Introducing Homework Club!

For many students who come from conventional education systems, the idea of homework is almost like a punishment! We all remember coming home from school and being ‘forced’ to dedicate another hour or two of our precious daylight hours to completing tasks from school. At university, there was no way to pass the exams without extra study. Over the years, homework got a bad rap. (* a bad reputation)

Bart Simpson definitely doesn’t agree with his homework tasks!

Yet when learning a foreign language, studying on your own can be highly beneficial. You take concepts and words from your lessons and try them out in different ways and scenarios, building your vocabulary networks and grammar knowledge at the same time. It’s the perfect opportunity to review what you’ve already learned, and repeat grammar concepts to get them even deeper in your long term memory. (See our post on spaced repetition for more details on reviewing.)

Homer knows the importance of repetition!

The Plant Method believes that homework can be fun, engaging, and rewarding. Our tasks/assignments are far from the worksheets of your grade school days. We’re going to use your own interests as well as the ‘passive’ uses of language to create amazing homework tasks for you to complete!

Ideal homework comes in two different ways: CREATE and CONSUME

With the addition of interesting and engaging homework, you are now using ALL the skills needed for acquiring a foreign language: speaking, writing, listening, and reading.

What is the Homework Club?

The homework club is a service provided to English language learners (other languages, such as Czech, are coming!) For a nominal (*small) fee, you get five interesting and varied homework assignments to complete at your own pace. Once you hand them in, they are corrected and sent back with suggestions on how to improve! When you’re ready for another five assignments, just pay the fee again! (By the way, the fee is 1000 Kc per 5 assignments!)

What are the benefits?

• it’s motivating to receive tasks (and not have to think of them spontaneously or by yourself)
• completing a task is also motivating
• receiving corrections highlights where you can focus your energy for the next task
• the tasks will be incredibly diverse, helping you access different parts of your language skills
• you can compete with other learners in our point system and get rewards!

Also…

• paying this small fee keeps you accountable and helps you reach your goal. You have some skin in the game, which means you have invested money in it and you are more liable to make it a priority

What to be careful of…

• Doing homework should always be enjoyable. If you don’t like the assignment, don’t do it! Do something else and share that instead.
• Be kind to yourself. If you’re busy and can’t complete an assignment in a short time period, skip this assignment or do it whenever you can or ask for something else!
• No apologies are necessary. No excuses, either. Maybe your dog really has eaten your homework, but you’re never going to be penalised for not completing a task.

How to begin?

• Sign up by sending an email with your interest to info@theplantmethod.com
• You’ll get an invoice for 1000 Kc, to be paid within a week
• Once the invoice is paid, you’ll get a link to a page with the first five tasks!
• Complete the tasks in any order, it really doesn’t matter!
• Send each completed task to jen@theplantmethod.com

That’s it! I look forward to seeing your assignments!