Private student who will only chat

[novena]

Help! I've just been given a nightmare job.

8 hours a week one-to-one with a rich lawyer, who is used to people doing exactly what he wants. He's doing a PhD in the UK and needs English for everyday communication - he does not really need academic language at this stage. He is strong intermediate and a confident speaker but very rusty and despite good collocation, vocab and pronunciation, his control and grammatical accuracy are very poor, making him impossible to understand. He needs grammar practice but has specified: no grammar, no reading, no writing, no listening, only vocab and speaking. He wants to do the same topic for a week at a time and re-use the same vocab. Wants me to correct him every time he makes a mistake - no delayed error correction.

Despite me telling him that he needs to work on his grammar and the importance of integrated skills, he's refused to do anything other than discussion/chat classes with no other skills work as a springboard to discussion. No reading / listening means that he's learning vocabulary out of context. I've tried transcribing his speech to help him see that his difficulties are with accuracy, not lack of vocabulary, to no avail. And a week of the same topic? I'm struggling to expand the topics enough to last that long and to provide any kind of structure. I don't have relevant resources in my school. Textbooks are largely useless as they contain too much grammar, reading and writing, even though they cover the topics, skills and grammar that he needs, in a structured way. I agree with his thoughts on recycling vocabulary and not jumping about between topics but not to the same extent. I've taught a lot of one-to-one and am not a new teacher, but faced with a year of this I'm about to quit my job. He is quite chatty but is starting to get grumpy with how I'm teaching him. He's already complained about 2 other teachers in the school.

Suggestions please!Heeeeeelp!

[Lorikeet]

First, how important is it to you to keep this job? Will your boss listen to him if he complains? What about writing down your thoughts about his errors, about how you think he should study, and then about how he wants you to teach him. Give him a copy and send a copy to your boss. Then do it his way. If he doesn't succeed, tell him it would have worked your way, but since he insisted he knew more than the teacher, you did it his way.

[eslweb]

I am sure he's a tough man to convince of anything... I've faced this situation before and found that the following techniques helped restore my sanity...

1. Create conversation sheets, showing roleplays the correct form etc. If he completely refuses to read them in class, give them to him as a handout to take away.

2. Drill him a lot... If he's making mistakes break it down to that word and sound and drill him, that way he feels he's getting instant feedback.

3. If at all possible use videos / DVDs on each subject to give yourself a break and for him to see other people talking.

4. Actively quiz him on the day's news etc and if he doesn't know mention that you'd be happy to provide him with simplified English updates...

5. Take plenty of tea breaks.

I hope this helps, but he's gonna be one tough customer, so you have to go along with him and then subtly manouvre him to a position where he sees the benefits of other skills....

James
http://www.jamesabela.co.uk/

[Anuradha Chepur]

I can understand how you feel. But take it from me, this is more of a learning experience for you than for your student. At the end of it you would have honed your people skills and would have become adept at handling tough clients. So go ahead with it with all the patience you can command.

[EH]

I especially like ESLWeb's suggestions.

In addition:
1) Giving feedback after every error or awkward turn of phrase is unhelpful. However, giving feedback after every error that relates directly to something you're teaching or studying is quite useful. Only correct him on the material he's expected to know. I think he'll appreciate that more than he expects.

2) How do you plan to measure progress? You might want to discuss this (and get it in writing) with him beforehand, so that no one can complain, "But I'm not improving...." If he really doesn't want to take tests or participate in any form of assessment, then feel free to just do what he asks and have a nice chat while getting paid. If he does want to measure improvement, then figure out how to do so, and tell him exactly what he needs to do to meet his stated goals. Then he has no one to blame but himself if he refuses to follow your advice.

Good luck,
-EH

[tigertiger]

Free talk doesn't work and I would tell the student this. Perhaps pick your moment. Next time he gets grumpy your conversation gambit could be 'this isn't working is it?'.
This could be an opening for him to try it your way for two hours.

Make a good lesson plan before hand and make sure it is an activity that he would participate in.

If he refuses to play.
Use lots of functional language. Then drill him and make him stick to taget language.

If no progress tell your boss that this student is a problem. Point out that he has already complained two other teachers.

Me personally, I have told students that I can't/won't teach badly, and suggest politely that they would be better with another teacher.
they usually are the high fliers who 'know better' than anyone else.

[gmjones]

I hear your problem... however some students really do only want to talk. Try looking at www.wikipedia.org here you can find a mountain of links to all kinds of subjects. Look up your topic as a search and when an article comes up, look on the highlighted links which will give you further related information. It's a fascinating website and very useful.

I would suggest giving him stuff as homework to review. Give him ten words to learn but tell him he wil have to repeat them to you the next day in a sentence. Make him do some research too! He can look up opposites/adjectives/related vocab himself.

[strider]

no grammar, no reading, no writing, no listening, only vocab and speaking.

Yikes!

Here are a few suggestions. When he makes a mistake, will he allow you to write the mistakes onto the whiteboard? It's sometimes useful for people to visualize their errors. Also, after a while, you will have a dozen or so sentences that you could exploit. For example, you could get him to say the sentences, first affirmative, then negative. You could get him to look away while you take out key words of each sentence. If he is really confident, you could introduce errors into the sentence, see if he can spot them. Do you think he would write the sentences at the end of a lesson (make it into a dictation-type exercise)?

This type of student isn't easy to deal with but remember, while he's in your lesson, you are the boss. Would he go to the doctor and ask for treatment but no pills, no needles, only strawberry-flavoured medicine?

[Showem]

So, let me get this straight - he needs English for everyday conversation - is that right? So he quite fairly doesn't want to work on texts or things that aren't conversation-based.

Ask him what is his learning style is and what he wants to learn. Does he learn best from seeing things written down, hearing them used, writing it himself or what? Does he want to improve fluency, grammatical accuracy or expand his vocabulary?

Once you know those things, you'll be in a better position to teach him. If he says he learns from hearing things used and wants to improve his fluency, you can point out that it would be good to occasionally do some listening practice then. Maybe a excerpt from a TV program on a topic that he's interested in. If what he wants to learn and the way he wants to learn it aren't compatible, you have to try and make him see what the problem is. But you have to work as a team, also being flexible on your side of the issue too. If he wants instant feedback, okay, give it to him. I know it's often not so useful, but hey, maybe it is for him.

I've found with 1-to-1, you have to work on the learning strategy together.