When I was a young lad learning how to swim, the program I was in gave me a certificate with the various skills I had to master to become a proficient swimmer. Breathe out underwater. Dead man's float. Doggy paddle. Front crawl. As I acquired each skill they gave me a gold sticker to mark my progress on the certificate. One day, I lost my certificate. It was devastating.

Thinking about how effective this was at motivating me to master swimming skills, I decided to try the same thing with my first year English classes. It was WILDLY successful. Toot. Toot.

My initial idea with the skills would be that once a student had demonstrated to me that she was capable with it, she would then get her sticker posted on the wall. This would in turn license her to be an instructor for the students who hadn't mastered it yet. In this manner, the students who quickly learned the skills would get the opportunity to continue practicing them, plus save me the trouble of actually doing any teaching!

Although there were a few lazy students who finished all ten skills and never came back, I had a few star teachers who during every break would work with other students to improve their skills. Normally when I walk by classrooms at the college, I see students texting on their phones, chatting with their friends, or generally vegging out. It was a joy instead to hear my students quizzing each other "Are you a student? Do you have friends? Does Gulzhan Adilkizi like teaching English?"

At first the students were wary of having their results on the wall for everybody to see, but it turned out to be a great motivator. After every lesson they would ask me when I was available to assess their progress. They came to school two hours before lessons started to practice and test. They quizzed each other in the hallways. They got angry and cried when I failed them. Then they came back the next day and passed. It was great.

Probably the greatest success was with one student who started out very near the bottom of the class. Conversations with her were impossible, and when I first tested her she didn't even know the alphabet. Luckily for her, she is good friends with the best student in the class who patiently coached her, observed her tests, worked on her weak points, and prepared her for the next skill. She started mastering a skill a week and when she only had Present Simple and Past Simple left, she came to me for the test. I knew she had been working with her private tutor on Present Simple and figured she would easily pass, which she did. When she finished, I congratulated her on only having one more. She immediately replied that she also wanted to take the Past Simple test. Her tutor gave her a shocked look.

"But we haven't worked on that yet!"

"I know. I taught myself."

I was a little concerned that she was setting herself up for failure, as her friend had been instrumental in working with her on all of the other skills. We started working and she successfully navigated affirmative past simple with regular and irregular verbs, negative past simple, and finally questions. Sure enough, she had successfully taught herself Past Simple, much to her tutor's surprise and my delight.

The following are some reasons that I think they responded so well to this.

1) Each skill was manageable. For the average student, a skill took about a week to really learn, so they were able to see their progress often.

2) It was individual. I'm convinced that they don't have a word for cheating in Kazakh, because every time a student describes an action that is blatant cheating, they use the English verb "to help." Hence, when I speak Kazakh I've started using the phrase "destroying society" to describe cheating. During my tests, the students were not allowed to cheat and they knew it. Any progress they made was something that they could take pride in.

3) I failed them. If a student didn't have the skills, I was unafraid to fail them. From what I hear, failing here is just an opportunity for a teacher to make some extra cash. Although it made them angry, it made the progress that much sweeter because they knew it actually depended on their ability.

4) It was fun. In order to elicit negative responses, I had to ask interesting questions like "Does Almas eat babies? Do Americans like kissing pigs? Am I drinking your blood?" Diverging from the well worn path of watching TV, playing basketball and listening to music to which they're so accustomed was very refreshing for them and me.

5) Bribery. When a student finished all 10 skills, they got a fancy sticker (thanks Jenny!) and a chocolate bar from me.

The English skills they have learned will be useful, but there is an added benefit of this system that is more important for their long term success as language learners and teachers. They are learning how to teach each other and themselves. When teaching one-on-one, it doesn't take much time to realize that repeatedly explaining something won't help the student's ability to do it. What a student needs is practice actually making the sentences. When they first started teaching each other, they would always start the way their teachers do: with a diagram of the grammatical structure and a lengthy explanation. They have learned that this is incredibly ineffective. Now, they jump right in and ask each other questions, forcing the student to practice forming sentences using the correct grammar. Intuitively grasping that learning comes from doing will make them much more effective teachers in the future.

With the semester drawing to a close, all but 5 of my students were at one point able to perform all 10 skills satisfactorily. I'm sure they'll forget a lot during the summer, but I'm already thinking of the next 10 skills they'll have to master and the first is going to be a review.