Dear All,
I am in need of your professional knowledge again please!! :D
I am now giving one-one-one private English conversation lessons to two teenagers (separately) and I'm not sure what to do. They are elementary students and can express themselves but their pronunciation and vocabulary are not very good, although I can understand what they are trying to say. Should I be correcting this?
At the moment, I'm using text book materials with loads of role-play and eliciting of questions, etc, but I'm not sure if I am teaching them the right things for 'conversation'. I am teaching them about introducing themselves, feeling unwell, ordering food at a restaurant, etc. One of my students though wants to learn 'slang' English words (as she is coming to the UK soon) and also information on studying as she will be going to school.
The problem is is that I don't have a lot of time to be pouring over the internet, searching for materials, etc, but I care about them and want my students to be engaged and have fun at the same time. I feel like I am giving them too much 'text book' material. I am giving them lots of 'listening' exercises though to get them used to different accents, etc.
Any help please? Am I on the right track?
Thank you all again SO much!
Regards
Scampy
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
Log in or register
Follow TeachingEnglish
 |
 |
 |
 |
How about teaching these two students together? They are both teenagers and you (presumably) aren't, so they will have much more in common with each other than with you! - Plenty of topics for discussions and it makes the role plays more real.
The only< thing is that you must have a strict rule that nobody may lapse into the vernacular during the lessons, it's English all the time, and then there should be no problems.
Another thing I do in this sort of situation is to have a pile of cards with about 50 "discourse markers" or sentence adverbs or comments (whatever you call them) with me and make sure the students get used to using them in speech. Perhaps I prop the cards up on the desk or I give them out once at a time, the point is for the students to start saying things like "Anyway" or "You've got a point there" or "whatever". This will increase their fluency no end.
Diana
Support and guide them to connect with English speaking friends online, if they have web access they will probably have social media profiles on their favourite sites.
Pre-teach/guide them through some language they are interested in....then get them to use it with their English speaking friends online and to record it so you can listen to them using it and keep a track of their progress.
If you need any more help let me know.
You say that their pron and vocab are weak. Why not record them speaking and have them listen to themselves? Can they distinguish sounds? They could learn to describe differences which might make them more aware of their own pronunciation.
You mentioned that you encourage them to listen to various accents. Besides focusing on accent / pron, why not have them listen for useful phrases, i.e. gather vocabulary they can then use.
hope these two ideas are useful
:-)
Terri