Hello
I am a recently qualified CELTA level English teacher. I have been asked to provide private tuition to a Czech family with a low level understanding of English. They wish to learn everyday conversational English, as they are living/working here in the UK. The ability is low, but they understand me, and being a group, can help each other with translations.
As this will be my first experience of this type, I am asking for any help on how to build my first few lessons - ie. what style, subjects to use, what works best for private tuition, etc. In other words, where do I start? Can anybody with private tuition experience help me on this?
Thanks in advance.
Help needed for first time private tuition
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Get a nice basic contextually well-illustrated conversational textbook such as Side By Side, Interchange, or The New Cambridge English Course, and supplement it with examples and little skits drawn from respected grammar practice books such as Murphy's Essential/Basic Grammar in Use and good learner dictionaries (which have "defining vocabularies" of around 2,000 essential words, which will be a good place to start browsing and making notes as ideas come to you [which they hopefully should!] if the dictionary's main text is a bit overwhelming, though the main text usually also highlights very frequent and useful words), all the while bearing in mind the situations this family will likely be facing and needing to navigate successfully (remember though that not all exchanges will be transactional, i.e. that there should be socializing~interpersonally developmental aspects too in a decent language course). Then, there are functional and/or travel-like phrasebooks available (e.g. the ones by Lonely Planet) that will probably give you a few further ideas for productive topics and phrases.
I know that's not a whole load of suggestions, but hopefully it's a start!
I know that's not a whole load of suggestions, but hopefully it's a start!