Expressing ideas in English is often about finding the right vocabulary word. But often, you don't need a difficult word. Instead, you need to use certain tools that connect your thoughts and express more complex ideas.
At Plain English, we call these tools. And the Toolkit is a series of video workshops that show you how to use these tools to express more complex ideas.
✅ The Toolkit is available to members at the Plus+ level.
What does the Toolkit teach?
The Toolkit is a series of mini workshops that show you how to express more complex ideas.
Each Toolkit Workshop has a step-by-step video lesson that shows you how to use the tool in English.
The workshops show you:
How to express when things happened and put events in sequence
How to describe the logic of your opinions and ideas
How to transition from one idea to the next
How to compare and contrast ideas and concepts
How to describe generalities and exceptions to a rule
How to add emphasis to your thoughts
Example Workshop topics
Here are three Toolkit Workshop titles:
As you can see from the examples, the Workshops are not about using complex or complicated words (at least, used to, even though).
But these small words are tools you can use to connect ideas and express your thoughts.
What's in a Workshop?
Workshops are on-demand. You can take them whenever you like. They include a short video lesson and active learning exercises:
Video lesson
Workshops include about a 10-minute video lesson that show you exactly how to use the tool. The video starts with:
An example of how the tool was used in a Plain English Story
A description of what the tool is used for
A short lesson on how to form it and how to use it
Several real-world examples, with explanations of how the tool was used in the sentence
Summary
No time for the video? That's okay. Read a summary of the main points, including the example sentences.
Tip: If you're already familiar with the topic, just review the written summary for a refresher. You can always watch the video later if you need to.
Quiz
Take a four-question quiz that tests your understanding of the video lesson.
Situation Writing activity
Be an active learner and use the Tool you learned in a real-life situation. With the Situation Writing activity in the Workshops, you can practice using what you learned by writing your own sentence. Get immediate feedback to make sure you wrote it correctly.
(Curious how it works? Check out this article.)
Write your own sentence
After watching the video, taking the quiz, and doing the exercise, you can write your own sentence using what you learned. Be as creative as you like! See how you can use the tool in your own life.
Write your sentence in the practice area and get personal feedback from the Plain English team. (This article explains how it works.)
Good to know: We are gradually adding quizzes and exercises to all Workshops. You may see certain Workshops in the old format without the activities.
Where to find them
The Toolkit page includes an index of all available workshops.
Workshops are organized according to level of difficulty:
The most important workshops are called Essentials
More advanced workshops are called Extensions
Expert workshops are called Differentiators
Browse the Workshops by category on the Toolkit page:
We also highlight popular Workshops on your Dashboard:
