It can be a really hard decision. I’ve had to make this decision before, and I have had many classes in other languages in both group lessons and 1-to-1 format. Unfortunately, a lot of ELLs make the decision based on cost alone: group classes are cheaper!
But there are so many factors to consider, and when you think about them all, you realize that money is least important at the end of the day. So, I hope you will find a clear answer after we talk about it below.
If you are in a rush, skip to the quick comparison illustration!
By the way, if you don’t know what a group English class is: it’s when you take lessons where there is 1 teacher and 2 or more students. On the other hand, a 1-to-1 class is when there is 1 teacher and 1 student. If you didn’t know that, … eish.
It’s redundant to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of both, so we will just discuss the advantages of each.
Advantages of 1-to-1 lessons
All of the advantages of 1-to-1 lessons comes down to a single point: individualized. 1-to-1 classes are individualized on a number of levels.
1-to-1 lessons fit your schedule
This is often the key factor for a lot of language learners, especially business professionals! They simply don’t have the flexibility to join a group class. Group class times are set in stone. Language lessons at schools and universities are like this.
Unemployed people generally can join group classes without more difficulty than a shuffle of hobby times. But if you can’t make that time, you just can’t take the lessons! Then you have to look for 1-to-1 lessons that you can take when others aren’t having classes.
1-to-1 lessons match your pace
With a group of students, the teacher follows a specific schedule that matches the majority of students in the class. If you learn faster or slower than them, you miss out a lot.
If you learn 1-to-1, then it’s very easy for your teacher to move on to new content if you learn quickly, or slow down and practice extra if you didn’t get something. That’s why 1-to-1 lessons are generally more effective for language learning and makes the higher price tag quite justifiable.
1-to-1 lessons have individualized content
Do you want to talk about sports? That’s easy if you are the only student in class! It’s not so easy if you are 1 of 10 students. Generally speaking, the student has a lot more control of the content of 1-to-1 lessons. That is a great advantage for people who are only interested in learning something specific.
Group lessons tend to focus on a little bit of what everybody needs, not necessarily what you need. Why would you want to learn about pets when you’re a doctor who struggles to discuss your patients’ problems every day at work?
Advantages of group lessons
The great things about group lessons can’t be easily boiled down to one point. There are a variety of benefits. Maybe that’s just it: variety. Group lessons give variety.
Group lessons give a variety of voices
We all have a few great memories of group lessons where our classmates made us laugh or made us think of something in a brand new way. At the same time, we have very few memories of times our teachers did that (I actually remember many times I simply thought, “Yeah right!” about my teachers’ ideas!).
There’s something different about our peer’s perspective. It doesn’t make us defensive. It isn’t threatening. And it can often be fresh and interesting, even if we disagree!
But if we disagree with the teacher, it’s hard to continue that conversation without feeling uncomfortable, maybe because we feel like the teacher is our authority or because we know that we will always lose an argument with the English teacher because his level of English is so much higher than mine! Every time I tried to disagree with my Chinese teachers, they just went off on a long rant of things I didn’t understand, and I simply went, “Ah.”
But when I disagree with my classmates there is always a fun and playful try-to-say-what-you-mean-in-broken-Chinese-while-we-both-laugh-and-smile-at-each-other experience.
Group lessons give a variety of motivations
Tired of the teacher pressuring you every week in your 1-to-1 to study harder and do your homework? You’re not alone! If your teacher is your only motivation, then it’s easy to become a demotivated learner. I personally have motivation outside of my lessons, and pleasing my teacher is the least of my concerns, but some of us language learners don’t feel that way.
There is something motivating about being a group learning together. Of course, nobody wants to be the one guy that didn’t do his homework, but more importantly, it’s a sort of social confirmation when we achieve things together. When the whole class does the homework and completes a course together, we feel a sense of comradery.
It’s also motivating to keep up with the group. When I’m walking on my own in the late evening, man! I can walk slow! But when I’m walking with a group, I have to keep up. I hate being the one guy that’s 20 meters behind the group! Being in a group can make us pull up our bootstraps and put in extra effort. It’s the good side of peer pressure.
Group lessons give a variety of social stimuli
If you are an extrovert, nothing drags you down like being alone. That can have a negative effect on your learning if you don’t feel a strong connection with your language teacher. For some, it’s refreshing and exciting to be able to talk with different classmates for each activity. The more the merrier! So what if the class pace isn’t perfect for me, I made lots of great friends in this class!
My wife is like this. When the teacher is focusing on another student, she feels like she can relax and take a bit of a break. Then she is energized when she gets to try to communicate with someone she doesn’t usually talk to.
Of course, introverts can be the opposite. The frustrations of a multilevel classroom are bigger than the social gains of being in a group. Introverts tend to open up in 1-to-1 situations and outperform themselves.
This is a lot like me. Nothing irritates me more than when the teacher explains something over and over to a lower level student, and I’m sitting there thinking, “Come on! Let’s go! What’s next?” and I find it so humiliating when the teacher focuses on someone stronger than me because they are more fluent, and I have to stick my neck out to get into the conversation.
There are always exceptions to the rule, and there are always ways around this. You can have 1-to-1 lessons with a variety of teachers if you are an extrovert, or you can always sit next to your buddy in a group class if you are an introvert.
The simple answer
We can learn a new word before we get the conclusion: outlier. An outlier is someone who doesn’t fit in to the average. They are unique, different, or separate.
This isn’t a negative term. You could be an outlier because you learn faster than average. You could be an outlier because your schedule doesn’t fit everyone else’s. It includes the positive and negative side of not being like everyone else.
What matters is, if you are an outlier, you are probably better off taking 1-to-1 classes. If you can learn within a group, are a people person, and find satisfaction in adapting to others, you should go with group lessons (unless your schedule won’t allow it, in which case you would be an outlier!).
If you are an outlier, you are probably better off taking 1-to-1 classes.
I hope this helps you know better what format works for you, so you can better know how to study English and grow like a tree!
Practice the language you just read with these activities!