Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,

This is my first time here. I am not too sure how often people look at these posting but will try my luck.

I have been offered to teach a 1:1 conversational english class with an older man who seems to be proficient. His interest are education and would like for me to set up a plan that we would follow.

I need help in finding material to use and setting up a plan.

Currently I am living in Spain and am pretty sure it will be hard to find books on teaching proficient adults.

Any help provided would be much appreciated.

Hello!

Before you choose teaching materials for your prospective student, you should know his proficiency level in English writing, listening, speaking, reading including vocabulary although you will only teach conversational English. Without knowing his overall proficiency in English, it would be hard for you to teach him efficiently. Thus, testing his English skills and doing needs assessment should be prerequisite for the effective teaching and learning.

As for teaching materials, there are many useful web sites offering free teaching materials which you can implement in your lessons. You just need to print them out. However, I recommend that you visit each site to decide which material would be best for your student. Use search engines such as google and yahoo to look for information/materials. You just need to type words like conversational English, teaching materials, lesson plan, or/and ESL.

I hope my suggestions would help you a bit and wish you good luck on your first teaching!

Jinny

All you need is a computer with speakers and an internet connection. When I taught privately I would have a regular routine I would go through with material I found on the net.

http://www.davidlynch.com/
This site is of a radio personality that gives a weather report for LA every day. I found he would up date it around mid-day. I would have my students listen to the report and write it down. Then I would show them the correct version.

www.breakingnewsenglish.com
This is a cool site that provides lessons ready to go from current news happenings.

I would also download short films and commercials from the internet. There are sites dedicated to funny commercials. It took a long time for me to learn how to find commercials efficiently. If you type something like "funny commercials", "mov commercial" "download commercial" on google, you are bound to find some sites. Here are a couple sites I had on my favorites:
commercials
http://giesbers.net/video/
short films
http://usa.bmwfilms.com/clap.asp?
If you are going to teach with commercials, you must use this site:http://ad-rag.com/index.php
You can search through their database of thousands of commercials. It is worth the 2 dollars a month you have to pay if you are interested in using commercials.
It really depends how much preparing you want to do. I spent a lot of time preparing since I was dedicating myself to teaching privately. I would set up themes every week. One week, for example, was golf. I found news articles on golf, short films, commercials, photos (which I would use by talking about them), songs, ads, anything I could find related to golf. I would also set up role plays, "At the golf course". I would have a series of questions you might be asked at a golf course. "how many holes do you want to play?" "How do you like weather today?"

You can also use movies. Show short segments of movies and stop them to check for comprehension.

Always have more material to use than you have time for. Just in case something isn't working or if you go through the material quickly. I found that the secret to teaching English privately wasn't so much the material I used, but how well I used the material I had.

In class, we might read a few lines of an article and go off on some long conversation about golfing. This spontaneous conversation is extremely helpful for the student. It might feel like you are not doing anything, but that is what you want, the student to feel comfortable and using the language effectively. There is always time to drill rules and finish exercises. But make the most of side conversations. I am trying to get better at doing this with my classes of 25 middle school students. Its a lot easier with only 2 private students! Sometimes though, I can get the class engaged in a stimulating conversation after reading a story or at least expected moments like someone being absent and discussing where they are.

You can have all the material in the world, but if you don't make a connection to the student, it's boring and very little learning will happen.
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