Suggestions

At the suggestion of my wife, I am starting up this blog again. Our sister-in-law has been keeping one about her son, mainly for the grandparents and friends, so this has evidently spurned my wife into a sudden interest in blogs. Okay, maybe not a real interest, but after I told her that I had one she gave me this look like "What ELSE are you keeping from me...?" She suggested I start it up again. So, here I am.

And that's the funny thing about suggestions: lots of people give them, but maybe only about half follow them. As a EFL teacher, I have first hand experience of this. I have suggested and still do continue to suggest a variety of ways in which my students can improve their English proficiency. Living in Japan does not afford many opportunities to naturally use English outside of a classroom, so I would assume that any suggestion I give would be taken to heart.

Alas, I am sadly mistaken.

Out of the 15 or 16 high school to adult EFL students I teach, only four or five have followed my advice, and only one or two do so regularly. My question is, why?

Why, if they are paying about $90 a month to visit my class once a week, do they not invest an equal amount of time outside of class to develop their skills? Why do they come to class with sheepish grins on their faces saying, "No, I did not do any vocabulary study this week?"

It baffles me, but only to a certain point. If I worried too much over it, like I did when I first started working in this English Conversation industry, I would probably drive myself crazy. I have come to the conclusion that many of these older learners are not really pursuing English to fully master the language - it is merely a fun and slightly expensive hobby where they can meet up with similarly aged people to exchange a few words in a foreign language. Research studies I have heard about seem to suggest that learning a foreign language keeps the brain active and stems the oncoming tide of senility. Maybe that is what they are hoping for. If that is the case, then I guess they are at least following SOMEONE'S suggestion, albeit not mine.

No worries, though. They keep coming each week, smiling either because they are happy or because they didn't do any work, but smiling nonetheless. And they pay. And that's the bottom line, I guess. It SHOULD be whether or not they are really gaining anything from their experience in the class but come on... At the end of the day, we all know that money walks, even if my students can't talk.