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A class that "works"? | ||
Tags: Class Learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5370 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 17 of 29 12 September 2013 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I like classes. I think virtually the only requirement is that there is a realaxed,
friendly, supportive atmosphere. here's a class, for example where I would rate the teaching and subject as interesting and well presented, but everyone is obviously still a bit too shy to particicpate. here It's on language learning strategies, rather than actually learning a language, but the students are all pretty reluctant to use their languages or even say anything at all. Obviously, it's the first day of class. This style of presentation would probably be ok for learning a language in an academic way, but not ideal for practical learning. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 5894 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 18 of 29 12 September 2013 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I learn a lot even without doing homework. Of course, it would be better if I did do the homework, however I don't and most people don't. Plus it's just a basic fact of life that people who take these types of classes are not going to do their homework. It's basic human nature. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6966 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 19 of 29 12 September 2013 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If done correctly, they're very effective. I remember my French teacher giving us pop quizzes where we had to recite one-on-one how to form a tense or conjugate a certain class of verb (e.g. Teacher: "Donne l'impératif du verbe 'avoir'" - Student: "Aie, ayons, ayez"). Within 6 months I was getting the verb conjugations for most indicative tenses, the imperative, conditional present and subjunctive present correct 90% of the time on the first try when writing or speaking spontaneously. On paper, the drills from old courses from FSI, DLI and SLS would be close to the old-school strictness but after my experience with FSI Hungarian, I burned myself out since I tended to do a few too many in my study sessions. That was on me because I was overdoing it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 5894 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 20 of 29 12 September 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Different people learn in different ways and come from different circumstances. In a class you will have a variety of students,from the busy businessman to the university student to the bored housewife with nothing else to do. Some of these people will have more time or motivation to do homework or other things in class. For some, the utility factor of doing will be low. For me, I would never attend an evening language class, if the teacher forced me to do homework. I believe, it's like that for a lot of people attending classes. Plus a lot of people learn differently and see different points in attending classes. For me, it is satisfactory just to sit in class and listen to the teacher. Many people, me being one of them, get a lot from the fact that they are exposed to the language. I have very minimal benefits from self-learning materials. I use them, but usually just to get a general overview of the language, but I get most of my learning just from sitting in class, passively absorbing stuff. That's the best way I learn. A class has to take into account all these different circumstances of people and the different ways people learn. Giving classes is not charity, but a business. If they don't take this into account, then they won't have any customers and won't have any money and so won't give classes. If a person wants to get around this, then they can always take a private class with a teacher. There they can do the homework at home and focus on working on things that they want to work on. In a class with lots of people, that is impossible, just based on basic human nature. You can enforce homework in a school environment (for example like high school), but in evening classes for adults that is impossible. I forgot to add, that in my opinion, having the class be based around discussing difficulties that students have, would not be the most efficient use of class time. In a private class, yes, this could be good, but in a class with a lot of students with different types of difficulties, it would just result in a bunch of great artwork. :) Usually, in group classes, a part of the time, the teacher does indeed try to answer questions and difficulties that people have. That is usually the time, I start drawing in my notebook :) and other students do the same. Sometimes the question or difficulty might be relevant for me, but a lot of times it is a difficulty that I don't have or a concept that I understand. So that is a waste of time for me and other students. On the other hand, if it is meant to encourage some great artwork :))) Edited by showtime17 on 12 September 2013 at 7:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3983 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 21 of 29 12 September 2013 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My experience with homework is that the students moan when given it, but actually want to be given it. I've had requests for more homework, but never had real complaints about giving too much. I generally have 3 categories of homework. The first is the workbook that goes along with the course, which for adults, has the answers in the back. For this, I just tell them the page number that corresponds to today's class and tell them they can do it if they want. I don't check up on them, because it's not my job to babysit them. The second is that I ask them to read a book at home and then set aside 15 or 20 minutes once a week to do a task relating to it (which varies according to level). Again, I don't check that they've done it or not, but they're unlikely to do well at the task if they don't. And my experience is that most students do this one (although some will frantically do it before class or in the break). And the final one is written tasks that actually count towards their score. They're occasionally handed in late, but most students do them most of the time. Again, sometimes frantically before class. I give a lot of homework and leave it up to them whether they do it or not. After all, they're adults. One major problem in Asia is the ridiculous amount of work they give to young people. With adults, it's less of an issue, but I feel bad about giving kids homework when they've been in school from 7:30 in the morning and are now in my class until 7:30 or even 9:30 at night, and have probably got loads of homework from their regular school. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4638 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 22 of 29 13 September 2013 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I tried, but lost the will to live by about ½ way through. Hefin is at least entertaining 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4343 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 23 of 29 13 September 2013 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think the biggest problem of language classes is that the authority figure of the teacher/school tends to demotivate the students from self-learning. So for me an ideal class would somehow motivate the students to actively engage in learning the language as much as possible outside of the class room (and this has nothing to do with homework exercises). Schools need to actively teach students how to self-learn.
---------- I have this idea for a school with many small classes, that uses vocabulary lists with matching graded readers, with appropriate grammar lessons built into the text. The school provides prepared Anki cards with sentences and words for weekly learning. There is a weekly test, which if students do not get to an adequate grade, means they are automatically stopped from advancing to the next class. This shouldn't necessarily be seen as punitive (perhaps you can't study because you were ill, away for work/holiday etc), but you wouldn't progress unless you have mastered each lesson. Students would pay for the number of lessons, or better X number of learning points, so that classes with more students would cost students less to attend as they could pool their points towards the lesson, and contrawise if you fail the test and end up in a class on your own, you need to pay many more points (or wait until another group reaches the level you want to be in). So essentially you are paying for face-time with a teacher, and how much you pay depends on how many students are in the class - and of course if you want to you can pay for individualized tuition. Edited by patrickwilken on 13 September 2013 at 10:04am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4638 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 24 of 29 13 September 2013 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@Patrick
With my new-found zeal for the spoken approach (I probably sound like a Damascus Road convert to Bennyism :-) ) I would do something similar to the above, but all speaking and listening. The way that SSi and YSG works is that the teacher on the audio says in English a word, phrase or sentence (which gradually increases in complexity), and you give the TL version in the pause. Then the teacher gives it back to you in the correct form. (In SSi, it's repeated by a female voice; YSG handles that slightly differently, but you do get to hear 2 voices). I don't use Anki, but I believe it can already handle audio in some way, and I'd imagine it could be tweaked (or course providers could provide a tweaked version or their own software) to do something similar, but in SRS style, i.e. keeping track of ones you got right or wrong. It would have to leave it to you to mark yourself right or wrong for any given sentence - trying to automate that fully would be a nightmare - but I think that could work OK. You'd also want to make time for spontaneous speech with a native or someone at a very high level, so the "teacher face time" you talk about also comes into it. Perhaps small groups of 2 and no more than 3 plus teacher or other expert speaker would work quite well. Back of envelope calculation: Assume a class of 16 learners; divide into 8 groups of 2. Each group could have 10 minutes of "teacher face time" totalling 80 minutes = 1h 20 If the total class time is 2h or 120 minutes, that leaves 40 minutes that the teacher can give the whole class. You could tweak this to give more time in the small groups and less whole class time, of course. While one group got its "teacher face time", the people in the other groups could either be doing Anki (spoken or written) to themselves, or better, pairs could bounce spontaneous English* sentences off each other and the other would have to give the TL version, or variations on the theme. * - or the L1 of the class members, of course, if not English. Edited by montmorency on 13 September 2013 at 12:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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