I've been learning English online by taking one-to-one lessons for about two years, because I had no good experience in a language school where I used to sit along with other students and I really got bored at that time. In spite of those bad experience I decided to enroll for French course in a language school in person and give it a try to brush my French up a bit.
To my big surprise I've found this group course very interesting and appealing! Why? Because of the teacher, who is dynamic, enthusiastic, who loves her job very much, who always does her best, who gives a lot of additional materials to study at home apart from exercices of the textbook and also a lot of homework, because we learn in an interesting way by using interactive digital devices(a digital board, audio, video etc.), because we are sent all materials we went through after the lesson to our emails, because we discuss a lot, we play games, we enjoy ourselves and we learn a lot during the lessons and also we exactly know what and how to study between our classes. So, are group lessons always worse than individual ones as it is often believed? In my opinion it is the teacher and their approach (or materials) that only matter.
What dou you think?
Thanks for sharing your experience, Yvona! Sometimes I think that the bad reputation of group lessons is not entirely deserved, although I've of course also experienced the typical drawbacks of group lessons that had nothing to do with the teacher: a group may be too big, the level of the students might not be the same and I get annoyed by too many questions that seem obvious to me, and often groups have at least one person that dominates the group and talks too much.
I've often thought about hiring a teacher for one-on-one classes, but I still haven't gotten around to it. I only had private classes twice and found them more exhausting than group lessons because I was the only one getting "grilled."
Since, as I said, I don't have much experience with private classes, I'm not sure if I'm right. But one advantage I found with group classes is that they're easy: you sign up and you have a fixed schedule. That may be a disadvantage for people who aren't free at regular times, but for me, a schedule is more predictable. I'm less likely to stop because I'm not motivated anymore, I just have to show up again the following week.
@Esther,
yes, the number of students in a group matters as well. By the way, we do grammar and write exercises too, but the way which is not boring at all. The teacher provides a variety of different activities to get students to take part in them actively. I am not a young student and in order to get me to be interested in any silly activity is too hard for any teachers, so just entertaining students without meaningful purpose and objectives should be certainly off-putting for me
I agree with you, Ivona: teachers are very important to learn a language or anything else. If you need dynamic and enthusiastic people who give you many different tools to learn and you find them...bingo!
On the other hand, there are also other type of students who prefer to study with more "traditional" methods. I remember the case of a Basque teacher who was teaching the Basque language and culture in a university in an European country and he told us that he tried to teach with amusing and playful games, but students didn't feel at ease and they prefer to study grammar and write exercices.
Besides, it's not the same to be 10 students at class or to be 30. When the group is quite big, it's difficult to the teacher to adapt the level to everybody. However, if you find the proper teacher and a group of students you like, it could be a great experience.
