Of all the English skills, speaking is the one that matters most in the real world and receives the least structured attention in most school programmes. Reading and writing are assessed constantly. Listening is tested in standardised examinations. But speaking — the skill that determines whether a student can actually communicate in English when it counts — is too often left to develop through incidental exposure, without the deliberate, progressive teaching that would accelerate it most effectively.
The English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours addresses this gap directly. ESB has been developing spoken English as a teachable, assessable skill since 1953, and the English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours is one of the most structured, most focused oracy programmes available in a residential English setting anywhere in Southeast Asia.
What the English Speaking Board Is
The English Speaking Board was established in 1953 as the first organisation in the United Kingdom dedicated specifically to the teaching and assessment of spoken English — what linguists call oracy. ESB’s founding principle was that confidence and fluency in spoken communication is not a personality trait or an accident of birth. It is a teachable skill. A learnable skill. A skill that develops fastest when it is taught with the same deliberate structure that reading and writing receive.
ESB’s oracy framework places spoken communication — clarity, confidence, fluency, and the ability to adapt language to context and audience — at the centre of English language education. It is a framework built for real-world communication, not examination performance. The English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours delivers this framework in a residential immersion environment where English is the language of the lesson, the meal, the excursion, and the evening — which means oracy skills developed in the morning are reinforced and practised throughout every waking hour.
Who This Course Is For
The English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours is appropriate for students across age groups and language levels where spoken English confidence is the priority. For younger learners who are reluctant to speak English in front of peers, ESB provides the structured framework that removes the anxiety of spoken performance. For older learners preparing for university interviews, professional presentations, or formal English qualifications, the English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours develops the formal spoken register that those contexts demand.
The Study Plan
Before the group arrives in Hua Hin, Dragon Study Tours sends the tour organiser a complete ESB study plan. Every lesson of the English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours has a clear objective connected to a specific oracy skill — from basic spoken fluency and pronunciation in the early sessions to structured presentation delivery and formal spoken communication in the later ones. Tour organisers know exactly what their students will be developing before departure.
Block One — Listening and Reading
Block One uses authentic spoken English materials — exemplar speeches, formal presentations, storytelling in real-world contexts, ESB scripts and transcripts. Students in the English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours listen to model oracy and analyse what makes it effective before they are asked to produce it themselves. The principle — receptive before productive — is one of the most reliable sequencing decisions in language teaching. Students who understand what good spoken English sounds like before they practise produce significantly better spoken English than students who are asked to perform without a model.
Water breaks at 09:10 and 10:00 provide deliberate cognitive resets between the receptive and productive phases of the morning.
Block Two — Speaking and Grammar
Block Two of the English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours is the oracy production session. Solo presentations, paired discussions, group debates, formal introductions, storytelling in English — all structured around ESB oracy activities, all facilitated by native English teachers, all in classes of maximum twelve students. The maximum twelve class size is critical: it is the structural guarantee that every student speaks in every session. There is no hiding in a class of twelve. Every student performs, every student receives individual feedback, and every student develops.
Grammar and pronunciation are embedded in the spoken tasks rather than taught in isolation. Students learn accurate spoken English through the process of producing it, being corrected, and producing it again at a higher level.
Fruit Break — 10:50 to 11:10
Twenty minutes of fresh fruit, light snacks, and social time. The break resets energy before the most demanding part of the morning.
Block Three — Collaborative Project Work
Block Three of the English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours is where oracy becomes performance: presentations delivered to the class, storytelling from memory, structured debates, peer feedback sessions conducted entirely in spoken English. Students who arrived reluctant to speak formally in English are, by the final sessions, chairing discussions and delivering prepared speeches.
The Education Endowment Foundation research on oracy consistently finds that structured spoken language development improves not only speaking ability but also reading comprehension, writing quality, and academic self-confidence. The English Speaking Board course at Dragon Study Tours is grounded in this evidence base and delivers it in a residential context that reinforces every morning lesson throughout the full programme day.
For more on how oracy develops in the classroom, see How ESB Builds Oracy in Young Learners. For the full academic programme, visit the academic programme page. For the full excursion programme, the 50 Things to Do in Hua Hin covers every destination. Visit the booking page or request a quote.
