Weekly drills¶
Twenty-seven weeks (0-26) of 30-minute daily sessions, seven per week. Every week has the same seven-day shape, so you never have to decide what to do: open the page, scroll to today's day, start the timer.
Day types¶
| Day | Type | What you do | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (Mon) | Grammar | 60-second rule, 10-item exercise, check answers, 3 sentences about your real work | corrected mistakes in the error log |
| 2 (Tue) | Vocabulary | 5 new words (table), collocations, 8-item cloze | 5 rows in the Word table for Anki |
| 3 (Wed) | Speaking | 60-90 s structured answer, pronunciation micro-drill, self-check | one recording (optional) |
| 4 (Thu) | Idioms and phrasal verbs | 5 expressions (table), 8-item exercise, "when not to use them" | 5 rows in the Expression table |
| 5 (Fri) | Writing | rewrite a realistic bad draft under constraints, compare with the model | your rewrite saved |
| 6 (Sat) | Speaking record | 2-minute recorded talk, score with the rubric, shadow a clip | score logged |
| 7 (Sun) | Soft skills and weekly review | scenario, 150-word response, 20-item recap, self-score, error log | top 3 recurring mistakes |
Timing. 30 minutes on normal weeks, 20 on light weeks (6, 12, 18, 25, 26; shorter exercises, 3 new words). Use a timer; stop when it rings and note where you got to. Consistency beats intensity: six sessions of 30 minutes beat one of three hours.
Difficulty ramp. Weeks 1-8 are medium (B2+ to C1), weeks 9-20 medium-high (C1), weeks 21-26 high (C1+, timed, interview-grade). Week 0 is the baseline: results go in docs/log/comm-baseline.md and are repeated in Week 24.
How to record yourself and score¶
- Use your phone voice recorder; one take, no restarts, no notes on Days 3 and 6 (an outline of three keywords is fine).
- Name files
YYYY-MM-DD-weekNN-dayN.m4aand keep them in one folder so you can compare Week 0 with Week 24. - Listen once for content (did I answer first?), once for delivery (pauses, stress, fillers). Do not judge accent; judge intelligibility.
- Score the six-criterion rubric (Clarity, Structure, Fluency, Grammar accuracy, Vocabulary range, Pronunciation; 1-4 each, total /24) and note the two lowest criteria.
- Add one line to your log: date, total, lowest two criteria, fillers per minute if relevant.
The error log habit¶
Keep one plain file (or a note on your phone). Whenever you spot a mistake in your own speech, email or Slack message, or a colleague corrects you, write: wrong -> right -> rule. On every Day 7, pick your top 3 recurring mistakes and mention them on Monday's grammar warm-up. Weeks 16, 18 and 23 are built around this log, so a rich log makes those weeks far more useful. Recurring mistakes fall into a small number of patterns; naming the pattern is half the cure.
Vocabulary and Anki¶
Each Day 2 page has a table with the header | Word | Part of speech | Meaning | Example | and each Day 4 page has | Expression | Meaning | Example |. The script scripts/export_vocab.py reads the Word and Expression tables from all drill pages and exports them for Anki (front: the word or expression; back: meaning and example). Keep the table headers exactly as they are so the export keeps working. Review the cards for five minutes a day; new words also reappear inside later exercises as spaced repetition.
All weeks¶
| Week | Theme (grammar focus) | Checkpoint |
|---|---|---|
| Week 00 | Grammar diagnostic quiz (40 items) | |
| Week 01 | Articles & determiners: a/the/zero | |
| Week 02 | Prepositions and collocations | |
| Week 03 | Present perfect vs past simple, and time expressions | |
| Week 04 | Conditionals and modals for hedging and softening | comm-1 |
| Week 05 | Sentence structure and parallelism | |
| Week 06 | Punctuation and style: commas, dashes, semicolons (light week) | |
| Week 07 | Relative clauses and reported speech | |
| Week 08 | Common errors of fluent speakers: uncountables, word order, false friends | comm-2 |
| Week 09 | Active vs passive voice, and when to use each | |
| Week 10 | Inversion and emphasis structures | |
| Week 11 | Advanced articles and the zero article with abstract nouns | |
| Week 12 | Linking words and cohesion (light week) | comm-3 |
| Week 13 | Nominalisation vs strong verbs (clear writing) | |
| Week 14 | Degrees of certainty: modals and adverbs | |
| Week 15 | Comparatives, quantifiers and precise comparisons | |
| Week 16 | Mixed error review (your personal error log) | comm-4 |
| Week 17 | Participle clauses and concise modification | |
| Week 18 | Review: hardest patterns from your error log (light week) | |
| Week 19 | Rhetorical devices: contrast, triads, rhetorical questions | |
| Week 20 | Mixed advanced structures | comm-5 |
| Week 21 | Narrative tenses for stories about your past work | |
| Week 22 | Precision under time pressure: fewer errors while thinking aloud | |
| Week 23 | Personal error log: final push | |
| Week 24 | Final grammar assessment (compare with baseline) | comm-6 |
| Week 25 | Free choice: your weakest grammar area (light week) | |
| Week 26 | Free choice: consolidate (light week) |