[tanyis]

HI!! greetings from Chile. I'm a Chilean EFL teacher and I'm in love with tish web site!!
This is my first time posting and I'm in desesperate need for some help. I'm starting to give EFL private lessons to a 13 year old and I'm not really sure where to start from. His vocabulary is very poor and his teacher at school gives english lesson in Spanish

So I don't want to scare him by jumping into an all English lesson.

what should I DO??? HELP PLEASE!!

[clivehawkins]

Hi and welcome to the site,

Teach him some animals, numbers etc using flashcards from this site and then play picture bingo. Go to the 'make a worksheet' section of this site and you can create your own games. It's great fun and excellent practice for vocab.

As for speaking only in English, this game is light on language and so he shouldn't be particularly scared.

Hope this helps :-)

[HUE]

Once you both get a bit more comfortable with the lessons, make sure to zero in on his interests. If he's excited about a topic, he'll work harder to speak in English... and may even forget that it's work!

[tanyis]

thank you!!

[KEV5446]

hi i teach in spain to children from the ages of 6 to 9 who don't speak or understand english as yet and have just started primary school and are very scared.start with flashcards and choral drilling as suggested. although i would start with classroom or teacheing commands. like stan up and sit down etc. don't revert to using spanish because it will be an on going problem. respnond in english.after the commands you can use them to introduce colours and numbers and animals etc to broaden his vocab and then throw in things like a, an. my name is. etc.and then classroom objects so after a fem lessons you could do what.s this . he responds with a blue pen for example. buy yourself a get set go book 1 from oxford publishers they have all you need.copy th command pictures to make your flashcards. kev

[michèle 2]

Hi,
I teach private lessons too (in France). I usually start teaching vocabulary using flash cards and the present continuous so that my students can describe a picture or answering my questions.
what's the boy / the girl / poeple doing here ...
they need to learn a lot of verbs to be able to describe people in various situations and flash cards are very useful. Learning prepositions is also an important point, then they can say where the objects, animals, people are ( using the same picture).
Hope that helps
Michèle

[frizzi26]

I think Clive Hawkins and Michele are right.
start slowly and learn to know your student a bit more
good luck!