Why do students choose to not continue on in our four year programs? After all, a four year program of language instruction should not be a one or two year program. It should be a four year program.
Students, if our instruction was interesting, would not drop out of our programs after completing only one or two years.
Why do they do this?
It is because our instruction is not interesting to them. It does not motivate them. It is like bad breath to them.
Our traditional instruction stinks. It has always stunk. The teeth in our mouth have been and in many schools are still rotten, and the stink of rotting teach reaches our students, who want to enjoy something beautiful in their language instruction, and they recoil. That’s what grammar instruction does to most kids.
We need to go to the dentist, fix our stinking teach, learn to teach in the real way, and then our programs will be actual real four year programs. Then we will retain our students and keep our jobs because we want to and not because we have to and then we will no longer be in the hellish and stinking state that we are in now.
Our profession has had bad breath for long enough now. It’s not fun to go to the dentist, but it’s often kind of necessary. How much longer can kids take the traditional methods?