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READ THE FULL SERIES: DEFEATING THE TIME THIEF
- Part 1: Beat the Time Thief: Your Daily Plan
- Part 2: Why Homework is the "Brick Wall" of Fluency (You are here)
- Part 3: Learning English Outside the Classroom
We all know the feeling. You finish a great English lesson, full of energy and new knowledge. Your English teacher gives you some homework exercises, which you fully intend to do. But then life hits. The next week comes around, and you’re thinking of your next excuse to your teacher as to why you haven’t got your homework - again!
Work, family, chores—suddenly, the hours you planned to spend reviewing your notes and doing exercises have flown by. You look up and realize the Time Thief has struck again.
If you’re ambitious and driven, you likely feel frustrated and maybe even a little guilty when you fail to do your homework. You're not lazy; you’re simply battling against a persistent enemy - one of seven English learning villains.
This villain, the Time Thief, thrives on inconsistency and your lack of time structure.
Today, we're going to talk about the importance.
The Question Every Teacher Dreads: "Can We Check It Next Week?"
Imagine this common scenario when you greet your teacher:
Student: "I'm fine. Look, I know you gave me some homework last time, but can we do it for next week? Because I just didn't have time to do my homework."
At this point, your teacher has an option. They can let it slide, or they can put their foot down and say, "Actually, we need to wing it." We have to do it on the fly—and there's a serious reason why you need to do that. As a teacher, I simply can't just let something like that go.
For all you English teachers out there, you know what I mean.
The Crumbly Foundation: the Missing Layer of Bricks
Language learning is built on top of one principle after the other. Oftentimes, the homework your teacher gives you is key to understanding and taking the next step.
Imagine you're building a brick wall and you forgot the bricks that go on the third layer. You can't say, "Well, let's just build the layer above and we'll come back and fill those other bricks in later." No, it's too late. The wall is built and it will have crumbly foundations.
You actually need to do your homework when the teacher gives it to you because that homework is often dependent on the next thing he or she wants to do with you.
Story Time: Yes, The Lesson Today Actually depends on the Homework I gave
I often “rail against” English coursebooks for foreigners or non-native speakers (Generic Textbook Golem), but they’re not all bad. In fact, I’m a big fan of several books in my library, especially the My Perspectives (1-5) series.
I love how each module progresses. Each one is divided into 7 units (A-G) where the vocabulary (A) leads into the listening unit (B) which contains the sentences that you’ll study in the grammar unit (C). Then you do the reading in (D) which also contains sentences for you to study in the grammar unit (E).
So, let’s say I gave you unit D to do for homework—a reading with some comprehension questions—and you failed to do the reading and exercises. My plan was likely to check your work, discuss the text for speaking practice, and then transition into the next phase of the lesson.
Since you hadn’t done your homework, we’ll spend more time doing the reading and comprehension exercises together, leaving less time for what I’d had planned next. The problem isn't the homework itself; it’s the chain reaction of delay it creates.
You May Not Know it, but your Teacher Has a Plan for your Lessons
Teachers divide class time carefully between what must be done with an instructor and what should be done at home. When you don't do the home portion, we cannot simply push it back without sacrificing today's lesson objectives. Waiting for "next time" is effectively canceling today's progress because today was built on that homework foundation.
Kicking the Can Down the Road Kicks Down the Syllabus
Native speaker lessons are an investment. If you have 32 lessons a year and forget your homework six times, that's six times the teacher has to adjust the plan. This pushes down the timeframe of the syllabus, and by the end of the year, there's a significant amount of material you simply never reached. So, let's see how this scene plays out between student and teacher with a short video reenactment.
Maximize Your Money's Worth: Homework's True Return on Investment (ROI)
If you want to get your maximum money's worth, do the homework when you're supposed to. When my students apologize for missing assignments, I tell them it's not me they should apologize to—it's their own pocketbook.
Reserving Class Time for Higher Impact
Teachers assign homework to reserve lesson time for high-impact activities. Do you want your 55 minutes spent reading aloud for a comprehension check, or having a complex grammatical topic explained? The high-value work happens in the explanation and the nuance, but you lose that time if the teacher has to cover the basics you should have prepared at home.
The Lesson Count Penalty
I have students who have been in the same book for two years. This happens partly because we take our time, but largely because forgotten homework constantly pushes back the context for the lessons. You pay the price by taking a less-effective lesson.
Building Your Wall Right: Homework and The Smart Plan
The foundation of fluency is built in layers. If the first layer of grammar becomes concrete but the second doesn't stick, you’re forced into a cycle of unlearning and relearning. Your homework is foundational and contextual for your next lesson, but it shouldn't be your only practice.
The Smart Plan partners with your homework to make progress permanent:
- Homework (Team Development): The reading and grammar prep that gets you ready for high-impact classroom discussion.
- The Smart Plan (Individual Skills): Working on parts of speech, sentence structure, and vocabulary until they are automatic.
By making foundations automatic, you remove layers of stress. You can focus on the "nuance" (conditionals, perfect tenses) because you aren't struggling just to build a basic sentence. To get better in the game, you have to put in the work outside of practice to perfect your individual skills. That's the real key to fluency.
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So there you have it. Homework is super important to your English learning journey as is having a regular skills practice plan on the side. By doing skill work plus the homework your teacher sets out for you, you give yourself that daily exposure and practice you need to advance in English.
Please comment below with your stories. I’d love to hear what it’s like from your perspective. How do you spend your time learning English in and outside of the classroom?
