Corsi di recupero - Make-up lessons
Today I'm going to talk about something which I'm struggling to translate in English. Here in Italy, students obviously receive their grades at the end of the school year and, if they receive a low grade in a subject, they have to take an exam in September to prove that they've caught up with the rest of the class.
In between, usually in June and July after school finishes, these students are given the opportunity to attend "corsi di recupero", which are in-depth and make-up lessons. Sometimes they are held by the same teacher they had during the school year and sometimes they are assigned to an external teacher who, in this case, was myself.
I have to say it was a very positive experience. I had three courses with 1st and 2nd year students. Make-up lessons can be very useful for those students who have a slower learning pace than the rest of the class, especially in Italian learning context, which does not differentiate according to the degree of students' ability.
Before planning the courses, I looked for some advice id Paolo Balboni, Le sfide di Babele, 2011 (http://www.amazon.it/Le-Sfide-Babele-Terza-Edizione/dp/8860083575) which is an evergreen for language teachers in Italy.
According to him, make-up courses must be structured in two main phases:
in-depth thought: students have the opportunity to think about a specific rule or subject and recover from memory what they actually know about it. Once done, they have to re-create the rule with the help of the teacher
practice: smaller classes and a dedicated teacher can allow students to do exercises and be immediately helped and corrected.
According to my experience, it was a good opportunity for the students to revise some vary basic subjects they would feel ashamed of asking in class. In order to set a positive environment you have to start from what they (sometimes very little) know and value it even if it's very much below the required standard. They will feel more confident and follow you in more advanced subjects.
Their thought at the end of the class must be: "you see, I know something in English after all!"