For those students deemed to be very weak, a remedial interview may be provided. When I first came to Assumption University, I was very skeptical about the merits of the personal interview as a teaching device. My own experience as an interviewer and my observations of other instructors, however, have made me a firm believer in it. Indeed, in the hands of a resourceful teacher the personal interview can create miracles. I have seen shy students, who never uttered a word in class, happily chatting away for minutes without a hint of shyness.
Thai students are notoriously reluctant to talk in class.
They seem to be afraid of making fools of themselves in front of their classmates. Alone with the instructor, however, secure in the knowledge that the instructor will not laugh at their mistakes when they speak in English, they reveal themselves as gregarious, to say the least. Almost all the students I interviewed expressed their satisfaction with the exercise and exhibited a genuine desire to communicate in English. As for the instructors, most found the interview a pleasant diversion from the tedious duties of the classroom, and they welcomed the opportunity to show the students their real character. In a class, even in a relatively small class of about 30 or so students, the teacher remains aloof, somewhat unapproachable to his or her students, partly because of the formal atmosphere of the classroom and partly because he or she is perceived by the students, rightly or wrongly, as different.