Traditional grammar and free conversation are tools, each with positives and negatives. But some students believe they’re the only ways to have an English class.

Last video, I talked about traditional grammar. I’ve found that in many, many cases it does not help students speak or understand English better! In many cases, students become frustrated with traditional grammar, and then hope, and believe that the solution is free conversation.

Many students believe they can learn the grammar naturally with free conversation. Unfortunately, in my experience, this is not the case for most adults.

But free conversation is a very useful tool. It’s excellent for improving:
1) A student’s speaking fluency
2) Their listening comprehension
3) And for increasing their confidence

And all of these are very important. So, for my students who have an intermediate level or higher, I definitely include free conversation in part of our classes.

But what I’ve found is that if that’s the only tool that is used, some students tend to repeat the same mistakes, and do not increase the variety of structures they use when they speak.

What I’ve found is that if I include more tools:
1) Special listening comprehension exercises
2) Functions, like giving opinions, ways we agree, disagree, make suggestions, etc.
3) And include speaking exercises that are partially structured, not free, partially guided,

All of this, in addition to free conversation, does help a student improve their speaking and listening.

On my website I have many courses, and all of them have some combination of these different tools.

In my next video, I will be talking about ways to improve your speaking, six tips, six factors that you need to know to improve your speaking faster! I look forward to seeing you then. Thank you.