Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm a student teacher from the Netherlands and I have a tutor student. She is Korean, has been in this country for three months (so doesn't speak Dutch) and wishes to learn English. However, she is an absolute beginner. This means that I have to teach her English in English. You can probably see the problems that arise from this.

I have spent an hour with her and I established that she knows the following things to some extent:
- 'I am [name]'
- 'I am 32 years old'
- 'I come from Korea'
And that's it. That's what I have to work with.

I also found out that she does pick up things reasonably fast. So that won't be the problem. The biggest problem is teaching her in a language she does not understand.

Does anyone have any tips for me? Things I can do? Things I should not do? Anything is welcome!

Get her to start a notebook, and on the third page (i.e. you're looking at a two-page spread, not just the first page and the inside cover) write '1B' and '(Yes/No) I'm (I am)...'. You don't have to both spend too long on that page at any one time, but whenever one of you thinks of something that involves/begins with 'I'm...', write it down. Initially it might just be the sort of statements or answers we'd give when introducing ourselves and answering questions, but it will expand to include adjectives, present progressive, be going to etc.

Once you have some statements/answers, you can go on to forming questions and write these on the left-hand page (page 2 of the book, which you'll label '1A' and '(Wh-) Are you...?').

And so on...I'm sure your thoughts will soon begin to mushroom. There are many ways to organize a notebook...mindmaps, collocation grids, concordances, substitution tables etc. Take a look at some books on vocabulary teaching and lexical approaches; you might also like to do a search here on Dave's for 'wordsurfing'.

This is only a notebook, though, and I think it would help if you got a basic course with plenty of simple and clear practice (Side by Side springs to mind, especially as it is so suited to simple 2-person dialogue), just so the grammar is being covered systematically. After doing SBS for a while you could switch to something more colourful, varied and ambitious (there is a vast range of coursebooks and materials available). If she is into grammar you might like to give her exercises from something like Murphy's Essential/Basic Grammar in Use.

There's a chapter in Swan and Smith's Learner English about the particular problems that Korean students might have when learning English (you can search inside the book on Amazon for e.g. 'Korean' and thereby get some idea of what it contains), so it might be worth checking out:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/sea ... 15-1381236

Some links here to some Cambridge online course resources:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 3686#23686

Lastly, the following two books from LTP (now Heinle) might prove useful:
Practical Techniques for Language Teaching (Michael Lewis & Jimmie Hill)
One to One - A Teacher's Handbook (Peter Wilberg)

I love the notebook idea. It's always possible to expand it i.e. start with 'I am Eric', 'I am 21 years old' and end with 'I am a wonderful teacher' (I hope )

Thank you so much!