English class, from a teaching perspective, usually flows around grammar rules, vocabulary words, listening exercises and course book readings. It’s a product focused environment. The other day on my way to a class, I heard an amusing announcement for a local English school. Their catch line: Come in for your free English lesson. 9/10 people who take our free class become regular customers.

The commercial then switches to why the 1 person didn’t return: in commercial one it’s because they were abducted by aliens. Commercial 2 is because they were hit by a car on their way back to become a regular customer.

Funny commercial – but like most ESL companies out there, it’s focused on the product. The English class or course you should buy. But how well do we help students REALLY become better because they used our service? One of my favorite authors posted this on twitter the other day:

“1 way to improve a product might not mean changing the product, but improving what the user is able to do with it. Upgrade user, not products.”  from web via @KathySierra Twitter

How do you do this in the ESL classroom? I see this as our “Holy Grail.” As a teacher, I think our job must be to ensure that our users are “upgraded” by using our service. But that’s an interesting challenge when your product is a service that requires a great deal of time commitment in order to see marked improvement.

A few ideas that we’ve been working on:
Give regular feedback on progress. We are launching a digital reporting system which lets our users know, on a monthly basis, a quick view of their development in Speaking, Reading, Listening, and Writing.
We also provide a time line meter – which graphically shows the number of hours each student has taken vs. the total number of hours required to meet course requirements.
We base our courses around  the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) – and on each report card show our students what objectives they have already mastered, vs how many they have left before they graduate.
Sierra’s twitter post is really something difficult to put into practice when you place it into the context of the language classroom. “Upgrade your user.” What I have often found is that during the class – or a series of classes, the student is able to “upgrade.” They seem to temporarily acquire a new word, phrase, or grammar skill – but after leaving the classroom it’s like that upgrade didn’t take. It didn’t filter down to their day to day use of the language.

How to increase Assimilation
It’s not fire and forget. When you’re learning a language, and having it STICK, I think you need to prepare yourself for extremely focused repetition. Never be afraid to step back and recycle previous lesson material. That could be vocabulary words, Grammar exercises, etc. Never assume that just because your student has passed a test or finished a chapter that the material has been copied to their hard drive.

Question: Would it hurt to actually review completed CEFR objectives with your students and let them know that they have mastered that skill? Encourage students to notice their own abilities – perhaps it’s not as apparent to them as you may think.

Provide ample Kick Ass time in class: Make sure your students have time to show off what they can do. Develop presentations or activities which would allow students the opportunity to use their upgrades. (If you don’t use em, they’ll likely begin to disappear. )

How can you upgrade your students today? Think about it – and PLEASE comment!