It might seem a little odd to suggest that you can improve your English language while underwater. But it’s true! Kind of…

Scuba diving is one of the activities that is encouraged for our students while on an Interactive Travel English language course. It is a beginners diving course and as with all of our activities, the students are with experienced, bilingual leaders at all times – not just in the vicinity – our leaders are there to expand their own knowledge and horizons so they participate as well – underwater!

The course takes place in a totally safe and supervised environment in Exeter. The students are taught in groups of three by an instructor with a leader present. So in the above photograph, you have the instructor on the far left and the leader on his left, with the students to the right.

No student is forced to take part in any activity – although they are all positively encouraged to do so and most accept the challenge. They are also carefully monitored and if anyone feels that they need to take things more slowly, then this is always respected and no-one is allowed to feel uncomfortable with the activities.

The main lessons included in this basic course are how to safely remove and replace the regulator (the part that you put in your mouth that provides the oxygen) while underwater, along with half-filling up the goggles with water and then clearing the goggles of water – again – all done while underwater. Below you can see a couple of students demonstrating their ability to remove their regulators. You will also notice that the foremost student is holding an underwater frisbee – another of the fun activities enjoyed while participating on this scuba course.

Obviously, with this activity it is crucial that the students are very clear about the rules and instructions for scuba diving safely. As with all of our language course activities, the instructions are first delivered by a native English speaker (the instructor) and then the students are asked if they would like the leader to also re-iterate the instructions in their native tongue.

Obviously, a large part of scuba diving is learning to communicate non-verbally (while submerged) with hand signals. Although this does not directly help the students to learn to speak English, it is still a valuable experience that expands the student’s ability to communicate generally. There are some essential tasks (for example, making adjustments to the equipment while submerged) which the person cannot undertake on their own. Therefore, there is a very strong element of teamwork involved in this activity, which we feel is a useful (essential?) life- skill for our students to develop, along with their English language development.

Learning to breathe underwater safely while in a team environment is a particularly valuable experience which is not always an easy activity to find yourself involved in, which is why we make it a part of most of our courses in order to give the student as many valuable and memorable experiences as possible, along with our main goal which is to enable them to speak fluent English.