The person who had the greatest influence on my language learning was M. Maurice Rabotin, a professor of French civilization at McGill University in Montreal. In 1961 I was a 17 year old Anglophone student in first year university, with only a modest interest in French. M. Rabotin was a sarcastic chain-smoking professor who challenged his students and yet inspired them with a strong interest in the subject he was teaching. He made French civilization come alive for the students. I needed to improve my French to stay with the program. Once I was turned on to learning French, there was no holding me back. I subsequently went on to learn many other languages. So, the first thing a teacher must do is to challenge and inspire the learner.
M. Rabotin always seemed interested to hear what the students had to say. He would often disagree with us or explain why we were wrong, but he would listen. He would not correct our French while we were talking. He encouraged us to communicate, and to think. When we wrote, however, we were expected to express ourselves clearly and accurately. He would correct our mistakes in written French.
I tell the tutors at The Linguist to encourage the learners to communicate and not to make too many corrections when people are speaking. The learners need to be challenged to think in English, and to defend their ideas in English, but mostly they need to have a desire to communicate and to improve.
The more the learners read and listen, the more words and phrases they learn, the more they write and become observant of the language, the better they are able to defend their ideas. Most of the work needs to be done by the learners on their own, but a language teacher needs to be available to answer questions, and to provide feedback and stimulus.
Just encouraging learners to speak is not enough. When it comes to writing, a teacher needs to be quite severe and to correct all examples of poor usage, lack of clarity or other problems encountered in the learners' writing. At The Linguist our writing corrections are done in a lot of detail. If we miss a mistake it is not on purpose. We do not spare the feelings of the learner when it comes to writing mistakes.
In fact every mistake in writing is a good thing. It is a chance to learn and improve. In our system there is a record of each mistake and each correction, with explanations. There is plenty of opportunity for the learners to improve. When the learners improve their writing they improve all of their English skills at the same time.
I have recently written and recorded a content item on this subject called “Improve your English skills by writing”. You can find it in The Linguist Library under Language.
