A: Our carefully designed teaching materials presume that it would be unreasonable to expect a teacher of English for special purposes (ESP) to have in-depth legal knowledge and they have all been written with this in mind.
‘The Lawyer’s English Language Coursebook’ is a complete guide for teaching TOLES Foundation and Higher.
‘Advanced Legal English’ is intended to support teachers who are teaching classes at Advanced exam level or who are preparing a lawyer for the SQE exam.
Our Illuminate online legal English course, new in 2021, allows teachers without any legal knowledge to develop their own relevant and enjoyable blended learning course.
Teachers should remember that the majority of the material in TOLES is completely new to their students too, even if those students have a law degree from an English-speaking country such as the UK or the USA. Most of our subject matter is not covered by a law degree.
A: The exam series is designed to allow every student of legal English to make a start at gaining a certificate. The Foundation Exam is a huge support towards learning legal vocabulary and students can do well in the exam even if they are just at the stage of learning basic grammar structures. We try to avoid complications such as perfect tenses or conditional sentences at this level in order to give students the opportunity to focus on vocabulary and to start developing a sense of commercial awareness. The Higher Exam requires at least an intermediate level of general English and the Advanced Exam requires high intermediate to advanced level of general English. If you are in doubt, please email our office for further guidance.
A: There is no obligation for a student to progress through all 3 levels of the exam. However, we strongly recommend that they do so. Students who are familiar with the many fluency-based English tests on the market may dismiss Foundation as ‘too easy’ upon first sight and not realise that this is an accuracy-based exam. Learners who already have very advanced certificates from other exams and courses have been very surprised by the demands of TOLES Foundation once they try a range of testing material. However, all of the exams are designed to be beneficial in their own right and if teacher and student agree on a course of training followed by a particular exam then that is fine with us.
A: Our programme is not a typical English language course as the legal content of the materials is so high. This means it works slightly differently and requires teachers to have a rather different approach from the methods used in general English courses. Our material is entirely self-explanatory and is accessible to student and teacher alike. The activities are designed to promote debate and shared information between teacher and student as opposed to the now traditional learner-centred approach with teacher as facilitator. In our experience, this is a much more beneficial way to learn legal English than the student’s book/teacher’s book way.
A: The answer to this is as many hours as they can realistically achieve depending on their timetable, other commitments or even their working hours. Some TOLES students have only one hour of English every two weeks, others have much more. Students should take the exam when they feel ready or when all available hours have been used. This is how real life works for most people and we try to reflect that. The exams are available six times a year for this reason.
A: As in the above answer, our programme and exams are something very unique for lawyers and have a very high legal content. It is almost impossible to place them in the Common European Framework for languages as a result.
A: There are several reasons for this. We encourage a great deal of speaking in the classroom and the fact that we have no Teacher’s Book encourages more genuine debate and interaction in class. Students should constantly talk to you about the law and language under scrutiny and should constantly be comparing legal concepts and systems to their own. However, there is no speaking element in the final exams. This is because of advice from employers, whose overwhelming priority is strong and accurate writing skills. They tell us that they can test English speaking skills at interview and, very importantly, that a lawyer can make mistakes when speaking which would be unforgivable mistakes during the process of legal drafting.
A: No. Your TOLES certificate is valid for life.
A: You can complete our online registration form or you can download this registration form here and return it as an attachment by email to info@toles.co.uk. There is no charge to apply. The TOLES office will do everything they can to support your application and to get you started as a TOLES training centre. One of our main criteria is that the person at the school teaching TOLES is a qualified Teacher of English as a Foreign Language.
A: When your application is accepted there is a single administration fee of £200. This fee is one-time only and is not repeated. We then add your details to our website and send you a certificate confirming that you are a TOLES centre that you can display at your school. We will email you regularly with any updates and will remind you about the dates of exams well in advance in case you have any candidates. You can enter candidates for any exam. However, if you have fewer than 8 candidates we will inform you about any courier fee that may apply.
A: No. Your TOLES certificate is valid for life.
A: You can complete our online registration form or you can download this registration form here and return it as an attachment by email to info@toles.co.uk. There is no charge to apply. The TOLES office will do everything they can to support your application and to get you started as a TOLES training centre. One of our main criteria is that the person at the school teaching TOLES is a qualified Teacher of English as a Foreign Language.
A: When your application is accepted there is a single administration fee of £200. This fee is one-time only and is not repeated. We then add your details to our website and send you a certificate confirming that you are a TOLES centre that you can display at your school. We will email you regularly with any updates and will remind you about the dates of exams well in advance in case you have any candidates. You can enter candidates for any exam. However, if you have fewer than 8 candidates we will inform you about any courier fee that may apply.