English is no fast-food!

Savor your English Class...

This message goes out to all of you who think Language learning (English in my case) is some sort of fast food meal.

The comparison may seem odd at first, but I’ll get to my point in the next few lines.

As an English teacher, I have had more than my fair share of students (I’ve been teaching for more than 22 years now) and it is not uncommon to have students come into the room wishing they were never there to begin with. Or even worse, thinking that by speaking really fast, monosyllabic words, time would go by any faster.

First and foremost, you have to use your class time appropriately. Take advantage of your time, to ask questions, to talk, rather than being reactive waiting for the teacher to show you a brave new world.

I have seen students, who come to conversation classes (because they claim they need to talk), and then, when you ask them the infamous question “so how are you?” they simply answer “ok”.

As the good teacher I am sure you are, you try and push a little “Good, so, how was your day?” and then again creativity rises, “ok”.

Come on…really?

When a teacher asks you a question, such as “how was your day” in my experience, we (teachers) couldn't care less about it.

We are not interested in your day, sorry but that is true. We are not being nosy or anything, we don’t really care about how your life is going.

What we do care is; what you say and how you say it !

I usually tell my students “If you have nothing interesting to say then, lie”, if you don’t feel good talking about you (and I know many people don’t) use your imagination, create a story, tell me that you are a SPY in a secret mission to retrieve passcodes for military missile silos, just make sure you’re ready to respond the follow up questions.

Back to my fast food analogy, students come to class expecting to get their lunch bag packed with whatever combo they ordered, and head back home as quickly as possible.

Learning English should be more like a four course meal. Savor the appetizers?(warm up questions)?Enjoy the salad (Ask questions about things that were not clear from the previous class)?feast on your main dish (listen to the topic of conversation, state your opinions, don’t rush, talk, write down words that are “foreign (lol)” to you)?and lastly enjoy the lust of dessert?(review anything that is unclear, talk about things you are likely to do on the weekend).

By doing this you’ll be getting the most out of your class.

Some tips;

Write the vocabulary words?(Advanced students for some weird reason think they don’t have to write anything, when they hear a new word, they simply nod their heads as if they knew the meaning, then 40 seconds later “bam”, the new word is forever ignored by their brain)

Use these new words?(most students are afraid to incorporate new vocabulary, that’s just silly. What’s the point of learning new words if you won’t use them at all)

Talk, don’t just answer “YES, NO, OK, MAYBE”?(TALK, I can’t emphasize that enough, provide complete answers, justify your answers, the whole point of the class is for you to talk, and I am sure you already master the “complex” art of saying YES and NO)

Tell stories, think about an interesting fact, movie, book something you liked and talk to your teacher about it.?(always have something to talk about, comment on politics, news, even gossips, we’re always interested in knowing the whereabouts of the Kardashians.)

Ask Questions, if you have a question, ASK…if you didn't understand something, don’t pretend you did, ask the teacher to explain it as many times as possible.?(this is a crazy one, a lot of students are embarrassed to tell their teachers they did not understand a word, or a sentence, often times I say something a little more complex (deliberately I admit) just to see what is the reaction. And to my despair, in 90% of the cases students nod their heads as if they knew exactly what I am talking about. I then ask them, so, what does “whatever I said” mean, and the question mark blush immediately pops up in their faces)

By applying these concepts, I am sure you’ll learn more, and your next class won’t be as boring as you probably think it is.

Ahh, one more thing….going back to the 4 course meal metaphor, don’t forget to tip the waiter!

I, being the waiter, and a like or a comment being the tip !!!

Thank you, have a great week !