“I don’t believe it.”
“That is why you fail.”
-a chat between Luke and Yoda
The Empire Strikes Back, 1980
It all starts with belief.
Believe you can succeed, and you will.
Believe you can’t succeed, and you might as well go back to bed.
But how does a teacher make his/her student believe?
Here’s how NOT to do it:
This is what I call “Over Teaching.”
And it’s the biggest, most common problem in the English-teaching world.
How do you feel after one of these lessons?
Probably like this: “Uh, I’ll never remember all of that…”
This is better:
1. Start easy.
2. Have a win.
3. Get a small taste of success.
Then you’ll believe you can do it and you’ll want more!
Start easy
Have a win
Get a small taste of success
Like I already say, joking…
TAKE IT EASY WITH THE PIANO ON THE STAIRS.
Being an middle-aged guy at the time of starting as a beginner Hungarian English-learner, I was also bombarded with English language rules a lot by this kind of detailed presentations by both the Hungarian, and also the native British Council teachers and interestingly enough, I did not hate this method at all, because I accepted this method as a disciplined person and an academic lecturer. And you are again right Brian, because even though we and I acquired a wide range of English language rules and vocabulary, we the learners did not have enough opportunity to practice our speaking skills, and on top of that, the more one could speak a bit more fluently than the majority of us, the more he or she could profiteer from the narrow timeframe designated to the speaking practice. And yes, this kind of teaching method should be blamed for the fact, that most of us could not improve his or her speaking skills as it was expected by the teachers and most of us too.