The most time-efficient way of learning English is with a private tutor alone. The teacher can choose the teaching materials and methods to fit to your personal needs and level.
You learn faster when you get full attention and when the teacher corrects your mistakes - not others' mistakes.
When a teacher teaches English language for a group of students he or she selects a level for the teaching. There is only one student in any groups whose English level is the closest to the selected teaching level.
If your English is better than the teacher's target level, you feel bored and waste your time. If you are below that level, you do not understand everything and feel frustrated. That's why many students drop out from groups.
And that is only the starting level of the English course. There is also a pace the teacher and the group moves and the teaching method and material cannot fit to everybody's taste either.
Briefly, if you are not the only student in an English course, you waste your time, feel bored or frustrated and cannot get enough tailor-made attention. That's why 6-12 years of English learning in primary and secondary schools produce no result in most cases. And even worse, many students develop a negative attitude to language learning.
It is not the student or the teacher's fault. The language education system is dysfunctional. Not just here in Hong Kong where I live and tutor English but all over the world. You cannot combine "free", mass education with efficiency.
2-person English group learning
When a student is motivated, 1-to-1 learning is very effective. When I have 3 students in a group the group often breaks up after a few lessons if the difference between the best and slowest students is too big. So a 3-student group is usually the border case, the gray zone that may or may not work.
Two-student groups work well most of the time especially if the students are at the same level, like the same learning methods and learn at the same pace. Even if one of them is significantly better than the other but they are very good friends and the better student is generous and patient, the lesson is productive.
So taking an English conversation course with your friend is a good idea, especially if both of you want to learn. I usually design the lesson to the level of the weaker student.
Group price seems cheaper but it is not
Some people choose group English course for making friends and having fun. But the most common motivator is usually the cheaper price.
But the cheaper price is just an illusion. Yes, you pay less tuition fee in a group than in an individual lesson. But you pay for the improvement of your English and not for the time you spend in the classroom.
If you calculate the tuition fee for the individual attention, the tailor-made teaching and your English improvement for a large group versus an individual, private class, the one-on-one lesson is always cheaper.
If you learn with one friend together, the price per person is much lower than if you take the lesson alone and the benefit of the learning is the same or just a little bit less. That is, a two-person group can be the best solution for your English course selection.
Zoltan Gregor lives in Hong Kong and tutors English for adults and secondary school students. He teaches English conversation for one, two or three people at a time. Visit: http://www.englishconversationcoursetutorhk.com/
If you want to improve your job interview skills, you can practise it with him. See the details at: http://www.jobinterviewcoursehk.com/
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