Some individuals hold the view that learning a language in small classes is more effective, since it provides better concentration and teacher’s assistance, while others believe that the number of students in the classes does not make a notable difference. Personally, I reckon that classes with fewer people are more efficient and should be prioritized.
On the one hand, willingness of students to learn languages is the key to their dedication and attention during the lessons. Their desire to improve depends mostly on themselves, rather than on the number of studens in the classes. For that reason, reducing the number of individuals during the lessons may not be sufficient to encourage people to pay more attention and improve more rapidly. For example, in Russian universities students learning languages typically study in large groups, and still, the majority of them do it successfully, without the necessity to be divided to smaller classes.
On the other hand, smaller classes provide teachers with an opportunity to pay more attention to each students. It may result in better understanding of a topic in a class and improve the academic performance of learners. Not only does it help students to be obsorbed by the learning process, but it also facilitates them being constantly involved in the process. In other words, when the number of individuals during the lessons is large, it is challenging for teachers to make everyone busy with the tasks. For instance, during the English lesson in language-learning school “Benedict” teachers are supposed to listen to every student speaking in order to highlight some mistakes and give advice. Correspondingly, the smaller the number of people in the class, the easier it is to accomplish this goal. Were the class big, it would take a long time and leave students waiting for their turn.
In conclusion, even though in some cases smaller classes cannot solve some issues, it is still a better way for students to learn, since it provides teachers with the opportunity to pay more attention to every individual and does not require waiting a long time for teacher’s assistence and feedback by the students. For that reason, I strongly believe that creating small classes should be encouraged.