English Classes Suck

Oct 4th, 2007

I came across an article today called “why we don’t like English classes.” Apart from initially amusing me, I found I agreed with a lot of the points in the article. I like to think I’m one of the teachers that are ‘different’, so I thought I’d share a little of my philosophy.

Ok, so as the previous post recommends, look for a partner that you can speak with in the target language. If that’s not an option, and you can’t move to the target country, you need to recreate these conditions in your own study.

To learn a language, you must speak it. That’s the bottom line. Practice makes perfect, yada yada yada. You also have to listen to it, read it, and write it normally. The trick is to make your study as interesting as possible. It seems obvious but so many teachers and students seem to think language study is boring and teach/learn it that way. It’s simply not the right point of view to learn anything and the results show.

So, watch your goals. Language learning takes time, it’s that simple. Don’t aim to study every day for hours on end, you aren’t in medical school. What you could try is doing 10 minutes of study a day, but by study I mean HAVE FUN! My ’study’ approach for Spanish is to have coffee with my friends and watch the ‘Friends’ series on DVD along with other movies. It’s not hard, it’s not difficult, it’s fun and I enjoy it. Every now and then I wonder about a grammar point so I go and look it up. No stress, no worries.

The moral of the story: if it’s fun, you’re learning. If it’s not, you’re in for some pain. But some people like that…

And if you have a teacher that just likes to put grammar activity after grammar activity in front of you, you might want to suggest to them you’d like a little conversation. Not made up conversation about some artificial topic like global warming. Start a real conversation about your weekend and see where it goes. I believe a good teacher can lead even the lowest level student in conversation for an hour…can yours?