What is the best way to consolidate a newly learned language? What is the best way to become fluent and enjoy this language?
To speak it, trust me!
But how can we speak the language if we don’t know where to start?
Fluency classes’ purpose is to provide my students with a structured ‘language gym’ with language aids (vocabularies and sentence structures), my assistance and a relaxed environment to practise. These kinds of classes are always small sized to minimise ‘performance anxiety’ and maximise individual attention. As we learn a lot from our mistakes, they are welcome as great resources from which everyone can benefit. After each lesson students can go over the notes and all the resources we used. In fact, I will email everything after the lesson, including some voluntary homework.
Students can do some voluntary homework to revise the lesson and they can email it on to me. I will check it and email them back with corrections. In this way we won’t use our precious Fluency class time to check it, and those who decide to do it will benefit from their individual feedback.
Fluency classes are different levels, so that all students can find their ‘language gym’ to practise depending on their own level and needs.
The idea behind Fluency classes comes from my personal experience, not only as a teacher, but especially as a language learner. Italian is my native language, but I learned French and English as an adult and I have been learning Gaeilge for a while…
My language learning experiences have led me to develop these fluency classes to fill the gap between learning the individual elements of a language, and being able to use it fluently while enjoying the great experience of speaking it!