My experience of online language classes

Throwback to when I did a week of intensive Italian classes during Covid!

With a week of annual leave coming up, most shops and restaurants still closed, social distancing still in place, and any jobs around the house done long ago I was faced with the prospect of a week with nothing to do. Anyone who knows me well can imagine my reaction to this – doing nothing is just not something I know how to do! After looking at a couple of options I decided to sign up for a week long  semi intensive Italian course with Dilit International House Rome, with 3 hours of classes every morning for a week.  I’ve done this before with Spanish and Italian, building them into a holiday in Alicante and Palermo – study in the morning and sightseeing or sunbathing with my husband in the afternoon.  This time of course it was remote with classes by zoom. 

We were 8 students altogether, dialling in from various parts of the world including the UK, Italy, Norway and Japan. I had done a level test by zoom about a week before and was placed in the B2 class which felt like the right level – challenging but not to the point where I had no idea what was going on. Going just a little out of your comfort zone is where you learn most and the lessons were really good for this.  It was very collaborative with the students correcting each other and learning as much from each other as we did from the teacher – a good thing!  Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, checking I knew which buttons to press to leave the breakout room without leaving the call etc.  Some of the other students had been there for many weeks already and knew each other, which I’m used to from previous experiences but it honestly didn’t matter, I felt like part of the group immediately.

In a way we get to know the classmates and teacher more personally – we see inside their homes, therefore their lives in a way that we don’t see when we all come together in a neutral setting like a classroom.  The icebreakers need to be a bit more imaginative but that’s a good thing and again we learn something about each other that we might not if we were in a room together.   For our first game we had 30 seconds to grab an object from our home that represents something about us, or holds a particular memory. We held them in front of the camera and talked about why they were important to us.  Among other things we had a cactus that has moved apartment countless times with its owner, a book in Japanese about Italian wines (we learned a little Japanese from the cover!) and mine, a keyring of Santa Maria di Guadalupe given to me as a good luck charm by some Spanish friends when I did my Spanish DELE C1 exam.

I really have to give credit to the teachers, who have had to change and adapt quickly to their new ways of working.  Our teacher Luisa made really good use of zoom breakout rooms, and did well to make sure that we all engaged with the class and with one another. Not an easy job at the best of times but even more difficult when you can’t go to the espresso bar downstairs together during the break! Zoom breakout rooms requires a level of trust and faith in your students way above that of a classroom environment – the teacher cannot see what is going on or walk around the room listening in, instead they rely completely on the students reaching out to them for help if needed.  The content was varied and at the right level for us, and despite being at home and in front of screens, Luisa had us on our feet acting out roleplays, enthusiastically practising our accents (and hand gestures of course – we are Italian!).  It was really impressive the way she managed to still capture the feeling of actually being together.  Despite it being remote I would say it’s the best intensive group class experience I’ve had, especially if you make the effort to immerse yourself in the language in the afternoons/evenings by watching films etc to substitute the normal extra activities.   It can never replace being in the country for real, but for those who can’t just jump on a plane, it’s a worthwhile alternative