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A class from hell | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 17 14 February 2012 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last night I dropped out of a C2 level weekly two-hour Spanish conversation class that I was taking at a local university. We started out 3 students, then one quit after two classes. I wondered why, but I suspect I know, as you'll see in a minute. So, for the last two weeks there were just two students and the teacher.
The first problem was the other student, this older women from France who thought she knew more Spanish than everybody else. She was arrogant, condescending and kept butting in and hogging the conversation. Last night we got into an argument (in Spanish) because she said something that I really didn't agree with. I really fault the teacher for not keeping her under control. If her Spanish were that great to listen to, I might have at least learned something, but it was certainly worst than mine. So, why did I have to go out of my way to listen to somebody make all these mistakes? Now the same could be said for somebody having to listen to my mistakes. This brings me to the more important point. The teaching was atrocious. The young gentleman from Spain leading the class was very knowledgeable about Spanish but didn't know how to teach conversation. The method consisted of first having the students read aloud articles printed from Spanish newspapers. Then the teacher would ask if there were any words we didn't know. Then he would ask some question about the content. Well, of course, madame know-it-all would start rambling away in her so-so Spanish until the teacher finally had to tell her to stop. Then when I started talking, she would interrupt to give her opinion. Extremely annoying. Besides the presence of madame big-mouth, the real problem here is that we were not really learning any conversational skills. I teach French and spend a lot of time working with students on conversation, so I think I know a bit about the subject. First of all, you need what I call in-depth correction. At a C2 level, the mistakes tend to be relatively minor but you don't want to let anything go by. I make my students repeat an entire sequence a few times until it flows well. That's what I would expect for myself. Why should I have to put up with the uncorrected mistakes of the other students and why should they have to put up with my mistakes? Correcting mistakes is just the beginning. What students need to know, and what I teach, is how to express themselves in an idiomatic fashion. I say to my students: "Fine, what you just said is correct, but here is how a native speaker would say the same thing in a more idiomatic fashion. Here are two or three ways of saying the same thing. And here is how I might throw in an idiomatic expression to make the conversation more interesting. Now it's your turn to do it again." In addition to all this, another reason for my hasty exit was the feeling of not making any progress. While it was great to have access to a native speaker for questions and clarifications, I felt that I wasn't learning to really converse. Conversation is all about interaction between speakers. You have to learn how to ask and answer questions. You have to learn things like conversational markers, interjections, how to express emotions, opinions, etc. None of this happened in the class. Instead we just listened to each other reading and sort of discussing these dreary texts. A pure waste of time. I wonder if other people have had similar experiences. Edited by s_allard on 14 February 2012 at 5:31pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 17 14 February 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ouch, sorry to hear of such a bad experience. I hope you'll get your money back from
the school or a better course. I've a few bad experiences with conversation in language classes (mostly general language ones with only part of the time dedicated to conversation). One of the most horrible ones happened at high school with my first teacher of English, who was a nightmare. We had visitors, native speakers from a partner school in GB, so we had hoped to practice, to speak together and to enjoy it. Firstly, the teacher gave us topics such as "our school canteen" which we were supposed to speak of. We left that. But what was not that easy to get rid off was her "dictionary approach". She treated the native speakers as a dictionary and didn't let much of the conversation happen. She kept asking for words and interrupting the flow to tell us to write it all down. Recently, I have been looking for a conversation class or something like that. I gave up partially because the "read an article first" method is everywhere. I'm not saying all the classes must be wrong because of that, but it is not anything appealing to me. I read a lot by myself, I have no trouble with understanding or looking up the words, therefore it is mostly waste of time. Why can't the teachers be a bit more creative? Would it be that impossible to make an introduction without an article? Or to give people a homework (for exemple a shorter film, perhaps even the article or anything) to have something to speak of during the next lesson? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 17 14 February 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I feel your pain. A C2 student is by definition a demanding student and few teachers can deliver.
Obviously, not all teachers have leadership. Sometimes that makes for a nice, easy-going experience, but sometimes, it means the class derails. I quit my last Japanese class for the same reason. The class had become a rotary club, une ligue du vieux poêle, full of English conversations and no leadership. AND they were using the dreaded text approach you mention... I entirely agree with you about corrections. Some teachers are so reluctant to correct, even more so in conversation classes because many feel that it breaks the flow, but when I correct my students, they get so much out of it! They often perpetuate the same old mistakes because no one ever corrected them, so these need to be addressed! When you make them repeat it a few times, they get the feel of the correct sentence and they are already on their way to improvement. In my experience, the best classes are the ones students prepare themselves (with one or two students). When they come to the class with a story to tell, a TV show to describe or an article to present, they are so intent to communicate, and they do so in such detail, that there is a lot of meat to work with -- and they want to know how to explain their story well. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 4 of 17 14 February 2012 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that your problem consists in expecting someone else to teach you the language. One is one's own best teacher. At your level, ample exposure and practice made fruitful by intelligent observation is all that remains on your way to fluency and proficiency. Why waste your time with imperfect lesson plans, incapable speaking mates and uninteresting articles when you could be reading books of your own choosing, listening to authentic speech and having stimulating conversations with natives?
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 17 14 February 2012 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
At C2 level, I suppose he thinks he'd benefit from the guided corrections of a professional native speaker. And he certainly could, with the right teacher... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Heather McNamar Senior Member United States Joined 4783 days ago 77 posts - 109 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 6 of 17 14 February 2012 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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This isn't really that similar, but it kind of reminds me of my high school Spanish classes. I had the same
teacher all through, and she would begin each class with a lecture on one of two subjects: how we absolutely NEEDED to learn Spanish and how we absolutely NEEDED to go to college. Plus, she was a real slave driver, piling on the homework with no regard for our other subjects or activities. There was a blood drive at school once and I donated at a time that coincided with one of the class meetings, and the teacher was deeply insulted that I had skipped HER class. Now I have nothing against Spanish culture or the Spanish language, but I've really been turned off and had a bad taste in my mouth. Sad to say, but it's true. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 17 14 February 2012 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can honestly say I don't think I've ever heard of a C2-level conversation class.
At a C2 level, you shouldn't be worrying about your conversation abilities at all. Really. You should already have that under your belt. A C2 level is mid-university level in vocabulary and flow. Seriously, how was this class advertised? R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 17 14 February 2012 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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This C2 level class is basically aimed at people preparing for the C2 DELE examination. I don't think it's meant for people who already have the C2 designation.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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