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Teaching students without discipline | ||
Tags: Language Teaching | Motivation | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4659 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes  Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 15 15 August 2012 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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With an adult learner, all you can do is to make suggestions. For the undisciplined among us (me included), the way to go is to find the road with least obstacles.
In my case, this included to redefine THE time for language learning. I am learning 2-4 hours each workday, divided in: 2 x 30-40 min. commuting, all the time spent running office errands - which comes at least up to another hour, and the time spent running errands outside of the office. The same when doing housework, cooking... I had to convert most of my learning to audio but it simply works for me. I still need to set time for writing but this comes on top of it. Well, and I am now known as the weirdo who wears a mp3 player as accessory all the time. I don't think your students need be as hardcore - but perhaps try to suggest they use the time spent commuting 2 or 3 times a week and do at least some drills, shadowing, learn vocabulary etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 15 15 August 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
1.He can ask and the adult student has no reason to lie. 2.You usually don't need to work hard at home to do fairly well in class. "Doing fairly well in class" is very different from using your potential qualities to maximum and from learning the language to the desired level. //to avoid confusion: the first sentence in 2. wasn't meant as "your classes suck, you should be more demanding teacher" but it was just about the fact that people, especially those with above averige intelligence, are able to learn with less work and, more importantly, to do well in classes without much preparation thanks to the ability to think fast and improvise. That is an advantage but on the other hand it doesn't help the students to acquire good study habits until it's too late. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 15 15 August 2012 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are my hero. I wish I was so disciplined. I have tried and failed repeatedly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5393 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 12 of 15 16 August 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the suggestions! The student's actually a friend who's taking formal classes
once a week and enjoys them but just doesn't do anything outside. And as Cavesa said it's totally possible to take classes, learn the essential vocabulary and the assigned grammar topics but have no idea how to put it together in a real context (right now my Spanish is proof - I've learned enough grammar to be able to score high enough on a college placement test to be placed into 4th semester intermediate Spanish and beyond but I can barely speak, write or understand native materials). I used to take and give music lessons and in that field a teacher's job is definitely to teach you how to practice. In music it's understood that the work gets done in the student's practice sessions, not in the lessons which serve to check progress, correct any problems and offer new tips to overcome difficulties. I think this is where a lot of language eduation falls short. A teacher may tell students to create an immersian environment at home but doesn't always go into how or keep giving suggestions beyond the first class session.
Yup, this is exactly the idea. I've been looking at principals from the Getting Things Done (GTD) system and how to apply them to language learning. Things like goal setting, breaking down big goals into actionable steps, making check lists, other accountability systems like the Seinfeld calendar emk mentioned, etc. I'll also definitely recommend things like Memrise and some of the other sites that are designed to make language learning more like a game. I know she commutes and always has her headphones in so I'll look into helping her find some audio (planning ahead for down time). I'll also see if there are any sketches by Les Inconnus that are easier to understand that I could make a little guide for and I know she has Netflix so I'll make some movie suggestions. I think coming up with more options that don't involve sitting down in front of a textbook will help. I mean textbooks can certainly help but it can be a bit like making a kid eat vegetables and they're not entirely necessary to learning a language as native materials is where the real proficiency comes from. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 15 16 August 2012 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Also, creating language spaces helps.
I'm horribly undisciplined. So, my German books are down in the basement. When I want to read, up here in my room are the ones in English, Spanish, Japanese and French. I have a stack of flash cards for Mandarin vocab I take with me for whenever I'm bored, and my ipod is full with language-related stuff as well. My mum has made a big poster with English verb tenses and their signal words for the bathroom. Stuff like that. It must be really easy to do. Just five minutes to spend on the language - if you do it several times a day, one of the activities can suddenly become fun and you'll end up doing more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 14 of 15 17 August 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||
The mentioned problem sort of describes me. My motivation comes and goes. Lately, it's mostly gone. What basically sustains me is a somewhat large TL dubbed movie collection, ripped audios and regular contact with native speakers. On the upside, it's gotten me reasonably far. Anyhow, am starting to think about the personal trainer idea. Good luck to you and your friend! Edited by Snowflake on 17 August 2012 at 1:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| baskerville Trilingual Triglot Newbie Singapore scribeorigins.com Joined 4248 days ago 39 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: German*, Japanese Studies: Hungarian | Message 15 of 15 07 June 2013 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This thread just kicked my butt! I was slacking on my French for almost 2 weeks now and
then the word "undisciplined" kept flashing in my head. So after I log off tonight, I will need to get going with Assimil again :P
I used to teach a class where the disinterested and/or undisciplined students outnumbered the motivated ones. It was a headache -- it was only my 3rd Japanese class to teach and it almost made me quit. I tried doing some games in class but as they are adults, they were reluctant to participate. I tried more homework so they can study by themselves at home -- they'd come to class early to copy someone else's answers. It was frustrating. Then came the magic word: anime. I realized that a lot of them were studying Japanese because they wanted to understand anime or manga without relying on English subtitles or furigana or scanlations. So since then, I came up with activities that are related to anime/manga. We watched a bit at school during break time; we sang anime songs; my visual aids were manga characters and so on. Of course, the anime stuff did not work for other classes because it would depend on the average age of the students and their purposes for studying the language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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