Following my personal mantra “the more you do, the better for your language“ I rarely miss the opportunity to give my students a reason to use the language as much as they can outside the classes. Knowing how learning a foreign language works, you can’t help but be saddened by such a reaction. Yes, I can see some of my students‘ eyes glowing with excitement and relief when I tentatively suggest I won’t assign any home preparation for our next lesson (the reasons vary but most often there is only a very short time between the two lessons or I’m aware that they have a really busy week ahead of them). All of this made me think about the concept of homework and all the myths and misconceptions attached to it.įirst of all, let me address those who’re still sitting on the fence about whether or not homework is really necessary. He also said that prior to the homework, he hadn’t written anything in English since primary school. Later in the week he sent me an e-mail with the text, begging me to be lenient with him because the task was really hard for him. I assigned a piece of written homework to a student with whom I’d only just started cooperating. The first one was my colleague’s post about how one of her students bribed her with something akin to a granola bar because she hadn’t done her homework and thought the offering would make it all right (or better). Two things that happened last week inspired me to write this post.

Have you done your homework yet