Question:
Please share some ideas for teaching one to one English lessons.
These are pretty tough lessons to teach cuz the teacher/student usually feel they have to be *on* all the time.
What activities can I include to mix in with the lesson to make it more interesting and fun?
I’ve tried role plays that the student requested, and an Email session (where we write back and forth to each other for 5 mins rather than speaking).
Know any good resources or do you have ideas? Please share. Thanks.
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No problem!
Firstly you need to find out their goals and aim for them in the most direct way possible.
If they’re studying for an exam or something, just find the relevant material and go over it with them, find out what their probelms are – grammar, pronunciation, confidence etc and work at them.
If they don’t have a really specific goal then you really have alot of options you can:
1. Find out their interests, research them on the internet, get magazines, use videos, newspapers – anything that relates to their interests and discuss them. If they have a difficulty – adopt the ‘diagnostic teaching method’ – this means when you find a problem, be it grammar or pronunciation deal with it on the spot and review it thoroughly the next lesson. These lessons will be great for the student as firstly, they’re in English and secondly, they get to talk about things they’re interested in – and so are likely to be more enthusiastic!
2. Some students don’t feel safe without a ‘structured approach’ they want to know what you’ll be teaching in 3 lessons time. For this kind of student, I recommend using a textbook that you can go through together. For adults – I suggest the ‘New Headway’ books (Oxford press) as they focus on all 4 language skills – pay attention to your students level as this series has 6 different levels. Don’t worry, you don’t neccessarily have to spend 100% of your time doing the text book – sometimes the student or yourself may have brought up an interesting topic – don’t be bound to the book, you can always let the conversation flow, then go back to the book.
Again, check out any reasources from Oxford or Cambridge reasources -they have the best English materials.
Also, you could consider doing a CELTA course (a kind of TEFL course) – I have and I now teach in Taiwan whilst enjoying my life!
Hope this has been thourough enough, if it hasn’t feel free to email me – teaching is very important, you have the chance to really make a difference.
Tell them to talk with their neighbors to learn. At first there will be some fears encountered, but share some little fact or snack, to “break the ice”, or join a volunteer group in your locality to intermingle. You will get some laughs too.
It should be just like teaching any other language. For instance, when learning to speak Spanish my teacher typed and cut up a bunch of descriptions of advertisements in Spanish. The advertisements were off of cereal boxes, magazines, etc. and had pictures of celebrities that we all knew, and we had to match the Spanish description to the picture. We all loved this game because it took something familiar to us and let us talk about it in Spanish. Think of something like that. Slowly ease them into learning English by placing something familiar in the mix. Hopefully this helps!!!
Its important to speak more to the student to test the level of the student’s understanding of the English Language.Of cos if you’re teaching this student academically then its important to brush up on his/her vocab and grammer usage.Try to converse to the student in short sentences,ask questions that requires him/her to explain.Through his/her answers,correct any mistakes you find.
If you’re teaching an adult student for conversing purposes,its important to know whats the field that he/she wants to learn.Example for business purposes or whatsoever.
You may also want to visit the library or bookstores and get some books that you find suitable for your student.
Hope this helps.Its not fantastic but at least this’s what I know.
I share your feelings about 1 to 1s. Depending on the level, for a little down time play some boogle or scrabble both make use of the language and give you both a breather.
Listening to songs or bits from the Voice of America (learn english section) with the appropriate pre-listening work also helps.
Sometimes, we go out on fieldtrips. You can make them translate with the shop assistant (even if you speak the local language) or play point and tell. (Just the word if it’s a low level more info or story if it’s a high level.)
Hope these are helpful.