I know you have some great ideas and I need your help. I teach English and later this week I will meet a new student. We ́ll be doing conversation for 90 min/week. I haven ́t had any private students before so the situation is rather new to me. How can I get us started? Does anybody have a good idea about topics, how to get the student talking etc? It is a rather quiet, introvert student at an intermediate (B1) level. Please share your best ideas, I know many of you have loads of them, I ́d be very grateful!
Hi everybody out there,
If you're a trained teacher, you'd have a bunch of topics at the ready in your teacher's kit, no?
Anyway, here's my two Rappen's worth:
Talk about the student's hobbies or interests.
Family traditions.
Dream holiday destinations.
Favourite singers and bands.
Discuss the pros and cons of euthanasia. (OK, just kidding.)
English Grammar
Tried and tested method:
Find a short newspaper clipping that might be of interest to your student (X-factor results being fixed, Amy Winehouse dead/intoxicated/clean/divorced/married/pregnant/whatever, opening of the skiing season, Christmas shopping here/there/not happening in UK). Imagine what vocab and/or grammar could be useful in order to talk about this topic and prepare a little worksheet. There you go.
In my experience you will not be able to just 'converse' for 90 minutes, you must have a rudimentary plan. Ideally you will revise whatever vocab and/or grammar question came up during this lesson in the next lesson and so on...
Good luck!
swisskat
Thank you for your tips! Just as you write Argus I do have a lot of exercises and stuff in my "toolbox" but most of it is designed for class work at upper secondary as I used to work there. Just as you say Swisskat I know I need a good plan because we can ́t just talk for 90 min. Your idea of using an article to discuss and also do some word work around sounds like a good start. I even think that I have made a lesson plan like that once, I have to check my files. Thank you for reviving my memory!
Why not ask them how they feel about paying for private conversation lesson with a teacher who has no idea what they are doing? That should be good for at least half of the 90 minutes....
And if there is any time leftover, why a non native English speaker is teaching English? (I didn't make this up, it is in the OP's profile)
I'm sorry, that is just mean. There are many teachers who teach languages are not their first. There are people who speak more than one language fluently. You really can't tell me you have never heard of such a thing?
The OP did not ask any of us to criticize he/her choice of career. S/he asked for topics of conversation. I really thought that when DaveA left these kind of comments would stop. I guess not.
biblolover: I agree bringing short articles to read is good. Bring several and then discuss the vocabulary. My Spanish teacher brings one really long one at time & some have been so boring I really don't even want to talk about them! Maybe let your student pick out of the bunch which one s/he likes.
Another good topic is discussing your students work. This will help with vocabulary that is relevant to his/her job.
My English-teaching textbook tells me that some non-native English-speaking teachers can be more effective than native speakers. Haven't you met native speakers who can't explain grammatical points and don't use punctuation in the right way?
The key point is to be trained to teach English . Merely being a native speaker of English does not a better English teacher make.
For diction and intonation, perhaps yes, but then native speakers have different ways of speaking depending on whether they're from Britain, Australia, US, Canada or New Zealand.
How do you think the rest of the world learns English?
Not many schools have the 'luxury' of employing teachers from an English-speaking country.
Well as long as the speaker is fluent and trained to teach the language then what is the problem. (this does bother me when the speaker can't speak the language there teaching correctly then there is a problem)
I think the newspaper idea is good as well.
So then why is a trained teacher asking how to handle teaching a student?
If someone is paying a fee for a service, such as an English teacher, they are
expecting a trained professional. If I offer to have a coffee with my neighbour who would like the opportunity to speak English with someone, she is not expecting me to be a trained teacher.
A trained teacher who is a native speaker of English (or any language, for that matter) will not only know how to explain grammar and punctuation but will speak the language fluently. If I was paying a teacher, that is what I would want.
Perhaps Bibliolover is a beginner in teaching and maybe she/he is charging less than the usual high fees. It's an agreement between B and his/her student.
She sounds like she is just asking for more ideas as she says she has never taught one on one before. She could be fluent in English - we don't know this for a fact. Attacking her is just not helpful.
I agree 100%. My current german teacher is from Hungry and is better at explaing the grammar than my last teacher from Hamburg who kept saying "I know why, it is just the rule."
My husband learnt English as a second language and he knows the rules much better than I do
Hi again, I ́ve read all your answers. Apparently many of you were interested in this topic even though not so many helpful ideas came out of it. For those of you who can ́t be open-minded and understand the fact that I asked for some ideas, I ́ll explain my background. First of all, I ́m not a beginner when it comes to teaching, I know what I am doing. I have a master in education for teaching English as a second language and I also work for some language schools in Zürich. In my experience, a non-native speaker (should be well-trained of course) could be just as good, or even better, when it comes to teaching a language.
And once again, I was just asking for some tips and ideas as I haven ́t had any private students before. Where I come from we ask each other things because we know that other people might have ideas that can help. If anybody asks for my advice, I feel proud to be able to help, I don ́t tell them off. Apparently, this is not the way it works in Switzerland, so I won ́t bother you with any more questions. But don ́t forget: "No man is an island".
Hi biblolover
- Articles from www.swissinfo.ch are good, as they are usually of interest/ relevance to the student, and can be initially carefully selected to include vocab already likely to be familiar about Swiss tourism and culture. I'm sure you already have ideas on how to use newspapers in lessons, but Googling 'newspapers ESL teaching' should throw up lots more.
- Have a written rather than a spoken conversation: write an opening sentence (perhaps on the topic of an article the student has previously read), pass her the paper to write the next sentence, back to you for the follow-up, and so on. This should reveal particular grammar weaknesses to then teach.
- On the same theme, write a sentence one word at a time, turn by turn. 'I-(pronoun)-went-(verb)..' then what? Ask if it can be anything except a preposition?
- Teach something else, but via English: I explained mind-mapping the other day, and its use in learning foreign language vocabulary. Do critical analysis of a poem, explain how to write a haiku, etc.
- Cartoon books reveal good idioms and demonstrate a good cultural point of view. Calvin and Hobbes is not too difficult for this level, and can often lead to some very useful (but slightly American) expressions.
- Dictations. Slightly alien to people educated in the UK, but seemingly valued and popular elsewhere.
- Describe a picture, and see if they can reproduce it. Swap roles.
- Recipes.
- Write a letter to Father Christmas!
Hope this helps, and good luck with your teaching.
kodokan
Biblolover,
Here's a link for some ideas for private English lessons from Dave's ESL Cafe, which is a wonderful resource for English teachers:
http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Private:Teaching
In any case, I would include some extra activities in your first lesson plan because you may find that a private lesson moves at a much faster pace than a group lesson.
Good luck!
I also give an English Conversation class, my only qualification being that I am a native English Speaker - and the class is just that, an opportunity for people to come and converse in English. I made it quite clear at the start that I am not a teacher and as such charge only a nominal fee. However on the subject of ideas to get started you need to firstly get to know your student, he/she will be much happier talking about subjects relevant to him/herself. A good way to start is to make a list ie, talk about 4 or however many favourite places, 4 favourite films, 4 favourite books, 4 foods, 4 hobbies, 4 animals, the possibilities here are endless. Maybe a favourite book they have read in their own language and you could get a copy in English to read together and discuss.
There are also heaps of website with good ideas lingolex.com is a good one but just search "teaching English" and there are loads of others. Sometimes just to fill the last 10 mintues I will pick a word totally at random from the dictionary and ask them to make a sentence using that word - you would be surprised what comes up, found myself trying to explain the "heebie-jeebies" one lesson. Best plan of all is to keep it light and have fun. Good luck.
S/he is not asking us how to handle teaching the student at all. S/he is asking for things to talk about during the pure conversation part as s/he has never had _private_ student not that she is not qualified. You are making a lot of assumption. Do we always have to assume the negative?
You have no idea how trained this person is. You have no idea of his/her qualifications from a simple question. And not all English native speakers are any good at teaching.
I'm sorry but your assumptions here are just wrong. I've studied at University with tenured professors who taught a language they were fluent in, trained in teaching but was not their mother tongue. I guess I should give back my degrees & ask for my money to be refunded.
EDIT: Well, I see that the OP has come back to state that s/he is a trained professional. Nice to see it's required to justify our qualifications when we ask a question around here.
Thank you all for sharing your ideas with me. There really are some great resources for teaching English online, perhaps we should start a thread with our favourites? I have decided that, after introduction, getting to know my student etc, we ́ll get started on schooling, differences between countries etc. I have found an article about early schooling to base the discussion on, made some worksheets and prepared questions. Time.com have loads of articles, both long and short, if your students are at intermediate or higher level. I also found useful articles about topics as health, trends and generation gaps just to mention a few. I hope these tips might be useful to other teachers as well, because we need to help each other you know . Take care and have a nice evening!
Are you sure it's not Hungary ?
I'm taking Italian lessons from a lady who only learned Italian about six years ago. She speaks about five or six languages and her first language is German.
I'm finding her to be a great teacher, since she also had to learn Italian as an adult, she know exactly what challenges are lying ahead for me.