The BIE Method

Our courses are based on an extremely dynamic method that maximizes our students’ speaking time and keeps them constantly challenged through a variety of activities which include:

• Listening: students listen to an audio segment or part of an article read out loud and are asked to summarize what they’ve understood. After a first attempt, the teacher corrects the student’s mistakes, introduces new vocabulary, and asks the student to summarize again, including the new vocab and corrections.
• Picture or Image description: students look at an image or picture and must describe it to the teacher in as much detail as possible. The teacher then corrects the student’s mistakes, offers new vocabulary to help him/her improve the description, and then asks the student to describe the picture or image a second time using the new vocabulary.
• Oral presentations: Students prepare a short 1 to 2-minute oral presenatation on a topic of their choice or based on a video or article they’ve started watching or reading in class. Teachers do not interrupt the student during the presentation, but will take notes of the mistakes they hear and the new vocabulary that could help the student improve on what they’ve presented.
• Grammar done in a communicative way: Grammar lessons with BIE are taught orally through a set of dynamic activities. Students must answer the teacher’s questions and ask questions themselves to prove they can master a given grammar point. Whenever a mistake is made, the teacher will give clear explanations and examples to correct the student. (NB: The level of difficulty will gradually increase as long as the student answers the teacher’s questions correctly.)
• Quotes & Debates: students read a quote and must debate the pros & cons of a given opinion in a structured and coherent way. The teacher will help by correcting the student’s mistakes and allowing them to better express their ideas in a clear fashion.
• Questions for students: Students are asked questions on a specific topic and must answer in complete sentences using the correct tenses and syntax.
• Knowing how to ask: Students are given answers by their teacher and must come up with the corresponding question. This is a great way to master the interrogative form in English.
• Headlines: The teacher reads news headlines to their students who must imagine what they think the article is about and be ready to give their opinion on specific topics.

These are the 8 main BIE activities aimed at improving your oral expression and comprehension skills in class (reading and writing activities are mostly assigned for homework).

If you would like to see how these activities are actually conducted, have a look at some of our videos here.

On most online English teaching platforms, the policy is to hire native or non-native English speakers and to let them “do their thing”.

If you’re lucky, your teacher may do a good job because he or she prepares the classes well, but more often than not there will be no standard you can rely on.

At Break Into English, our teachers are not only native speakers with ample teaching experience, but they have also undergone the selective BIE training program.

This enables us to guarantee that, regardless of which teacher is assigned to you, he or she will follow the BIE method that has been test-proven with thousands of students in individual and company classes over the past 10+ years.

Many online academies on teacher-hiring platforms offer conversation classes with teachers who simply talk with students without correcting their mistakes.

This is not our philosophy and we honestly believe that free conversation classes with little to no corrections will not allow you to improve your level of English efficiently.

Therefore, at Break Into English, one of our main guidelines is to correct the grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and syntax mistakes our students make in order to help them progressively eliminate these errors from their everyday speech.

So yes, our teachers will be very attentive to mistake correction in class, however the correction process will always be done in a positive and encouraging manner.

At Break Into English we know that learning English isn’t easy, and we’re not going to make believe that it is. We also know that students who spend their precious time and money to learn the language want real professionals who are going to challenge them and take them to their limits.

In fact, learning English with BIE is a bit like going to the gym: most people who work out don’t expect to get in shape overnight; they know they’re going to have to sweat and work hard to reach their goal, and you will too – but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy the process!

You’ll find that our teachers are friendly but demanding personal trainers.

By taking English lessons online, not only are you saving time and money, but you’re also helping to protect the environment.

Think about all the energy and greenhouse gases (CO2) that you and your teacher would emit into the atmosphere every time you’d both go to the academy for your class by car, bus or metro.

Now multiply that by the number of classes you’d have in a year.

If you were to have 2 classes a week that would be about 200 saved trips just for one student and one teacher; 400 if you count one trip to go and one to come back from your class!

And let’s not forget the building you would be having your classes in, which would need to be heated in the winter, air-conditioned in the summer, etc…

So do the Earth a favor and have your English lessons via Skype, Meet, Teams or Zoom to make the atmosphere cleaner!

Forget about commuting to that English academy after work: getting stuck in traffic, finding parking spaces, getting home late, spending extra money on gas or public transport… With English lessons via Skype, Meet, Zoom or Teams, that’s a thing of the past!

Now you can go home (or stay home), get comfortable, and let modern-day technology provide you with a virtual classroom experience that’s even better than the real thing thanks to the abundance of stimulating learning material available online.

Over the years, we have compiled a list of the best websites to learn English on the Internet. Whether it be articles, audio bits, pictures with captions, vocabulary, grammar, or songs, your teachers will be only be using material of the highest quality during your lessons.