Private vs. group classes as part of immersion

[alexidsa]

I was working on my French by taking one 1-on-1 class pretty much every day for several months. It turned out to be quite an efficient way to prepare myself for a 3 moths long visit to France.

Before going to France I applied for an intensive language course at Alliance Francaise. They estimated my level as B1. I was quite happy about it as it was exactly my goal: reach B1 before going to France to be able to communicate with locals from day 1.

Unfortunately(?) I had to leave the course after a week. I just realized I was wasting my time there. Here's what in my opinion is wrong with that kind of courses:
1. Lack of speaking practice. The class lasts 3 and a half hours (that includes half an hour break), plus I spent about an hour to get there an back. So it took about 5 hours on a daily basis. And I did spoke French there for may be 30 minutes and not with French but with other students. When I take private classes on italki I talk all the time, I get corrected, etc. I feel like even 1 hour of 1-on-1 on italki with a good teacher is more efficient then 5 hours I spent on that group class.
2. A group is too big. There were about 12 people in a group. When you have so many people, their levels are very different (not all B1s are created equal). You can forget about an individual approach.
3. The same mistakes as at schools. I feel like that kind of courses do the same things wrong as ordinary schools where people hardly speak a language after 10 years of study: "let's take 20 words for cinema today and 20 words for medicine tomorrow. Yay!", "let's learn this piece of grammar today. Yay!". Vocabulary can be learned in more natural ways (i. e. you discuss with a teacher things that happened to you and will happen again, so more context, more feelings about vocabulary), grammar is learned easier after you've got exposed to a specific pattern many times in natural ways (there's no way to implement it when there're 12 students in a group).
4. You're limited to 1 teacher. It took me a while but I found on italki a) a teacher who is great at teaching grammar b) teachers who're perfect for conversations (nice flow, very precise and gentle corrections, etc.) c) teachers who have great specific skills but not worth to have classes too often. Variety!

Thanks to the Internet, I can take 1-2 hours of 1-on-1 lessons every day for pretty much the price of the intensive course (often even cheaper) and not waste that much time every day (having more opportunities to communicate with locals).

To be fair, not all intensive courses are equally bad. There're courses where groups are limited to 4 people and they have 1 hour of 1-on-1 tutoring every day. It's an interesting mix of groups classes and individual tutoring. It's much better but is a) very expensive b) still not as efficient as 1-on-1 tutoring.

At the moment I have a strong feeling that intensive group classes make sense only for people who lack motivation/discipline/experience to organize their language learning by themselves. But I'm totally biased as I've just wasted 600 euros (got no refund) So if you have different experience, I would love to hear about it.

[Cavesa]

My last attempt at group classes happened five years ago in Berlin and I agree with most points of yours, and would add more. And ages ago, I spent two semesters in normal evening classes by AF and the problems were just the same. At least the French classes were not beginner ones. The worst thing a beginner can do is sign up for group classes. It is the second or third worst thing for an intermediate

1.The students were learning mistakes from each other. You could easily hear bits of Italian pronunciation mistakes coming from a Spanish native and vice versa. And the teachers were far too lenient.

2.No freedom in choosing a teacher. We had two in the Berlin course. One was good and was using the classes to the maximum of what is possible under such circumstances. The other was simply bad. She may have been better for a different level, but giving beginners a lot of independent activities, where you are simply getting even more opportunity to learn the mistakes from others and you depend on personal qualities of other students (such as being unable or rather unwilling to talk and to use the learnt material), that was a bad choice. Also the way of explaining the grammar and such stuff was far from good, and there was no homework, which was a big problem, as nothing was pushing the majority of the class to work in their free time. In the old AF courses (we are talking about distant history here, long before I found HTLAL), there was the same problem. One of the teachers (one per semester) was quite good. Not stellar, but quite good. But the one before her was a disaster. Horrible at planning and unable to progress with the students. We were to get through half a coursebook, therefore 6 units during the semester. The following course would have started at unit 7 of the book. She spent lots of time (more than a month an half, if I remember correctly) on unit 1, a bit less on unit 2, a bit less on unit 3, and we didn' finish even unit 5 out of the 6. Also, she was one of the teachers with whom age is a problem, because they allow it to be. I have nothing against older or younger teachers in general, but every person needs to know their strengths and weaknesses and work on the weaknesses. When an older person simply refuses to keep their general knowledge up to date and has problem teaching vocabulary like "mp3 player" and instead tries to convince the whole group that they are wrong and simply bad at describing a "CD player" or a "radio", and wastes half the classtime on that, there is a problem. And there were more examples like this.

3.The schools don't know what "intensive" means. They think that is just more classes per week, but the classes are just as hyperslow as in normal courses over the semester. They still waste time on activities that should be done as homework, and the progress is really slow.

4.Yes, the students are not pushed to use the target language all the time. That is a big problem.

5.Yes, I agree the cost/value ratio is not too good. Especially as I am more and more convinced that getting to B1 on one's own is much easier without teachers. A good private teacher can help, yes, but you are not getting that much value for your money, as you have nothing to practice and the teacher mostly does what a good book+audio course does too. Classes are even harmful, unless they are really good.

6.I agree group classes may have value for people who have a real problem learning on their own, lack discipline, or ability to self-study. That is not that bad per se, we are not all the same. The problem is that a class is not pushing those people enough, at least enough to not let them harm the progress of the more dilligent learners. The classes get dumbed down, so that even the slowest learners don't lose motivation to pay for another semester.

7.I would love to hear experience of people who were in real small classes. Not the "oh, we offer small group classes, no more than 12 people" kind. I think 4 or 5 motivated learners could together progress really well, I just haven't had any opportunity to try. I have seen this option offered (by the Berlin langauge school), but only as a part of a package with the useless classes.

[alexidsa]

1.The students were learning mistakes from each other. You could easily hear bits of Italian pronunciation mistakes coming from a Spanish native and vice versa. And the teachers were far too lenient.

That's exactly my experience! I'm in Toulouse (South of France) and there're a lot of Spanish (6 in my group) and Italians (4 in my group). They build clusters and speak their native languages. I feel like putting friends from the same country to the same group is the worst you can do for a class dynamics but obviously schools do this as people pay and they can not refuse.

Especially as I am more and more convinced that getting to B1 on one's own is much easier without teachers. A good private teacher can help, yes, but you are not getting that much value for your money, as you have nothing to practice and the teacher mostly does what a good book+audio course does too. Classes are even harmful, unless they are really good.

After France I'm going to South America to *surprise* learn Spanish, so I started working on Spanish recently. I totally feel where you're coming from but I started having private classes from day 1. You're right, I can not have a conversation, so a teacher (best case scenario) just plays a role of Assimil manual. But it gives me two things: motivation (if I was not able to tell how old I was, I will learn Spanish numbers before the following class) and pronunciation mistakes' correction (the one thing is to just repeat after Assimil audio, another is to be immediately corrected by a native speaker). But I feel like having 30 minutes lessons is more than enough at this stage (at least till A2).

7.I would love to hear experience of people who were in real small classes. Not the "oh, we offer small group classes, no more than 12 people" kind. I think 4 or 5 motivated learners could together progress really well, I just haven't had any opportunity to try. I have seen this option offered (by the Berlin langauge school), but only as a part of a package with the useless classes.

[/quote]
That kind of classes seems to be popular for Mandarin. For example: http://www.tmichinese.com/courses/ (in this case group is limited to 6 people, plus 1-2 people usually quit). I think the reason for this is the level of life. Rates in European schools are so high that increasing them by 3 times (by making a group 3 times smaller) is practically impossible (the price would be around 2-3k per month).

[Cavesa]

Yes, the class being broken into groups based on nationality is a problem. It wouldn't happen in a small class, even three spaniards wouldn't exclude one pole, I think. It would seem rude. But sticking to one's own in the crowd doesn't feel so.

If a teacher that does the same thing as the Assimil CD helps you, great. For me, it would be a waste of time and money. I think a teacher may be more useful in languages with fewer resources for learners, sure. But from what I've seen while learning the mainstream languages, they are not adding value.

You are right the smaller classes would be more expensive. But I still cannot see why they are not being offered at all. A Lamborghini is also not for everyone, yet it is on the market. This is a big gap. I don't think the small group classes would be THAT expensive, as they couldn't be more expensive than individual classes, which people are willing to pay for. While the majority would opt for the huge groups (believing all the usual nonsense like "it's great to practice with other beginners"), I think the population going for the small classes would actually be more than sufficient. But since quite noone offers that, it is impossible to try and see. The only small groups I have seen offered (as the basic setting, not as a plus to huge groups) are offered to enterprises.

[rpg]

Registered just to respond here-- this thread is very relevant to my interests as I'm considering quitting my job and taking a couple months to study Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country(ies).

I've seen a lot of criticism (in this thread and elsewhere) of large-group classes. Recalling my time back in high school, this makes sense to me.

I'm curious if anyone has any extended experience with small-group or individual intensive courses. One place I was looking at for Spanish is http://www.peruwayna.com/ which seems to offer either group classes with <= 5 people or individual classes. I've come across a bunch of similar type things elsewhere in S. America too. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Stelle]

I have taken one-on-one classes as a student in various Guatemalan schools and I've also taught small -group intensive French classes (anywhere from 3 to - rarely - 8 students. We tried to keep the number to six or fewer). Both were excellent experiences. Speaking from a teacher's perspective, a group of four highly motivated students is the ideal number, since it allows for both paired work (with teacher input and feedback) and reasonably sized small group discussions. I was also able to set aside an hour every day for independent work, which allowed me to rotate through my learners for 20 minutes of one-on-one targeted teaching during a six-hour daily class.

[alexidsa]

I've started this thread to share my negative experience with traditional group classes (particularly Alliance Francaise) but I was curious whether better organised group classes could work for me. Recently I had a chance to find it out in Medellin, Colombia. Medellin is may be the best place in the world to learn Spanish: a lot of schools, multiple language exchanges every day, Colombians speaking good Spanish and willing to talk to you (it was such a huge contrast after learning French in France).

I've been looking for a language school and eventually got to a school named "Colombia immersion". Those guys got it right: small groups (up to 6 people, usually less), focus on conversations, slightly push students to integrate and talk to locals, etc. For the first week I got into a group class of two people It was amazing! It was as good as a group class with a great teacher can be. But it was not fast and efficient enough for me. It might be a great choice for general audience but when you're really into language learning, when it's not the first language you learn, group classes (even great ones) seem to be suboptimal.

But the teacher was so great, so I decided to take private classes with her instead of taking italki classes as usual. It seems obvious now, but it was a revelation to me at that point how much more efficient offline classes are when you just start. I've already left Medellin and take online classes while living in San Jose, Costa Rica. It's not too bad but I definitely miss my teacher from Medellin (I'm trying to push her to teach on italki but she's hesitating). If anyone reading this post goes to Colombia to learn Spanish, ping me