I have an adult student who doesn't have much time for classes (2h/week) and who desperately needs to learn conversational English (3 months!). He's a begineer and, as fas as I could notice in our first class, pretty self-disciplined! I thought of working with him over the phone. My idea is to use the Task-Based Learning approach, sending him some exercises dealing with grammar and vocabulary by e-mail and allow him some time for preparation for an information gap activity, which would be our task. Then we would have a 30' session over the phone to role-play the task and check his doubts.
Has anyone ever tried anything like that? Does it work?
Vivi
Classes by telephone
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I've got a bit of experience of teaching by phone - your ideas sound great.
I think the only bit of advice I can give you is not to be too ambitious. Speaking by phone is probably the hardest way to communicate in a foreign language. If he is a beginner, simply being able to pick up the phone, get through to you and give an account of his activity for the day would be quite an achievement.
I think the only bit of advice I can give you is not to be too ambitious. Speaking by phone is probably the hardest way to communicate in a foreign language. If he is a beginner, simply being able to pick up the phone, get through to you and give an account of his activity for the day would be quite an achievement.
Another thought : it's an interesting exercise to do dictation by phone. For example, after you discuss a topic with him, you could dictate 'corrected sentences ' to him. He can then fax or e-mail his sentences to you. If the sentences include proper nouns, figures, times , places it can be a very practical exercise.