Job Discussion Forums

dmanuk · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 33

Hi all,

I have a new private tutoring job starting in a few days with an absolute beginner. Well, an absolute beginner for China anyway (meaning that they have studied in school, but haven't used any English for the last 15 years or so).

I'm fairly experienced in larger class settings, and also with int/adv one-on-one, but not so with beginners.

Just wondered if anyone has any useful tips.

Cheers and beers to everyone now that summer's on its way too!

RonHex · Joined: 10 Nov 2009 Posts: 243

prepare way more material than u think u will need.. I have a couple great private students but man do they burn through material fast! create a baic template to use every class.. eg 5min QnA 5 min warmup activity, 5 min current events/news, 10min new vocab, 10 listening, 10 min speaking activity/roleplay, ect.. doesnt have to be the same every week but it gives you a good foundation to build lessons... find out what the student is interested in and why they want to learn english.. build lessons around that... also tell them next weeks topic and ask them to prepare something.

nickpellatt · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1522

Id invest a few kuai in a textbook and follow that, adding to it as I went. New Interchange books are around 40 kuai I think...and no reason why you cant just follow one of those.....that 40 kuai should keep a 1-1 on going for a long time....so is a good bet, and beats planning stuff.

I would be tempted to disagree that you need more material though...1-1s are a great chance to really focus on small language and pronunciation points..so things should take a lot longer IMO

JDYoung · Joined: 21 Apr 2003 Posts: 157 Location: Dongbei

Beginners need a lot of repetition and that's really hard to do in a one-on-one. How many times can you practice the "Hello, my name is ..." between the teacher and one student? I would suggest have lots of material and recycle it in as many ways as you can think of. Recycle the material from one class in the next two and in another further along.

Beginners can be fun because they can see the improvement in every lesson. With advanced students you can have real conversations. It's the in-between levels where the hard slog is located.

All only in my opinion of course.