A. J. Hoge training program for teaching English toteenagers

This paper is an introduction to a modern language teaching system to teach English language skills such as listening, reading, writing and speaking and language areas such as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation in the classroom. This teaching system had been developed since 2008 by A. J. Hoge, as the Director of Effortless English Club, with his friends Kristin Dodd's and Joe Weiss from San Francisco-California. They created the Effortless English System based on the researches on language teaching conducted by Dr. Stephen Krashen (1981). and Dr. J. Marvin Brown (1984). (Basari, 2011: 23). The purpose of this study is to reveal the role of A. J. Hoge training program to teach language skills practically. For this purpose, the paper describes the problems that teachers encounter in the classroom in North Iraq. Paper's aim is showing the role of mini stories in the process of teaching English, as a foreign language for teenagers based on from age 13 to 15. Effortless English will change the English language teaching from theoretical to practical way and improve student's personal and academic language skills. Eventually, it can give information about the role of mini stories in language teaching. The primary goal of this system is to improve English language skills of the learners like a native and it mainly focuses on everyday English. (Basari, 2011: 22). A. J. Hoge gets benefit from other writers and teachers of personal development such as Blaine Ray, Tony Robbins and Dr. Ashley Hastings, and Dr. Brenda Murp. (Basari, 2011: 23). Effortless System makes sense because native speakers in any country spend most of their time speaking their daily language. Effortless English system suggests that learners should study this system from 6 to 12 months. The lessons are designed to enable learners to improve their speaking quickly and effortlessly. In recent years, teachers use the Grammar Translation System in North Iraq. In practice, students focus more on grammar rules, translation, and word memorizing. The system does not benefit students' English language skills especially speaking skills, because students always think and translate in their own language. This is an obstacle to speak automatically without fear, stress, and other psychological barriers. On the other hand, Effortless English System teaches students with entertainment, games, and various practical activities. This system does not teach grammar consciously and analytically; instead, it teaches grammar unconsciously by using interesting mini stories. Using a story technique developed by Blaine Ray, the teacher makes a story by asking many easy questions. The importance of this technique is training students to reply more quickly about a certain story. There are some steps to teach language skills through mini stories. First, student listens to the story carefully, second, the teacher reads it; third, teacher uses question and answer technique to teach language skills. For example, the teacher has a story about a monkey and says, "class, there was a monkey. Was there a monkey?" Students shout, "yes, there was a monkey." Then teacher asks, "Was there a monkey or a girl?" Students immediately shout, "A monkey, a monkey." Teacher says, ah, I see there is a monkey. What was his name? Here, both the teacher and students develop unconscious questions and answering method. This continues for twenty minutes because Effortless System helps student to think in English. Teacher can increase the number of questions. In this way, teacher can make students more energetic and active in the classroom. Effortless System focuses on teaching learner's language skills. The key of excellent speaking is listening to mini stories many times. It is not reading many mini stories one time. If students follow these rules, they will end up with speaking English like a native. This research tried to answer "Why learners can't learn English language skills after twelve years of studying at school?" In this research, the researcher used sixteen technniques related to teach langauge skills to solve this problem. To clarify, some of these techniques belong to Hoge's effortless English system. While others belong to different authors in which the researcher used them to enrich this study. This method was applied in an English language course at Hawler Educational Academy on two groups, which were control, and experimental groups. In the control group, the researcher applied traditional English teaching method. In the experimental group, the researcher applied A. J. Hoge training program. This course covers a two-month period. The mean of first exam marks of the experimental group before the researcher applied the A. J. Hoge method was 66.68. The mean of second exams marks of the experimental group after the researcher applied the A. J. Hoge method was 78.64. In pair 1 we can see the power of A. J. Hoge training program to improve learners' linguistic skills practically and effortlessly. The mean of first exam marks of the control group before the researcher applied traditional language teaching method was 61.56. The mean of second exam marks of the control group, after the researcher applied traditional language teaching method was 65.56. In pair 2 we can see that the traditional method is not powerful to improve learner's linguistic and language learning skills, in comparison to A. J. Hoge's language teaching method; because it is not practical. Keywords: A. J. Hoge's Effortless English Method, Language Skills, Question and Answer Technique.