Wait for It

One of the things I and my fellow foreign English teachers talk about and agree on is how a couple of students sometimes expect . . . magic.

I’m not sure why some people think that way, but we’ve all had the same experience: a student takes our lessons and then quits after a few months (of one lesson a week) because they still can’t speak like a native English speaker or can’t listen to all the words spoken by a native English speaker or can’t write a perfectly-constructed essay.

In a way we have failed that student, not because we didn’t do magic, but because we couldn’t help them see that learning English (and any language) takes time. It also requires consistency, the right attitude, and, something I just discovered recently, grit.

There are some people who say they have discovered ways that will help people learn a language in just two or three months. That’s great, but I think that if you want to use a language as a tool to communicate for life then it has to be a part of your life.