TeachingEnglish
One to one teaching
Submitted by jackson on 21 September, 2010 - 15:57
I'm trying to elicit some advice from experienced teachers (especially with one to one teaching) for the following one to one (mainly unresponsive) problems:
- The student feels uncomfortable or shy in a one to one situation.
- A student has had a bad day at school/ home/work and finding it hard to concentrate. Wants to tell you all their problems.
- The student has poor listening skills.
- Your student expects you to dominate the lesson and do all the talking.
- Will be grateful for all and any advice on these topics.
John
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Hi John,
here is just my personal response to the situations you mentioned, although I think that every teacher would react differently.
- shy in 1-to-1 situation - If this is the case, why has the invidual opted for private lessons? Perhaps encourage them to join a small group class, at least until they feel more confident communicating in English.
- want to talk about their problems - in some appraoches/methodologies, one of the key characteristics is that the content of lessons should be student led. Sometimes the teacher is supposed to take this "material" and develop activities based on it, in others they adopt more the role of a counsellor. As long as your student tells you about their stresses in English, then I think you can do a good job of teaching vocab, maybe metaphors, practise pronunciation etc, and try not to adopt the role of therapist! Or you could try to make the lessons more reaxed, and fun, so that the person can look forward to that after a long day, and have some release from the outside stressors.
- poor listening skills - there are plenty of books and resources that aim to train listening skills step by step, and here I would say practice makes perfect!
- Student expects teacher-led lesson - sometimes teacher talk time is not bad, as you are a model for the student and provide them with correct input. However, the students should realise that to communicate successfully in English, they'll have to speak as well, and they won't improve if they don't practise. Maybe they don't feel comfortable speaking spontaneously yet, and you could give homework or some time for themto formulate a little speech or what they would say in different situations, so that at least part of the lesson becomes "their responsibility", then slowly you can move away from solely teacher-centred lessons. You could also try a few activities from approaches/methods such as the Silent Way, etc. These may be a shock for the students at first if they're not used to this kind of teaching, but at least they promote student talk time.
Hope these help!
CF
Hello jack and cmftrier,
I'm writing some things in case any of them could help you out, jack. Here I'm referring to private classes, to help a male student to learn mainly grammar and vocab for an exam within some days! And we started a few days ago! It's like a S.O.S. situation.
1. Listen to the student at a first short interview. We both are Spanish. Find out what he is in need of, to pass the exam.
2. Approve any small target he hits, for example when doing an exercise from the text book. This action by you will boost him up. Make him think when he fails by writing or saying the correct answer. Say nothing to him for a short while.
3. Assign, by negotiating, the amount of time he's going to spend studying on his own. The classes are not enough.
4. If he did not reach the assigned time, for example he didn't reach the set span of time just for 5 minutes... tell him he has to study 5 more minutes today, adding to the assigned time. But sort of a cordial accomplicing or cooperating, sort of something challenging. Recognize when he reached the time alloted to his personal study.
5. Make him clear the date is approaching!
6. Help him how to fill the assigned study time with stuff of his opinion plus some help from you - he might not know what to do in 45 miunutes.
7. Believe what he tells you about his study at home. Trust is essential. All in all, and this not lack of trust, you be realistic whether he is proggressing or not.
8. Send him emails, not many!, to show him you are concerned and thinking hard how to help him.
9. Plan every class: 'I had thought for today to do this and that, but, Alex, what do you think about what we should do today?' He will be somehow amazed and happy you are really after his passing his exam.
10. With all this treatment it is more likely you both will reach a nice rapport: you two are in the same team, though he is the protagonist of this 'game'.
11. Positive motivation. Let him see his proggress. But also, and in a realistic way, let him see what he lacks to learn and practise yet.
12. Tell him about your remembrances when learning yourself, in a slight funny way.
Sorry for the long list. You could pick up a few points, or whatever you think.
Best!!
Fernando M Díez Gallego
Teacher of English and teacher trainer. Granada, Spain.
http://fernandoexperiences.blogspot.com
Hi there, here are some strategies that I adopt when dealing with my private students:
Many of my students look for private lessopns because they feel unconfortable for speaking in bigger groups or feel uncomfortable about speaking English at all, so what I ususally do is start up with very controlled practice exercises. Another strategy I often adopt is having a talk about leanguage learning itself, especially because students who are shy to speak are usually afraid to make mistakes. So I usually have a conversation telling them that it is OK to make mistakes, that mistakes are part of the learning process and the importance of getting message across, independently of accuracy as a first stage. This helps me getting them to talk in the target language.
- I agree with the other teacher who said - if it´s done in English you can use this opportunity to help him improve pronunciation, grammar, etc.
- If the student insists on speaking on his/her mother tongue in several lessons than my strategy would be having a very specific list of objectives for the lesson and share it at the begining of the class with my student: Look this is what we will do today. - So that if at the end of the class we haven´t been able to complete the list or do all exercises planned, I would try to negotiate with the student some strategies that would allow us to finish the list next class - so MAYBE the student will realise that he/she is using up his lesson time with things that are not related to the lesson.
Well, I hope I have helped!