For everyday life

Practical English

English for the situations you actually meet: at the counter, on the telephone, at an interview, in an email, with a stranger asking for directions. No examination, no marks — just English you can use.

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Who this section is for

For adults who studied English at school and have forgotten most of it. For school leavers who need English for work. For people who understand English perfectly well but cannot bring themselves to speak it. For anyone who has been told, once too often, that their English is not good enough.

Nothing here is graded, marked or examined. You are not competing with anybody, and the only measure that matters is whether you can do something today that you could not do last month.

The one thing that matters most

The largest single obstacle for most adult learners is not grammar. It is the fear of making a mistake in front of someone.

Nobody has ever learnt a language without getting it wrong first, and a listener who understands you has understood you, whatever the grammar was doing. Speak imperfectly today and you will speak well next year; say nothing today and next year you will still be silent.

Core English

Practical Grammar

Only the grammar you need in order to say what you mean, explained without technical terms.

Vocabulary

Words for everyday life, the workplace and travel, and a method for remembering them.

Pronunciation

Being understood: sounds, word stress and the rhythm of English sentences.

Common Mistakes

The errors adult learners make most often, with the correct form beside each.

Self-Assessment

Find out honestly what you can already do, and what to work on next.

Interactive Practice

Activities that mark themselves and explain every answer.

IELTS

What the test actually measures, the four modules, the nine bands, and where to get official practice.

Cambridge Exams

Young Learners, the A2 Key to C2 Proficiency ladder, and the teaching qualifications TKT, CELTA and DELTA.

The four skills

Reading

Reading for meaning without stopping at every word.

Writing

Messages, emails, forms and short letters that get a reply.

Listening

Understanding real speech, at real speed.

Speaking

Getting from understanding to speaking — the hardest step, and the most rewarding.

English in use

Everyday English

Shops, buses, appointments, directions, telephone calls and the small exchanges of daily life.

Spoken English

Fluency, hesitation, repair phrases and how to keep a conversation going.

Workplace English

Interviews, meetings, emails, telephone calls and asking for what you need at work.

English for Adults

How adults actually learn a language, and how to make time for it in a working week.

Practical Conversations

Model conversations for the situations that come up most often.

RCF Online Academy

The Academy teaches elocution diploma preparation and English Literature. These Practical English pages are free to use whether or not you take a course.

About levels on this site

Some material here is labelled A1, A2, B1 or B2 to give you a rough idea of difficulty: A1 and A2 for beginners and elementary learners, B1 and B2 for intermediate and upper-intermediate.

These labels are a guide only. RCF English does not claim that its material is formally aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference, and no test on this site provides a CEFR certificate or an official level.

More resources coming soon

The lessons and practice on these pages are written by RCF English and are complete. What is not here yet is a library of downloadable spoken-English worksheets, dialogues and audio.

We have deliberately not filled this section with files found elsewhere. Ready-made spoken English and IELTS material is almost all commercial or belongs to another institution, and republishing it here would breach copyright. This section will grow with material written for RCF English.