Offline (face-to-face) - print these instructions

1. Buy some or all of our teaching and learning materials, so no planning or preparation, and you will have just bought your own English school for under two hundred dollars!

2. Access the free members area or go to http://s399.photobucket.com/albums/pp77/jasonoutthere/ and download our logos that will brand your online promotion of your offline lessons and informal practice sessions.

3. Read our instructions for teachers.

4. Find a lesson plan (...or three, at different levels to cover different interests and learner abilities) that you wish to use.You can search by topic, language focus, grammar point etc. Print off some hard copies for your members to use at your first EOT Meetup .

6. Go to http://esl.meetup.com/  and see how many people in the world want to practice their English.

7. A ‘meetup' can be a ‘language exchange' or, like we are doing it can be a structured conversation session using our materials. It can even be a proper paid for English lesson with materials and limited places. It can take place anywhere.  A café, a bar, a park, a museum, anywhere where the public are allowed to sit and talk and it usually costs you nothing or just the price of a cup of coffee - is this the end of the language classroom? We set up both a lesson (in a department store coffee bar) and an English conversation session (in a pub) from the start and think you should do both too.  The conversation sessions can be cheaper and will get more members faster and can drive bookings for the taught classes.

8. A lesson is taught by you or another teacher you recruit and can be paid for in advance by PayPal or Amazon via the meetup.com website or you can take cash when people attend. You can also upload self-study lesson plans for learners to download and use to get some good ice-breaker questions for the conversation sesion which they can also pay for online via the meetup.com website or with cash on the day.

9. Put the name of your country and then town or city into the search box on http://esl.meetup.com/ and see how many people are interested in an ESL meetup in your location.

10. Click the ‘back' button on your browser.

11. Click on ‘Start a Meetup group'

12.  Follow the on-screen instructions, it doesn't take very long and is fairly easy to do.

13. Call your first group 'English Out There structured English conversation'.

14. Set the time you want to meet.

15. Make sure you tick ‘public'.

16. Complete the form and click ‘next'.

17. Upload the EOT logo you downloaded before, this is your branding.

18. Add a description such as this (copy and edit these if you like), for an EOT English conversation session:

Want a bit more structure to your English practice sessions? Come to our first session.

Make the most of the group and get some seriously focused practice by using our special English Out There materials which will help you to study some language at the start of the meetup over a quiet drinkand then guide you through your first conversations when everyone starts talking. The materials are available for paying members only.

Use any of three special lesson plans with exercises at three different levels:

Elementary - (insert lesson description e.g. Prepositions of place using house interiors and furniture vocab
Intermediate - (Music using adjectives to describe music)
Advanced - (Comparing countries using comparative forms)

Give each member a choice of lesson materials, tell them to get a drink and then do the exercises quietly. Once everyone is just about ready use the speaking task as an ice-breaker and structured learning experience, talk about the lesson using the language in the lesson and then, once you've done that, talk about what you want to.

Meetup with others in your area who are also interested in learning and teaching the English Language. All ages and levels of proficiency are welcome!

...or this for an EOT lesson:

This is a full 3 hour English Out There lesson taught by one of our qualified and experienced teachers, (teachers name).

The class will start and finish Out There and worksheets will be supplied by (teachers name), so just bring a pen, some paper and some change for a hot or cold drink in the final hour.

The 3 hour session involves three stages: input, activity and result. You will be taught some new language, get used to using it in context and then use it with people you have never met before. Finally you will feedback to your group and your teacher. (teachers name) will be with you the whole time giving you advice and support.

Maximum class size: 10
Cost: (e.g. £10.00 per person)

19. Get some quick instructions and information about EOT from our London meetup.com pages, just re-use and edit them for your pages on meetup.com, like the text above.

20. Make sure you charge your members for attendance.  You can do it for free if you like, we don't mind, but you could earn some money from doing this and asking people to pay makes them take it more seriously.

21. Charge your members to attend, we set up GBP 10.00 for a three hour EOT lesson and GBP 3 for an English conversation session.  You can adjust prices anytime. You get to keep all of the money, we don't want any of it!

22. To be an organizer on meetup.com for 6 months costs just US$72 and you can create as many lessons or practice sessions as you like over that period, so you could schedule 10 EOT lessons per week for 24 weeks if you wanted to and teach for 30 hours per week.

23. Meetup.com will automatically email all of the people who wish to attend an ESL meetup group in your location, so expect to get some quick member sign ups if you are in a big town or city.  You can also invite people yourself on the meetup website.

24. Once you have created your first meetup group you can create another, which we suggest should be a teacher delivered lesson with a maximum of ten places and you should charge for it.  Start low and you can increase prices if it becomes very popular.

25. If you feel confident, and to get maximum exposure, we think you should schedule a series of EOT lessons, say 6-10 weeks into the future, so learners have the chance to find them and RSVP and pay, and to avoid you having spare seats.  Likewise, schedule some more language exchanges in advance and make your presence on meetup.com a serious one.

26. Our lessons are designed to be taught in any sequence and are self-contained three hour courses in themselves, so you can pick and choose which ones to schedule.

27. You can stay in touch with new members as they join, change location or cancel a meetup and let everyone know, so don't worry, it is very flexible.

28. Meetup.com will advertise your EOT lessons and conversation sessions for you, and they have a system linked to craigslist to also help you to advertise, but you can hand our leaflets locally, and do your own on and offline promotion, after all it is now your own little business. Also use free listings like LOOT and Gumtree to recruit learners.

29. Before your lesson or conversation session print off the appropriate number of lesson plan worksheets that you think you will need and take them with you. For example, for a lesson for 10 learners print off and photocopy 10 sets of worksheets for that lesson.

30. Good luck, take a camera, or record it and use the photos to promote your other lessons and language exchanges and please tell your friends, students and colleagues.