English Language Training
A short history
Volleyball Development Camps now offers an immersive English language studies tutoring option – “immersive” meaning that for much of the course the student-athlete is taken out of the gym and put in a situation where, escorted by a tutor, they use their conversational English with the real people of the community: shopkeepers, ticket agents, museum guides, restaurant staff, market stall sellers… everyday people in everyday situations.
But… it took a while to create the right learning environment.
Not long after VbDC began offering high performance summer training, we discovered that athletes from other countries were coming to the camps to practice their conversational English. It made sense that VbDC should do something to help those campers get the most out of their exposure to the language, so we began an English language studies programme.
Finding the right place to practice
At first, VbDC language tuition was conducted at a school internationally recognized for its summertime English as a second language (ESL) programme. Students attended four hours each morning in class and the language lab, conjugating verbs, memorizing vocabulary and writing essays. We soon found they hated it, and their parents weren’t convinced of its value – it was no different from English class in school back home. What both wanted was an out-of-classroom experience, one where the student-athletes made practical use of their second language while exploring a different culture.
Most of the campers already had a practical knowledge of English and wanted most of all to learn the vernacular of the local youth culture and converse with their peers in English.
That point became clear when two teen-aged girls, one from France and the other from the Belgian national junior team, asked us for a word they could use to describe a particularly good-looking boy attending the training sessions. The word they were given was “buffty” – not one likely to be found in the dictionary but definitely a word in the vernacular of the time. We overheard “buffty” used the rest of the week in small huddles of giggling girls; we had never heard athletes practicing their infinitives or discussing split infinitives, but now…. Something had clicked. The classroom studies were obviously not giving the student-athletes what they wanted.
VbDC then transitioned to the immersive studies formula under the guidance of Kathryn Klibi, a language teacher from London who is a two-time recipient of the city’s ESL Teacher of the Year award. Classroom-style study was not abandoned altogether – tutors still held informal discussions around a dinner table and regular assignments were given to write blogs in English to the family back home – but the bulk of the tuition moved to an environment where the student-athletes had to use their language knowledge for practical purposes.
Even then, further improvements were needed. At that time the language studies were available only to athletes attending the more advanced training curriculums, and there was no opportunity for individual tutoring. More changes were made to permit younger athletes to practice their volleyball at an appropriate trainingcurriculum and study English.
Our language programme today
VbDC camps are about volleyball training first and foremost. The decision was made to let the experts create a language programme in the same way VbDC coaches are given free reign to set the training syllabus. The English language tutoring is now offered as an optional add-on to our sports training rather than as a “language camp” in itself. It can be added to either of VbDC’s two-week London Experience performance curriculums, which allows volleyball athletes from a wider range of sporting ability to study conversational English while training at our summer camps. The option includes a minimum of 30 hours of in-house study and tutor-escorted excursions, with a further option to purchase additional one-on-one tutoring at industry standard crates.
Volleyball Development Camps became a leader in performance training with top coaches teaching the sport in the best available venues in curriculums matched to the athlete’s ability. Such a volleyball programme can’t be built overnight – it evolves. Likewise our immersive language studies course has needed time to evolve, and we offer the language studies option in the same spirit of dedication to quality and value..
