Hello Magda, where did the idea of ​​publishing the program as a guide come from?

There are many textbooks in English that help us thoroughly teach students English grammar, enrich their vocabulary, and improve their listening skills, but there are fewer programs that focus on conversation.

I always had to search additional conversation topics for the lesson process so that students could apply the learned material in practice and make the lesson process easier, more fun, and more interactive.

Experience has shown me that it would be very helpful if I could collect additional materials that I used to guide daily, enrich them with thematic idioms and video materials and turn them into one special course. I created a draft, which I incorporated into the learning process, shared with colleagues, they also tested it and the course turned out to be very effective. As it’s proved by the positive feedback from more than 100 students.

The course became very popular in our learning center in a short time. We actively used the draft of the program for more than two years, and at the same time I worked to give the program a finished look. I had the idea to publish all of these staff as a Textbook and not only SpeakUp, but also other centers and English teachers would have the opportunity to guide this course.

Who is the course Express Yourself for?

The course is for the students who have a rich vocabulary, are more or less familiar with grammar, but have feelings of insecurity and cannot express themselves in a foreign language. In general, students can read the book independently and study, but it is much more effective when they attend an appropriate course.

Who can attend the course?

To say simply, the student should have the B1 level at least. Because the lessons are conducted entirely in English. Our goal is not to do grammar and relevant exercises, but only to speak and apply the learned material in practice. We have no age restrictions on the course, anyone can join us both online and offline.

It should also be noted that the book is very interesting to read and provides general education in English, however, it is not self-studying.

How many lessons does the course consist of and what topics does it cover?

Express Yourself consists of 36 lessons and includes very interesting articles, thematic idioms and video materials. For example: music, technology, culture, healthy eating, sports, etc. In fact, we talk about all the topics that are encountered in everyday life and we want the knowledge accumulated in the course to be relevant to reality.

The book is very beautiful, colorful, illustrated, and of high quality. How was the design created?

I mentioned above that at first we had the material in text format, which we tested and constantly updated. After approving the final version, to which we made a great contribution from the teachers of our learning center, we started thinking about the design.

Each chapter is planned in the same way and includes: analytical reading, vocabulary enrichment, discussion of thematic video material and idioms. High-quality photos correspond to the texts and facilitate comprehension.

The design of the textbook belongs to – Simon Ormotsadze, who is the co-founder of SpeakUp and the manager of digital projects. Simon is also a business consultant and an active trainer in sales and management. He tried his best to bring my idea to life, to make it colorful, illustrated, sophisticated and attractive. Such that the book would be interesting not only in content, but also visually striking.

I think that we really got the best result. The textbook stands out both in content and in sophisticated design and high quality