Let's Talk in English (LTE) is meant for beginning students of English. Readers need about a 600-word vocabulary to understand it.

We are always getting new readers and listeners, so we keep the level of the magazine about the same. Within each issue, you will find low, medium and high level lessons.

Beginning English students or anyone who is interested in improving their English conversation. Students learn useful words and phrases as well as idioms and cultural information.

To learn English well, you need to think in English. If you are always comparing Chinese to English, you will always be translating between the two languages in your mind. This will not help the learner to think in English.

Learning English in English is much better than learning English in Chinese. Although it may be more difficult, in the long run students will learn faster and better. We try to use just enough Chinese to be sure students understand, but we want to challenge them to learn English in English.

A number of our listeners are students, but many aren't. We want to be sure our lessons appeal to a wide audience and meet their needs.

We appreciate the topic suggestions we get from listeners. But some topics are just too hard to cover at the Let's Talk in English level. The vocabulary is too difficult. Our focus is on everyday English that people use in their daily lives.

Have your students break into small groups or pairs. During this time allow your students to speak freely without being corrected by you. Walk around to the different groups to make sure they are indeed speaking in English, but save the grammar corrections for your grammar lesson.

In our teachers' training program, we teach many useful classroom activities and songs. For intermediate students, we also have a conversation textbook, Talking in Class. This book gives ideas of activities for different topics. It could be used as a supplemental text or an idea book.

We also have CDs of songs for the English classroom, Singing in English Can Be Fun and Life is a Gift. They come with lyrics sheets, so you can easily teach songs to your students. These songs have been a great hit in our workshops, and we think your students will enjoy them.

Test scores show how well students are learning. Most teachers agree that a motivated student is a student who will learn faster and easier, and students are more motivated to learn when they are interactively involved with language learning. Learning a language is like learning an instrument. We cannot learn an instrument by listening to lectures on how to play. We must try it for ourselves, and then practice, practice, practice.

So how do we make time to get them involved and motivated? Begin with a five-minute warm-up activity a few times each week. If you find that your students are enjoying the interaction, use one day each week for conversation practice and do some longer activities.