Best learning background is a fear free environment.

"Best learning background is a fear free environment" this is something came to my mind when I attend the speech craft program at Exilesoft. The same idea was proved by the British Council English  Course I attended at the office, few months back.

As I understood; these are few things which helps to make a fear free environment;

1. Friendly relationship between teacher and students
   If teacher act as the king in class room and he expect all students to treat him as the king then a big unseen barrier will create between the students and teacher. Sometimes teachers might think to build respect from this behavior. But it will never be a respect but a big fear to the teacher. Students' creativity goes down if they are afraid of the teacher. Also if they have anything doubtful to clarify they won't speak at the class room. This is what happen in most of the government school class rooms and that's why it's famous that Sri Lankan's usually don't raise questions in public seminars even after they grown up.
2. Teacher is nearby to every student
   If a class has hundreds of students and teacher has only 1 * 2 feet area in front of the class room then students don't get chances to reach to the teacher. They never get chances to be friendly with teacher or at least to talk with him/her. But of course if students get more chances to talk with the teacher and if he is a friendly one then it will be a great fear free environment to learn.
3. Less number of students in the class
   Number of participants of the class also has impact to the individual's interaction to lessons. Every one in the class room may become good friends easily if it is only few students. This may never happen in a situation with hundreds of students. Students are not afraid to ask questions or clarifications among friends. So the environment become fear free. And the other hand each and every student get more attention when the number of them are few.
4. Willingness to learn from mistakes
   It is said that "The best lessons are learned from mistakes". And also class room is a place that everyone can learn. So there should not be any reason to be afraid to make mistakes at the class room. This is some thing that I personally experienced at my English course. Some times I wrote the wrong answer which was doubtful to me even if I knew the correct answer. Then teacher explained why it was wrong. If I wrote the correct answer at that time, I would never get a chance to learn why that doubtful answer was wrong. Unfortunately that attitude is not spread among the students. Many of the teachers expect correct answers always. So students are afraid to make mistakes to learn from them. But learning will be more successful in an environment where mistakes are encouraged.
5. Improved self- esteem
   I believe creativity works at it's best when some one works with high self- esteem. If teacher gives close attention to every one and makes them feel he/she is important to the class then it will be a place that can learn with self confidence and fearlessly.

These are the things I found as the specialties in my class compared to the many of classes I attended from my child hood. I felt this is all about learning in fear free environment with self confidence.  I experienced that learning environment helped to learn effectively. What I can say at last is, if you want to gain 100% in learning then find fear free environment.