How to waste your time and learn to start hating English

The test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL) is a necessity for applicants of international exchange programs in both US and Canadian universities and may also be required for some jobs abroad. The current test consists of four sections: Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing. The results of the test have to demonstrate that you’re capable of comprehending information on academic topics and have tolerable skills of expressing your thoughts in oral and written forms.

 I decided that I needed to get more organized in my preparation process and attend a decent school for a short time. I have been poking around for a while trying to find an appropriate one and there it was: the school that offered a free trial lesson. Let’s call it “IH”.

So I went there…The very first thing that raised a red flag was when I noticed that the students didn’t talk much among themselves in English before class (only about the class payment), neither did they after entering the class room. But I was only a newcomer, so I thought that it might just be my first impression that they weren’t really interested in what they were doing.

In the very beginning of the class the teacher for some reason started giving notes about one girl’s essay that was written at home. He devoted 5 minutes to this issue, while the others’ essays didn’t deserve his attention at all. Maybe this was the only essay that was turned in?

After the teacher finally decided to give his attention to the whole group, we were given a whole bunch of papers, among which he picked a vocabulary one for the next part of the lesson. The teacher really didn’t give us a chance to explain all the words. But surprisingly for me the students really didn’t seem eager to explain the meanings of the words either. He felt satisfied, told us to fill the gaps (blanks) in the text below with those words and…left the class. As we were reading the text he gave corrections, without discussion about problems that we could come across trying to find the correct matches.

The second and the most boring part of class was right in the middle. The teacher put an old cassette in his stereo and…left for more than 30 minutes. That was an old version of the listening comprehension test that used to be provided in 90s, but doesn’t exist anymore. I expected from him the discussion of our results, but, again he just read the correct answers. I forgot for a couple of minutes that we live in the 21st century and could download as many audio files as we want from the net. I could have easily done this listening part at home and checked everything by myself.

I really was hoping that the speaking or writing part would shake me up just a bit and wake me from this prostration. Yes, he gave us an essay topic, but it was assigned as homework. This was a big mistake. Essays during the test should be written in 30 minutes without using a dictionary. There is no way; you would be doing this correctly at home! Instead you will spend a couple of hours working on your composition until it looked immaculate, but during the test everything is about timing and concentration, and there is only a slight chance that your home writing assignments will help you. The speaking part was reduced to discussing papers that described our strange dreams. We had to talk to each other while he pretended to be interested in our pronunciation. “No Russian in class” – he hushed me one time, but he didn’t really listen to what I was saying in English anyway….We didn’t have to use out thoughts or really express ourselves. Not unexpectedly, while we were reading these “dream texts” the teacher was absent from class, this time smoking.

At the end of class I felt pity for all the students in attendance. I thought they were supposed to hate English so far studying like this since September. Regarding my question “Is it always that boring?”, addressed to one girl, I got the answer “It can be worse. Today we had a lot of talking comparing to some previous classes”.

           So the role of the teacher in class was very limited (well, he was absent for 45 minutes so no wonder), the tempo ˗ very slow, the explanations –weak,  the forms of class work were picked according to what the teacher thought would be the simplest for him, the materials were old, the methodic was obscure. I wouldn’t say anything if the results of their studying was perfect, but the group didn’t not seem to make great progress, or to be really interested in what they were doing. Maybe I got too spoiled studying at different places, being a lecturer myself and having observed a lot of good teachers. But I really like the language and I just would hate classes like this. However, I don’t think that trial lesson was a complete waste of my time. I would attend this course…for free. But there is no way I would pay for this.

     

 Posted by Helen.