English fast? Get him or her a 25-year-old lover. The point is that it is very hard to change when there is no reason to change. That is, when not changing does not cause enough pain.

The more committed you are to practicing at least 5-15 minutes a day the faster this course can help you improve.

Some people say that it takes 21 days to change a habit. For example, if you want to get in the habit of getting up earlier (not forcing your self out of bed after hitting the snooze button 7 times), you need to do it twenty-one days in a row. The point is that what you do not do regularly is very hard to learn, and even harder to make into an automatic habit.

Simply Better English breaks English up into small steps that you can practise any time anywhere. But that means that to succeed in the course you need to in fact practice every small step!

The more open you are to new ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling about your lived world, the faster you can improve your English.

One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of improving your English is accepting that English does not map the universe and does not prioritize what must be communicated the same way as your native language does. Much more than translating your native language word for word into English, improving your English asks you to see, think, and feel about the world in a different way.

Simply Better English trains this different seeing, thinking, and feeling. That is what makes it meaningful, instead of mechanical.

The more comfortable you are making mistakes the more likely you are to let other people help you when you do, and the easier it will be to improve very fast in this course.

One challenge to learning a language is that everything happens at once: and you cannot be perfect in everything at once. The only way to focus on what you are learning one step at a time, is to ignore as much of everything else as possible. Simply Better English explains trains this. This works best when you are comfortable making mistakes in steps you have not mastered.

Another challenge is not carrying the burden ‘to be perfect’ all by yourself. When you are speaking English one or more people are involved. This course teaches you how to use the people you are talking with as your teachers. People who are comfortable making mistakes tend to also be comfortable accepting help from others.