Bigger is Not Always Better by Kaitlyn

Bigger is Not Always Better by Kaitlyn - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

Throughout my 12 years of schooling, I’ve encountered teachers of every type. Some teachers give lectures while others give worksheets every day. Although learning comes easily to me, there have been some teaching styles that I can admit were not the most effective. There has been one trend, however, that has helped me learn throughout the years. If I had to give a teacher advice to help me learn, I would tell them I learn best when content is explained to me one-on-one.

The best example of how one-on-one, or even small group, teaching has been in my French class. When I started taking French in the ninth grade, I became very interested in it. I could hardly stop myself from reading it and speaking it and I always wanted to learn more. However, especially in the first and second levels of the class, the class size was upwards of 30 students or more. My teacher, Mr. Benmoussa, usually spent time disciplining troublesome students so I didn’t get as much time as I would have liked to learn this language.

When I entered the third and fourth levels of the class, the number of students got smaller. Since these classes were not required, only the committed kids took the class. There were 11 of us in the class and it was fortunate that we were all friends and we all loved to speak French. This also made it much easier on Mr. Benmoussa.

Since Mr. Benmoussa didn’t have to waste time putting students in line, we had more time to do things that pertained to French. That’s when I really started to learn. We were expanding our vocabularies and knowledge of sentence structure every day. It was easier to ask questions and we had more time to ask as many questions as we liked to make sure we understood what we were learning. But it still wasn’t enough for me.

Some days after school, I stayed behind so I could speak to Mr. Benmoussa in French and ask any further questions I had. Learning this way as really helped me to understand how the French language works and even know some of the culture.

One-on-one teaching has helped me learn so much more than large class lectures would. Without the distraction of 30 other students, I have been able to expand my knowledge of the language I love. With any teacher, I feel that one-on-one teaching will help me learn about any subject in any case.