Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello,

I work as a private tutor and I've just taken an assignment which involves preparing two Russian girls aged 10 and 12 for secondary school in the UK. As well as preparing them for entrance exams my main role will be improving their fluency and oral communication. As far as I'm aware their grammar is pretty good (probably upper int - advanced) as they've studied English for years but it's their fluency and actual using of the language that needs work.

Can anyone point me in the direction of any good EFL textbooks or websites or activities for this purpose? Most materials for children seem to be too basic, whilst materials for adults are not appropriate content wise and many game-type activities require many students as opposed to one-on-one.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Carrie

Any chance of finding out the actual school they will attend? Then you can research the school and have them read about it and talk about it. You can help them through the rules and talk about the sports they will encounter and so on. You could watch Youtube videos about school age kids in the UK and get to know some of the music that that age group likes. Sing a-longs. Stories of kids their age in the UK. They could learn to text because that involves a lot of language and they might need that with their new friends.
You could Google Map the area and find out where the stores are and recreational facilities and talk about the houses, apartments and so on in the area.

I just posted a similar plea for help, only I work with younger kids. I agree there are few useful materials online for getting kids to talk. Here are a few simple activities I've used for warm-ups that work more or less:
-put topics you know they can talk about in a cup, they have to each take one and talk about it for a minute, or have a conversation about it, or have a mini-debate taking two sides of an issue
-i start a sentence and they have to finish it correctly, this can be done as a competition
-for pronunciation, tongue twisters and rhyming games
-can't say yes or no--give them pieces of paper and say they are "dollars" or whatever. they ahve to have a conversation, if they say "yes" or "no" they have to pay the other person a dollar. this forces them to use complete sentences
-tell a group story, go around and each person gives a sentence
-for question practice, can do 20 questions, put a famous person on their back and they ahve to ask questions till they guess, or play bananas, where you ask a student questions and they have to reply bananas without laughing
-talking about pictures, stories, and videos

some of these i found in teh idea cookbook, some i can't remember where. hope it's helpful!

all great ideas thank you so much.