lists, doing grammar drills, reading boring textbooks. “How?” you’re
thinking, “can speaking English possibly be effortless?”
Believe me, I feel your pain.
Back when I started teaching 15 years ago, my students were all excited to
begin conversing in English. And I was excited to help them. At that time, I
taught in the usual way. I used textbooks and I focused on teaching grammar.
I thought this was the best way to teach, and none of my students
complained.
I still remember one particularly intelligent student of mine from
Venezuela named Gladys. Gladys was determined to speak English well.
Talk about effort! Gladys attended every one of my classes. She always sat in
the center of the front row. I can still picture her eager and smiling face. She
took detailed notes. She listened to every word I said. She also studied at
home. Every day Gladys studied her English textbooks for four hours or
more. She also tried to learn 50 new vocabulary words by memorizing word
lists. Gladys was my star student and I, too, was sure she would succeed.
Six months later, however, she still could barely speak English. Her
speech was hesitant and unnatural. She constantly made grammar mistakes
with even the simplest sentences. Her pronunciation was difficult to
understand. She still thought in Spanish and tried to translate to and from
English when she spoke. Worst of all, Gladys felt nervous every time she
tried to speak English. Speaking English was a painful experience for her.
Gladys was extremely frustrated. After so much effort, she had barely
improved. As her teacher, I too was frustrated. I was sure Gladys would
improve quickly and couldn’t understand why she had not. I followed all of
the traditional teaching methods. I used the standard textbooks and the
standard classroom activities. Gladys was intelligent, disciplined and
consistent, and yet her English speaking barely improved.
Sadly, I realized that Gladys wasn’t the only one who had not improved.
Her classmates also had barely improved. It was frustrating, and I felt like a
complete failure as a teacher. But when I asked my colleagues for help, it
turned out they had the same problem – very few of their students were
