Making the most of your classroom time
In my last post I promised to give you some tips on how to maximize the benefits of spending time in the classroom, so here I am. Make yourselves a cup of hot beverage of your choice and read on 😉
A lot of students still think that just coming to their lessons is enough. They think it’s the teacher’s job “to teach them“ and the teacher is responsible for their learning progress. In fact, there’s a huge difference between this passive approach and an active attitude you can adopt towards your learning. It doesn’t matter if you attend courses for the public, where you likely share space with 4 to 7 other students, or take individual lessons with a tutor. There’s always something more you can do to get the most out of each lesson.
Come prepared
Before-class preparation doesn’t only concern teachers. I’m not talking just about doing your homework, but OK, let’s talk about that first. Better late than never is not a go-to strategy when it comes to preparation for your next lesson. Doing your homework 10 minutes before your walk into the classroom or your teacher walks into your office may seem like a good idea but it’s actually not. The best thing is to do your homework when you get home from the lesson or earlier in the week leading to your next lesson. Some people argue that if they do their homework well in advance, they “forget”. There’s an easy solution – do your homework right after the class and then go back to it and revise, say, a day before your next lesson. This reinforces the learning process.
I can often hear my students say something like: “I wanted to ask you about something I saw/read/heard but I can’t remember it now.“ You might come across such unclear points when you’re doing your homework, reading an article in a magazine or watching a movie in between the lessons. If that happens, jot down the things you didn’t understand and then you can discuss your questions in the lesson with your teacher. Some teachers, me included, also encourage their students to send them their questions by e-mail. I’m always happy when my students are curious to find out more about the things we work on (or the English language in general).
Take notes
This might sound trivial but you’d be surprised how many students aren’t used to taking notes during their lessons. When I point this out to them, they respond with something like they don’t need to put it down because “they will surely remember“. Then it frequently happens that they ask about the same thing over and over again and they don’t move forward as fast as they could. I recommend getting two notebooks – one for the classroom notes and one for home study. As soon as you arrive at your lesson, just get your notebook out and start taking notes. When you come home from your lesson, go over your notes and copy the things you’d like to learn into your second notebook/file. If you are a digital person, you might prefer bringing your laptop with you instead and work with digital files when studying.
Take pictures
I actually learnt this from one of my students who started this practice (and I’m still thankful to him for this idea). I usually write quite a lot in the lessons because I believe that graphic representation of some grammatical concepts or correct spelling helps my students understand and remember better. Many times I also draw. I use very little to zero mother tongue in my lessons and a picture is often worth a thousand words indeed. Sometimes there isn’t much time to write things down during the conversation or other activities. In such cases, you can simply take a picture of the whiteboard and copy the notes from the picture(s) after the lesson. You can store all the pics in one file on your computer and go back to them if needed.
Ask questions
I’m trying to make sure things are clear in the course of the lesson but sometimes it happens that the student is too shy to ask for fear of looking “stupid”. I’ll tell you a secret – I don’t believe in looking stupid or asking stupid questions. Did you miss out on something? Wasn’t the explanation clear enough? Do you need to hear a piece of information again? If you need to ask, do so! Your teacher can’t help you if you don’t let them know what you need help with. If a question crosses your mind between the lessons, write it into your classroom notebook so that you don’t forget.
Negotiate the content
This is something you are able to do only if you are enjoying the luxury of having one-to-one lessons. If so, you can ask your teacher to focus more on the things you’d like to practise and improve (or those you really love doing). Of course, a good teacher has a fairly good idea what and how to work on at different levels. Personally, I’m a firm believer in learner-centered approach and tweaking the content and form of the lessons along the way so that they cater for my students‘ needs is the very essence of how I work. I routinely check with my students to see if they want to make changes and I often suggest changing things myself if I can see the student would benefit from it. Your teacher most likely carried out a needs analysis at the beginning of your cooperation but there’s nothing bad about asking them to speed things up, slow down or dedicate more time to practising listening, for example. It’s your time, your money and your learning. Or it should be.
Have fun
I can’t stress this enough. Honestly, I’m not one of those people who think learning a foreign language should only be hilarious and students should be rolling on the floor laughing every single lesson. There is a certain amount of more or less boring stuff such as memorizing irregular verbs (even though such activities can also be made interesting, that’s for sure). In general, however, learning should be pleasant and you should enjoy it. If you’re not looking forward to your lessons, it’s a lot more likely you’ll eventually quit.
To sum up, if you want more from your lessons – be active in between the classes, prepare well, do not rely on your memory and take notes. Don’t be afraid to ask and ask for changes in the syllabus if you’re not getting what you’d like to. And don’t forget to have fun along the way 😉 I hope these few things will help you make your learning experience richer. Do you have further tips and tricks that help you study more efficiently? Please share them in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @Martin Eayrs, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Photo of the whiteboard taken by myself.