Clever Geek Handbook

Is there any sense of intensive English?





You just heard about how to lose weight in 3 days, pump up the old-fashioned way in a month and, of course, learn English in 2 weeks. For some reason, many people think that they will be able to learn what others spend half a year or more on such courses. It is time to discuss this format of training, its benefit or harm, the possible results.



Intensive - Pros and Cons



Let us, for a start, define what is intensive in terms of learning English. These are such courses that are available in any school of English, and we are not an exception. As a rule, they last 1-2 months for 4-6 lessons per week and from 2 to 6 (yes!) Hours per day.



We decompose their advantages:





This is not advertising of such courses - the results are achieved if everything is built methodologically correctly and the load is distributed evenly or incrementally.



Cons, of which a lot:





To make it clearer, let's draw an analogy with the study of C ++ and a person who has just graduated from the university. Imagine that he has found a vacancy for a programmer of his dream, and you can only apply for a vacancy in the coming month!



And now he is already conducting studies of variables and constants, streams, pointers, and so on, 6 days a week, working 2-3 hours at a time, studying dozens or even hundreds of pages of material and doing a bunch of practical exercises (well, if they do given in the course). At the same time, the quality of knowledge that it receives is relatively low, because there is no time to explain, you need to do more and quickly, and understanding of C ++ will come later!



What is the result? A certain goal has been achieved, a lot of energy has been spent and the person has undergone quite stressful conditions due to the abundant workload in a short time. But it turned out just to remember how to crack simple programs and sites, because there were practical tasks on this topic.



But will such knowledge remain in the head over the next two or three weeks? Or do you have to make constant efforts to keep even such a small achievement?



Intensive goals



So we smoothly approached the definition of the goals of intensives - a small amount of information in a short time, which will not last in memory without a constant load. In addition, before the intensive it is better to have a certain training, otherwise there will be a serious “cracking” from the habit.



This does not mean that there is no practical benefit from the intensives. Just have a clear and narrow specificity:





Intensives - Alternatives



For any more voluminous or long-term goal, such as passing the whole level of Pre-Intermediate English, standard courses are more suitable - from 5 months to 1 year. Here are the main reasons why:





Such courses are perfect for everyone - both beginners without prior training and those who have a base, wanting to improve their level and get a conscious, long-term result.



For all those who, nevertheless, need everything at once, but in order not to be so painful, there is a good alternative. It is, in fact, something between an intensives and the usual tutoring activities — individual intensives via Skype. Judge for yourself, there are a lot of advantages:





The disadvantage is that communication will take place only with one teacher and there will be no opportunity to talk with other students, therefore the language barrier will be overcome longer. And, again, these are all the same short-term tasks, just in a more convenient format.



Intensive - conclusions



What we have in the end:





It turns out that you need to go to intensives with a clear and short-term goal, for other cases you should pay attention to full-fledged courses - individually or as a group.



If you are convinced that during the intensive period you will pass a whole level from scratch, you shouldn’t believe it, since the quality of such courses is definitely low. Judge for yourself, quite a lot of people are joining the courses, they are united into large groups and we create a psychological effect of excitement - as if everyone needs these courses and there is simply no end to the customers.



From the point of view of sales, everything is also clear - more people, more money, even if at the expense of the quality of such classes, at which earning the teacher’s attention is still a task. From a pedagogical point of view, everything is also quite simple - there is a noticeable short-term and point effect in the form of separate topics on vocabulary or grammar, but in no way a comprehensive understanding of the language system.



What is the conclusion? Of course, choosing the format and timing of training is your personal choice. We just recommend to take it as a rule to devote 5 to 15 minutes of time per day to English classes on our own, in order to constantly be in good shape and not lose the acquired skills, in addition to regular regular classes with a teacher. In case you have not studied English, we advise you to start practicing today and then you simply will not need intensives!



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