If you have studied English for years and still don’t speak, “conversation classes” sound like the perfect solution. If the problem is speaking, just practise talking. Robin Callan, the creator of the Callan Method, saw it differently: he called chatting the greatest enemy of language learning. Here is why.
In free conversation you only practise what you already know
When the conversation is free, everyone naturally uses the words they know and avoids the ones they don’t. You repeat your current English, with the same mistakes. When a new word comes up, it is explained once and forgotten, because nobody returns to it in the next lessons.
The teacher talks, or the most outgoing student
In group conversation classes the pattern repeats itself: the teacher talks a lot, one or two extroverts talk the rest, and the others spend the lesson almost silent. Even in private lessons, the teacher often ends up talking more than the student.
Pausing to think slows everything down
When the teacher asks “why?” and opens a debate, the student stops, searches for words, hesitates and starts again. Callan made a simple calculation: ten minutes of chat per lesson, plus five minutes’ late start and five minutes of small talk, waste 40% of a 50-minute lesson. A ten-month course becomes a fourteen-month course, for exactly the same result.
So how do you develop conversation?
With controlled conversation. Instead of letting the topic drift, the teacher asks prepared questions that make you use exactly the words and tenses you need to learn. You answer in full sentences, your pronunciation is corrected on the spot and the same structures come back in the next lessons until they come out effortlessly.
It is still conversation: questions, answers, understanding and speaking all the time. The difference is that every minute has a purpose.
When will I be able to talk freely?
Many students want to “let go” halfway through the course. Understandable, but at that point there isn’t yet enough vocabulary for a real conversation. Callan observed that by the final stages the problem solves itself: the student simply can. Cambridge exams, which include a conversation with the examiner, show it objectively.
Is there a place for free conversation?
Of course: colleagues, films, travel and meetings in English are excellent ways to use what you have learned. They just shouldn’t take up lesson time, which is for learning what you don’t know yet. Read also how to stop translating in your head.
This article was inspired by Mr Q’s study of the handbooks written by Robin K. T. Callan and by the dozens of hours of conversation he had with Mr Robin Callan at his home, conversations that were recorded and that Mr Q considers a treasure trove of knowledge.