Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello there

I wonder if anyone can help me. I`ve only been teaching for a month, and was trained towards kids. The school has accepted that i`ll teach a 40 year old, and after speaking to him, seems to know English already. Has anyone any ideas of material or ideas which will get the best out of him, and progress.

Thankyou

Hello kari,

I assume you are a native English speaker. You might try talking genuinely with your student to discover what interests him (besides English). If his English is as good as you suspect, then he already knows well how to study it, and has enough drive to succeed. However, he will welcome your willingness to discuss his interests with him in detail. If any literature is involved in what he likes, you might ask him to translate some of it for you and then work with him on his translations. Make him be your teacher for what interests him. He will adore you for it, and will be delighted to develop his English vocabulary in a field he likes.

And good luck.

Larry Latham

Hi there,

Yes, I too have students who are very good at speaking English so, as a native British English speaker, I find it great fun speaking with them but still feel very much that I have something to offer too!

I teach 1:1 students from intermediate to proficient level and what I have mainly found is that they really just want to listen and talk with a native English speaker. As the previous writer said, it's so good just to talk to them about what excites them and find out their hobbies, dreams and/or goals.

If you would prefer to have a more formal set up, I have found a fabulous teaching manual which shows you how to teach 1:1 from beginner to proficient level, mainly focusing on building their language skills and maybe help them grow in confidence in a particular arena in their lives allbeit business, hobby or general social gatherings, which we know can be daunting, even for us native English speakers sometimes!

There is tons you could offer your new student and this is a wonderful opportunity for you to learn/teach at a higher more specialised level.

If you are interested in researching this training book then email me and I will forward the link to you, it's only £10 to buy and you could read the manual in two evenings easy.

It's packed full of wonderful ideas to get your creative juices going and see growth in you and your student(s).

Best of luck!

Regards
Celine Horan
Personal ESL Trainer, Switzerland

Another idea for you:

If this student does have in fact excellent speaking skills you may want to focus on some other areas. Give him a book, get a feel for his reading comprehension level first. He can read it on his own time. Set a finish date (you should read the same book) then just chat about it or if you wanted give the student an assignment.

In addition to asking him about his interests, if his English is really all that (pardon the Americanism), why not ask him what he's hoping to gain from your lessons? He'll probably take it as quite a compliment if you tell him his English is so good that you'd like to know why he's taking your class. If he's that good, he probably has some specific ideas about what he feels he needs help with. Does he just want to keep his speaking skills polished up because he has no other chance to do it? Does he want to get into literature? Is he in an Asian country and therefore would like to practice more Western-style conversation structure? Does he want to expand his vocabulary?
Have you considered articles? Find an article that suits or pushes his abilities. It's bound to contain at least a few words, phrasal verbs, idioms, expressions, even slang he's either never seen or is uncomfortable using. Read the article yourself several times, try to anticipate some of the words and phrases that might be new to him, and try to come up with one or two discussion points or questions related to the topic. He will probably use his dictionary to look up words he doesn't know. Get him to mark and tell you the words he had to look up; you can help him retain them by incorporating them in future lessons. Phrasal verbs and expressions can't be simply looked up in a dictionary. For a challenge you could try getting him to guess the meanings of words or phrases based on the context instead of just telling him or letting him look them up. If articles are too simple for him, maybe it's time for some literature. It doesn't have to be Hemmingway or *beep*. I have a class that just finished reading/discussing Catcher in the Rye by Salinger. That gave us plenty to chew on!
How are his listening skills? How fast or nativelike can you talk before you lose him? Probe probe probe. Just in speaking with him, surely you can catch something he needs to work on.
If I had to teach kids all day, adorable as they are, I'd be grateful to have an adult to talk with. Enjoy!

Hmm... That's odd. For some reason, when I previewed my message, the word "beep" had been inserted where I had written an author's name alongside Hemmingway's. Is the author of David Copperfield an offensive word, now? Oh, what days we live in.