[Frauke]

Hi everyone,

I have problems in creating classes for my one-to-one students.

I can not do pair work or group work and it looks like that everything out of the books don't seem appropriate for them. I am so NOT creative here....

One is very smart notario who doesn't need English for his work but just for himself. I have been teaching him for over a year now so we know each other quite well. I teach him twice a week for an hour. One lesson we just talked, but the other lesson he wants to do some grammar stuff or so. I have run out of ideas.... All the stuff you can find on the internet is made for bigger classes.

Same problem with the other student although he needs it for work and so we concentrate on business related subject. It's a German class but at the end of the day it's no difference for me. I work with a book which is quite good, but the class lasts 1,5 hours and we both get bored of the subject after a while. I'd like to do something more diversified. And then, 1,5 hours are soooo long for a one-to-one.

Please, can you share your ideas with me?? Thanks so much.

Frauke

[emile]

Get them to prepare something before they turn up to the session. For example, they could go through an article from TIME magazine (they sound like advanced level students) and turn up with a list of things to discuss with you. Or you could get them started on a book (that you have already finished) and that would be a good discussion point during the sessions.

Otherwise, if you have a decent DVD collection, you could give them video assignments to do outside of class. I once had a series of 1-1 tutorials based around a Friends DVD box set.

I guess what I'm also saying is that a 1-1 can include all the aspects of a class - reading, listening, video work - at a stretch

[Eric]

Hello,

There were a bunch of suggestions here:
one-on-one class help me

And also we just had a discussion about teaching one on one classes over at ESL Teacher Talk.com.

You can hear the whole thing here:
http://www.eslteachertalk.com/2006/1...n-one-classes/

I hope that helps,
Eric

[Frauke]

Hi,

thanks for your quick reply. I cannot give them homework or anything to prepare before the class, because they both have family and a busy working life, so there's just no time left. Everything is concentrated on the class.

Eric, thanks for the links. I will go through them. I have to admit that I didn't look for informations before I posted.... , I'm just so busy at the moment....

Thanks again

[Frauke]

Hi Eric,

I have had a look into all the links but unfortunately this is more or less stuff for kids rather than "business men". I don't feel that any of it is appropriate for them...

Isn't there anyone here who teaches adult's one-to-ones??

PLEASE?? Thanks.

[musica]

What about just reading newspaper article with them and discussing the various vocabulary and also the ideas of the main point of the article, how to support a point of view, do they agree, disagree etc.

[Donney]

I like to use a very simple game which normally gets the students very excited. I call it "Telemarketing" because that's what inspired me. It comes from the popular game: Yes/No, white/black.

The idea of the game is to avoid saying any of the aforementioned words.

I make some cards depicting a situation in each of them, for example: Convince your friend of going to the dentist; or Try to sell your friend a collection of 19th century dolls. I don't know basically anything.

So they start playing and they can't say yes, no, black or white.

To add a little more fun everytime one of the forbidden words is used the one who wins (who didn't use any of them) picks another word to put in the list.

I hope it helps.

[susan53]

Quote Frauke

I can not do pair work or group work and it looks like that everything out of the books don't seem appropriate for them. I am so NOT creative here....

Hi Frauke,

I teach adults one to one all the time, at all levels from beginners to advanced. just a comment on your two points above :

You can do pairwork! It's just that you have to be the other member of the pair! This obviously means that you can't monitor at the same time, but try taping the activity. You can then play back the conversation, the student can try to correct his/her own mistakes or reformulate the things s/he had difficulty with.

Some pairwork activities can be adapted to become individual activities for one to one. For example a spot the difference activity with pictures, intended to be done with one student having each picture and describing it to his/her partner can be done by letting the student see the first picture for ten seconds, then turning it over andshowing him/her the second. They then have to list, from memory, the differences.

At lower levels I think students need a coursebook in order to provide a coherent course. They also need to do all the things that they would do if they were working in a group. Teachers are often frightened, for example, of asking students to read or do written exercises in class. Don't be - especially if they're not doing homework. They need to. The advantage of 1-to-1 at lower levels is that you can also add in things which are particularly relevant to the student. For example, with one beginner, I taught the past form of verbs (affirmative only) very early on. We then started each lesson with her telling me the things she had done in the preceding days. because she was saying things like I went to a meeting about ... I had a problem with... the specific vocab she needed for her work came up - which it wouldn't have done if we'd just ploughed through the course.

At higher levels it's more interesting to work on authentic materials based on the student's own interests - which may be for work or personal - but also much more time consuming in terms of preparation. At the moment, for example I have one person responsible for energy issues - we're working on EU and other documents concerning initiatives on pollution (provided by the student or from the Net) and another who's taking a high level sailing licence - we're working on a diary of a round-the-world race, again from the net. In each case I divide the text into sections, and then turn it into a "unit" with pre-text discussion activities, general and detailed comprehension tasks, vocabulary study etc. I also use short clips of video from BBC World which I work on in much the same way.

Hope that helps.

[livinginkorea]

Great post Susan and I totally agree about the pair work. I taught this owner of a small diamond cutting company for about 8 months and I always did the pair work activity with him. Not only can you monitor every step of the way but I found myself going off topic a lot when I saw a point where he could improve on. He did the same a lot too so in the end we did all pairwork and he loved it! He felt a lot more confident when he was at trade shows in Europe or America selling his product and not only could he talk about his product in great detail he could also talk to the person and build up a rapport with them, which is always useful when meeting potential clients.

[cabst90]

I am teaching a "one to one business English class now."

To practice grammer: I give him a verb and a time, he must make a sentence. For example, I say "write" and "5 times yesterday," and he must make a sentence.

You can practice conditionals by giving him the first half of a conditional sentence and the student must finish it (or vice versa).

I bring a news article in English and underline or highlight words that I think will be a challenge. My student reads the article, summarizes it for me, then we work on vocabulary. I ask him to define, give me synonyms, different sentences, and or contexts in which the word can be used. (I also prepare a few synonyms for each word in case my student doesn't know.) There are many other reading/speaking activities that you can do one-on-one.

Have your student tell you a story or summarize something. As your student speaks, write down everything. EVERYTHING. (yes the student needs to speak slowly.) Then give the transcript to your student and have him/her find and correct the mistakes.

good luck