You probably all know someone who has had to play catch-up in a class, and how incredibly hard it is to stay motivated.
This is especially true because our teachers are often the main source from which we derive our confidence, so if the teacher says I am rubbish at Spanish, it’s reasonable for me to believe that I am rubbish at Spanish. But what if you are just a little behind?! It could be that you joined the class part-way through the course, or that perhaps because of covid or for some other reason you have missed a bunch of lessons.
This happened to my student, who we’ll call Bobbie. Bobbie changed schools in Year 8, having completed a year of French at her old school. She was excited and motivated to learn Spanish as she has family in Spain, and thus she attended her first Spanish class filled with enthusiasm. However the Spanish class filled with students who had already been studying for a year and her Spanish teacher conducted this first class almost entirely in Spanish. Like many others before her, Bobbie arrived home in floods of tears, devastated and with the strong conviction that she was terrible at Spanish and that she had made the wrong decision choosing to study Spanish – such a sad result, when Bobbie is a teachers dream : a motivated, enthusiastic student with a real drive to learn!
Fortunately Bobbie’s Mum immediately reached out to us at Total Fluency, asking how Bobbie could catch-up on the lost year. Bobbie signed up for our Total Fluency Fast programme and together we agree a plan. Since October Bobbie has been using the TFFast app for 10 minutes per day and attending weekly 1/2 hour online coaching sessions. Starting from the point where both her classwork and homework were unintelligible we reached an exciting milestone in yesterday’s coaching session when Bobbie proudly reported to me that her end of term report shows: OUTSTANDING classwork, EXCELLENT homework – a full 3 months ahead of her goal of catching up by September 2022.
Congratulations to Bobbie!! And to all those students out there who have caught up!