Many students often ask me this question. Well, I’m going to tell you a true story that happened to me in one of my classes years ago.
Every trimester, I invite my students to fill out an evaluation questionnaire of the activities carried out in class. As a result, throughout my ten years as an English teacher I have been perfecting and improving the activities of the classes in such a way that my students can learn while enjoying themselves.
In my way of thinking, I always take into account the comments of the students and adapt the classes to their needs. All the opinions that you can read in the Testimonies section are real comments from my students.
However, once I had a group of 9 people where some told me that we did very little grammar, others that we did too much, others that we did a lot of oral practice and others very little, and the same for all of the skills. They did not agree!
What was happening in this group? In group classes, the teacher must assess the level of the participants, their age and their expectations and establish a balance between all the students. However, sometimes this is not possible.
What was happening with this group was that it was so heterogeneous that it was not possible to find a middle ground where everyone’s needs could be met, even though we were working hard to achieve the certification objective. It has been the only group in my career with which I have experienced this.
In Yes, I Can! English, that problem disappears.
The group classes in Yes, I Can! English take place via Zoom and are facilitated in small groups, of a maximum of 3 students.
We will only put three people together if they have a very similar knowledge, skills and abilities set (not necessarily because they are friends or family).
At Yes, I Can! English we offer a free trial first class in which we carry out an assessment of the student’s level, their strengths and weaknesses in all skills: written and oral comprehension, written and oral production, etc. Once this is done, we plan all the activities, objectives and the time necessary for their completion.
Did you know that, if the groups are well defined, in 90 minutes per week the same subject matter can be covered as in a group class of 3 hours per week?
