Call me old-fashioned… but I don’t believe in gamification. I am not going to trick you into learning. I won’t produce seemingly fun materials to provide you with the dopamine kick connected to clicking on a screen.
My job is to make you speak and understand through connection with me. That’s what I will focus on. Always!
Therefore, I leave the rest of the work to professionals, and I have you buy a textbook.
- There are amazing textbooks on the market for every language. It has been proven that the learning process is fairly the same for all learners and ANY language. There is no point in trying to invent something new. It isn’t my specialty.
- It’s proven that one learns better on paper than on a screen. Handwriting is always more efficient than typing. In my courses, we use the screen to communicate and as a whiteboard, not to read. It’s just as if we were together in a room.
- The sad truth is that many students neglect to take notes, and few write anything during the course. Even fewer do any homework. Having a textbook and an exercise book provides space to write, make notes, do some exercises, and sometimes even do homework. Yes, there I do trick you into writing.
- You need to have documents about the content you’ve learned and see what the learning process entails. Textbooks provide you with both structure and an overview of what you have learned and will learn.
- You cannot imagine how great it is when we finish a book with a student and they get to choose the next one. They see what they have accomplished, and they move on with renewed motivation and enthusiasm.
So yes, I am old-fashioned. If you want gamification, use Duolingo, but you’ll never speak because apps don’t put you in the situation of formulating your own thoughts. They don’t challenge you to hear something unexpected. They don’t put you in any real-life situations: I do. That’s my job, and I will challenge you, correct you, explain your mistakes, and, above all, congratulate you on your successes (small and big). The rest of the time, we will use a real textbook to make you progress regularly toward your goal: speaking, writing, and communicating with real people.