Language Open Learning teaches the students to teach

July 20, 2010 - PRLog -- With private student who are learning English in Bangkok, I have adapted an intensive course that has been working very well and I have been getting some excellent feedback. I love to see the students move forward and improve their English - and in some instances the students have started from no English and in a matter of weeks I have seen them become confident in their speech.

The one thing that I have found, both from personal experience of learning languages such as Portuguese, French and Spanish, is that confidence and practice is everything. Knowing the grammar etc - yes that can be quite important - but for me it’s the confidence of being able to communicate in a new language is that really sets the students up.

Ask any teacher and they will say that most students come to their class and learn for two hours or three hours then that’s it until the next week and by the time next week comes the majority of the previous class has been forgotten. A lot of teachers don’t really care as they will only be interested in being paid for that class - but some teachers really want to help their students and in return their students really want to learn.

There is something really fabulous when students, teachers and the lessons connect. I have been very, very lucky – or perhaps it comes across that I enjoy what I do – that my students have been keen and eager to learn more and more English with me.

What I have learned is to make the students at ease and make it important to correct errors but not important enough for the student to be embarrassed about making the mistake in the first place. Another key ingredient is to get the student speaking for 90% of the lesson. Why? To get them used to speaking, to hearing the new sounds and familiar with the words.

I have developed a course where the students are interacting for the full lesson – reading, listening, responding and writing. Quick fire for two hours every lesson and in fact the course teaches the students to teach themselves English. The student inadvertently takes responsibility for the course and I have seen them involve their friends and colleagues – really because all they want to do is speak and the more they speak the more they learn and the more they speak the more they understand.

The Ajarn Ken English course will soon be available online. I have some students testing this out and I am really excited about being able to share this to every English language learner.

More details of this will follow – please email me at ken@ajarnken.com

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Language Open Learning is a new, interesting and productive website for learning new languages. Language open Learning is building to be one of the major online learning resources and social networking arenas for language learners and students.

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