I used to have an evil Spanish teacher who would catch me making a mistake, or not reading a word properly in a class of 25 or more. I have no idea how or why she did it, but her method was “Shame provides the best lessons for all!”. She also had a nasty habit of looking at my paper and calling on me to answer the single question I got wrong in the entire exercise, then docking my homework score entirely. I really hated that woman. I was the only one that openly questioned her teaching “method” in a class of the largest group of brown nosing in school, so got put on the hot seat daily.

Those bad experiences caused me to stop studying Spanish entirely, and soured me on a lot of my foreign language learning study habits. This is why I am strongly against a ridicule based discipline system whenever possible. I try to help students before they earn my wrath.

As for reading and following along, I always liked that. Of course, I generally like reading, so I’m weird. Pedagogically, there are mixed opinions on this teaching technique. Struggling students really don’t get much out of it. Once they get lost following along it’s very difficult for them to find their place again. This usually results in spacing out. Of course, they could just not try from the get go. But it’s hard to gauge how much they are trying to follow along silently.

Taking a guitar class now and learning to read music, I can sympathize. Once I miss a note when we’re playing along in class I have a very hard time recovering and rejoining the group.