Reynaldo Ales

Comfortable environment vs. instant gratification

A couple of weeks ago, one student told me that for the first time he felt comfortable speaking in an ESL class. I was pleased. This was a conversation class and of course one big part of such a class is to facilitate communication and empower the students to speak freely. But I also noticed that other students felt shortchanged because they were not able to see tangible, measurable results. And I think that is one of the inherent scenarios of a conversation/speech class as opposed to a conventional grammar class: the student has more difficulty measuring how much he or she has advanced. I understand there are strategies we can put in place to counterbalance this, but I just wanted to bring this up because sometimes we try too hard to look for ways to make the students feel they have learned something, and in so doing we might not implement strategies which would bring better results only in the long term. We want the students to leave our class with a sense of accomplishment, and that is quite alright. But we have to make sure we also give them other strengths they might not become aware of for quite some time.