Category: Topics

More Teaching One to One – James

James Taylor

Teaching One-to-One: How It Feels From A Students Perspective  – James Taylor

 

I’ve taught English in a variety of settings. Business, test preparation, general EFL, teacher training, I’ve done them all. Teenagers, students, adults, executives, diplomats, retirees, even other teachers, been there, done that. From sixty minutes to one hour, tick. From one to one to twenty five in a classroom, it’s on my list.

So it’s fair to say that in my teaching career so far, I’ve had a fair bit of variety, but as a language learner, I’ve had almost no variety at all. Every language class I’ve ever had, from school, where I studied French in groups of around twenty and came away with a good grade and a complete inability to speak the language, to the Portuguese lessons I had in Brussels to stop me from getting rusty (it didn’t work), have been in groups. Now for the first time, I’m learning a new language, Spanish, one-to-one so I’m here to report back to you on how it feels from a learner’s perspective. Let’s start with…

 

Time and Space

Like some kind of language Timelord, I feel that my one-to-one classes give me the ability to control time. I can slow things down to suit me as I wish. If my teacher gives me an activity, I’m the kind of student who likes to calmly, slowly and deliberately get it right. I like to look at my coursebook, handout, notes, or the board, take my time and choose the right answer. One-to-one classes give me that luxury.

I can make spaces too. If I feel I want to spend more time on a particular part of the lesson, whether that be on a grammar bit or the general conversation that inevitably kicks off a class, I can. I have the freedom. Obviously my teacher has a plan, but luckily she’s not the prescriptive type, so she’ll happily allow me to slow things down or follow me down a particularly tangential rabbit hole. Subsequently, that means there is no…

 

Pressure

No matter how good the teacher is at creating a pleasant, cooperative mood, in a group class there is always pressure. Firstly, there is a pressure to perform to the same level as your peers. I remember my first ever Portuguese lessons a few years back and how most of the other students, whose first languages were also of Latin origin, sailed through the elementary levels, leaving me feeling like the class dunce. At least in a one-to-one class, as well as being the slowest student, I’m also the top of the class!

And who can forget the pressure to finish an activity? There you are, calmly, slowly and deliberately working on the task when you hear a couple of other students muttering to each other. They’ve finished and you’re barely halfway through. Who hasn’t felt their heart quicken, their grip tighten on their pen, and their forehead moisten as that happens? Well, not me anymore, I’m free to dawdle all I wish! Which may not entirely be a good thing, even though this…

 

No Pressure

… environment means I’m free to do what I want, teacher permitting of course. I’m not sure, however, that that is exactly what I need. Like any student I need motivation to progress and maybe I need some external pressure to get where I need to go. Do I need other people in the classroom to push me along?

I do have some internal motivation. I live in a Spanish speaking country so it would be nice to interact with people, plus it would make my life a bit easier. And when I think of my friends and family back home, the non-teachers, the civilians, as actors would call them, very few of them speak a foreign language and I’m proud of the fact that I do, even if it’s only one and a bit.

But I don’t need Spanish, I can live without it, I just like the idea of it. Is that going to be enough motivation? Only time will tell, but one thing I’m sure of is that, for me…

 

One Is The Magic Number

… and not the loneliest number, as some would have you believe. I’m an introvert, I don’t like to perform, I don’t enjoy peer pressure and I prefer my own time and space. Like any learner, I need some external motivation to help me succeed, but feeling slow and useless is not it. I don’t feel that I’m missing out by not being with other people. On the contrary, I enjoy the fact that my teacher and I can get to know each other despite my linguistic shortcomings in a way that would be impossible in a group class.

I’m aware that not every student shares my characteristics and situation (and I’m sure my old teachers would be horrified to know that one of their students felt the way I often did). More extroverted types might enjoy the things that I can do without. Good luck to them, but if you can excuse my rampaging ego for a second, this article isn’t about them, it’s about me and one-to-one suits me just fine.

 

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More Teaching One to One – Ann

Ann Loseva

Personality Matters in One-to-One
– Ann Loseva

 

The one-to-one classroom is a meeting point of two personalities. Not convinced that the teacher’s personality should be a shadow that completely yields or that being an equal makes a lesson teacher-centred, the observations which follow have at their center the idea that in a one-on-one class the teacher’s personality matters.

 

Observation #1: My 1-to-1 classroom is unplugged and adaptive.

It took several years and many factors (an increase in confidence being most meaningful) to start feeling more or less at peace with classes going their own way, the way the two personalities in a lesson shape them. As soon as I looked up from a coursebook and into a student’s eyes, I began to notice more of what our class could bring. In this light, my belief now is that there hardly is a better place to test teaching dogme style than a one-to-one class. For me as a non-native teacher of English, the teaching style I’ve deliberately chosen is still demanding in every lesson I give. Going light on materials we use, taking advantage of flashes of “lesson sparks” and turning them into conversations, being focused on every line my students produce – all of these require a certain attitude, as well as experience. And as experience goes, a series of such lessons might easily become a mess of a course. At first, I was too happily blown away by all the potentials and freedom this approach gave me, so no wonder that I kept falling into the trap of having no aim or direction. At this point I’m still not fail-safe as a teacher, but with time have collected a list of tips for myself and worked out a rough scheme of potential course scenarios. The strategies I use include:

Talking about the student: The first class revolves around finding out as much information as possible about the previous language learning experience of a student, its impact, its footprint and basic feeling about English it has left behind. We discuss details, reflect on the effectiveness of methods a student can recall. We pinpoint the situations of current language use and prioritize skills to improve. It’s absolutely necessary to set a realistic aim and objectives to go with it. We also take our time to mind-map the areas of interest, curiosity and “mastery” of a student – which means answering questions like: “What are you good at? What do you know a lot about? What’s in your Facebook feed? What do you need to talk/ learn about?”

Structuring the course: According to the information I find out during the first chunk of lessons, I will usually create an online space for our classes, which for me acts as a way to “hold” the course together by keeping communication with the student in a back and forth regime. I usually feel after one or two classes what fits this particular student. My suggestions include regular emails, Facebook or a shared Google document to accompany the classes, but I’m always open for any other ideas. In the recent year or so I’ve been trying out various ways to get students reflect on their learning on a regular basis, which I now see as a very important feature of my class. Students are informed that the course is flexible and negotiating its contents is one the keys for making progress. To make that work, though, I ensure we get back to learning priorities regularly and revisit our aims. The latest introduction for me is working more seriously on building up a retrospective syllabus for each class I teach. I’m still in the process of figuring it out for myself, but I hope it will help me avoid messing things up and being disappointed.

Advice to myself : On a practical basis, I’ve learnt not to cry over a lesson plan that doesn’t become useful for several lessons in a row. That only means we’ve found a new direction for the learning, and being “present” in a class and aware of the turns it takes for me as a teacher is much more important than following plans. I’m prepared to get sidetracked, use the digressions and their emergent language, as well as recurrent mistake patterns.

 

Observation #2  My 1-to-1 classroom is hopefully a space of shared trust.

Teaching one-to-one has taught me to be open to, recognize, appreciate and value idiosyncrasies. There’s no other type of class where personality matters more.  A match is not quite the same as building good rapport. It presupposes even more understanding, trust, sensitivity to your student’s concerns, unfeigned interest, and a genuine desire to help. Under these conditions, a teacher is at his/her most vulnerable in a one-to-one classroom. I don’t support the conventional opinion that a teacher should put on a cheerful mask as he/she enters a class. That sounds hypocritical and unfair to both students and teachers. It is definitely easier, but something that pays off emotionally in the long run. I want the 60 or 90 minutes I spend with my student to be a comfortable time for us both, so I shake off any pretense. It does take courage to get the message across – that I’m a teacher but I won’t know the answers to all of the sudden, often untimely and illogical questions. Yet this is how I suggest we should both learn, in a flux of a lesson, as dynamic or low key as my student and I will be on that particular day. And I hope I’m ready to realize that every day of class is another day. Once my class becomes this space of trust, I believe I start seeing the students I teach as interesting people with views that should be respected but which I don’t need to agree with, influence or impose my values and beliefs on. A one-to-one class is ultimately a place of concession for me.

 

Observation #3  My 1-to-1 classroom feeds my curiosity.

I enjoy the private lessons I give on a very egotistic level, too. I crave surprise, and the format and style of such classes never fails to provide me with amazement and revelation. More than just that, I’ll admit here to being also a greedy and selfish teacher, so I ruthlessly exploit lessons to quench my thirst for knowledge. Together with and from my students I learn the things I’d never know. The diversity of my students’ backgrounds (to mention just a few – advertising, technology, logistics, insurance, tourism, HR, medicine) opens up parallel universes to me. The tricky part here is realizing for yourself and then putting up with the apparent truth that you don’t know more than your students do, so the roles of a teacher and a student are not so rigid. Once you’ve come to terms with this, it takes no more than a deep breath to start learning from your students’, from the best of their skills, from the depths of their professional scopes.

Here are a few things I have recently done which I would never have imagined myself doing had it not been for my private students include …

  • I tried my hand at a certified exam test for auditors (CIA) and answered several questions correctly, at sight.
  • I’ve been offered a job at a senior management position which entitled me to helping bring some brand new snacks to the Russian snack market.
  • I know in detail how the alcohol import industry works in Russia.

Naturally, I don’t practically need all that, but the realization that I can have a chance to peek into some other reality than my ordinary teacher’s life is always too tempting for me to resist.
A one-to-one class can get very tense, especially if you are over personalizing the process. However, I still think that interpersonal skills, being able to sense the moods and their swings can change learning, both for the better and the worse. For a teacher in a one-to-one course there are always options to choose from. There’s the distant way, which is safe and pleasant:  teach the material, be amiable, respond to the learner’s needs and be free till next class. And there’s this shaky, uncomfortable way in which you remain yourself, bring your self into the lesson and share on equal terms.  Which way you go is up to you.

 

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More Teaching One to One

Teaching or learning one-to-one: what works and why? In this issue Barbi Bujitas, James Taylor, and Ann Loseva offer perspectives, ideas, and activities which prove that one is not the loneliest number after all.

 

Barbi Bujitas
Barbi Bujitas		 James Taylor
James Taylor		 Ann Loseva
Ann Loseva

 

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Teaching One to One – Henrick

Henrick Oprea

What Makes One-On-One Classes So Special?
– Henrick Oprea

After a long time teaching mainly groups, I’m now back in the position of having an equal number of private (or one-on-one) lessons. This certainly makes it easier for me to put things into perspective. It’s shed some new light on the differences between each kind of teaching, and also on what makes it so special for me as a teacher.

First of all, I’m a firm believer in personalisation and proper feedback for students. I also believe that the role the affective part plays in teaching is just as important as the role of the cognitive part as you can’t really have positive cognitive results if you’re unable to connect with your learners in the first place. When I’m teaching a group, I usually take advantage of the first classes to get to know my students as people and create some rapport with them. It makes it easier for them to trust me as a teacher and this allows me to demand a lot more from them.

In a one-on-one classroom, with only two people in the room, empathy is key. What I try as much as possible is putting myself in the shoes of the learners and really understand not only the reasons for their need to learn, but also their shortcomings and even traumas with their language learning experiences. I use the word traumas because so far I’ve chiefly worked with adults in one-on-one classes, and they’d already been through some learning experiences before they decided to try having private lessons. Such exchange and understanding of your learner has to be done from the very first time you two have the chance to talk. If you manage to pass this stage successfully, you’re bound to have loads of fun, learning and reflection.

In a one-on-one class, the teacher has to be prepared to cater for that learner in particular. This certainly means being prepared to change your lesson plan entirely if need be. Suppose your student works for a company that has decided – in a meeting right before the class – to send him or her abroad for a meeting, or that there’s a document that needs to be replied to urgently and your student asks for your help? You’ve got two options:

  1. Sure, I can help you with that as much as possible;
  2. Sorry, but that’s not what you’re paying me for.

I myself always take the first option. By making yourself available to help your student with something that truly is meaningful for him or her, you have the chance to create lots of learning opportunities that will stick. After all, they are the ones who have brought the material to class, they’ve got an interest in learning what’s there, which is likely to translate in easier retrieval of what you end up teaching them. In addition to helping them, you yourself may end up learning something new and that is likely to be useful in the future with other learners.

Another point to consider is how resourceful you ought to be as a teacher when you’re teaching one-on-one lessons. In a group, you’ve got different learners, each with his or her expectations, demands and worries. More often than not, they’ll end up having to adapt to one or two activities you’ve decided to do in a class simply because this activity caters best to other learners in the group. At the end of the day, you need to add variety to your classroom activities, but your ideas can be used and reused every now and then. When you’re teaching one student only, things are slightly different.

Each learner has his or her own shortcomings, and it is only by being truly aware of these that you’ll be able to help them achieve their goals. Such awareness can be taken to situations that are really extreme. For instance, I’ve never thought I’d have to teach someone who’s recovering from a stroke. Yet, I’ve been teaching a student for about 5 months now and I can’t tell you just how gratifying it is to witness his progress on a daily basis. This has meant a lot of work on my side, as I had to not only re-read much of what I’d read about it, but I also had to study new things on the development of the brain. Among the many benefits to me, it’s rekindled my interest in cognitive neuroscience and it has forced me to put into use many of the different techniques I’d learnt in my teaching career.

There are also the other (more regular) cases, the ones in which you’ll find yourself dealing with a top executive who needs to prepare for a presentation in English, or for a business trip. There are those who are just interested in learning the ropes of the language to be able to communicate on their next trip to Disney World. There are students who want you to use a course book, and students who despise the use of a course book. Each student is unique, and so should your teaching be. It takes the one-size-fits-all approach completely off the table.

Teaching one on one means being prepared to tackle all possible situations as they come, it means being on the top of your game at all times and being able to think on your feet. Oh, wait a minute…. This is what teaching itself entails. The main difference in a one on one class, then, is the fact that you’ll end up having to develop your bag of tricks a lot further and faster if you are to make things interesting each and every day. Most importantly, you’ll better understand the value that trust, empathy and affection have in learning after you have the chance to work with one-on-one classes.

 

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Teaching One to One – Débora

Debora Tebovich

Joy On The One-To-One Learning Journey
– Débora Tebovich

 

“There’s a temptation (to believe) that there’s no group dynamic in teaching one-to-one and that there’s a single relationship involved in the classroom activities. This is not true…” (Wilberg 1994, p 6)

When teaching one-to-one the teacher can become a partner in a role- play, a companion, a collaborator, a guide, a friend, or an authority on language form – though not usually the one to provide the content of the classes. I support the idea that learners should provide the content for the classes as much as possible. Some learners are as avid readers as their teachers are, and they usually know which books they want to read. They can choose. Learners, regardless of their age or English level, usually know what they like, what they need and what interests them. They usually also know what they do not enjoy. The journey of exploration is an exciting one.

Teaching one-to-one is almost all about tailoring techniques to the student’s needs, interests and wants and using our students as a resource, as well as responding to their changes of mood. 

One of the challenges we face is that there’s not one method that can fit all our learners. It can be challenging to find out which activities and methods work better for each particular learner. Each of them is unique yet with time and exploration, we can discover each person’s particular learning styles. Haven’t you ever found yourself adapting material to fit your own learning style? Well, I have been there, and sometimes I still am.

One-on-one teaching allows students to take more risks, to be more open in general and to enrich the classes with their personal accounts. This allows teachers to focus on solving problematic areas in the learners’ weaknesses.

For me teaching one to one is a learning experience, a moment of sharing and collaboration – like a deal where both the learner and the teacher give their best.

 

Key characteristics of A Student-Centered Learning Approach

Maybe you are one of those teachers who thinks that teaching one to one can be boring, however if you advocate a Student Centered Approach, have you noticed how many things teaching one to one and SCA have in common? In his article, Carl Rogers and Postmodernism: Challenges in Nursing and Health Sciences, Phillip Burnard writes that learners might not onlychoosewhat to study, but also how and why that topic might be an interesting one to study. Burnard also says that when implementing a student-centered learning environment, one must pay attention to …

▪   What the learner is curious about learning

▪   Teaching strategies to accommodate individual needs.

▪   Increased responsibility and accountability on the part of the student, increased sense of autonomy in the learner.

▪   Shifting responsibility for learning from teacher to learner

▪   Mutual respect within the learner teacher relationship,

▪   Reflective approach to the teaching and learning process on the part of both teacher and learner.

▪   Designing content as a means to building knowledge rather than a knowledge end in itself

▪   Positioning the teacher as a facilitator and contributor, rather than director and source of knowledge

In order to interact with other people in one-on-one classes, some members of my PLN visit us for a Google Hangout once in a while.  As learners become more self confident, we Hangout together in groups even when at different levels. I encourage them to think that as long as they have a message to share they can get prepared for the meeting, and because we develop trust as a virtue in our classes, little by little we move forward together more confidently. Developing trust is crucial in any kind of teaching scenario. When I teach adults their main concern is privacy, and fear of making mistakes, which would make them feel awkward or silly and resulting in lower confidence. Caring for each of them is my daily commitment, and they know it.

 

Planning

Planning a series of lessons for the future might be another challenge. As for me, one way of getting daily motivation is to explore what’s going on around and within learners. I find myself looking forward to seeing what my learners bring to class. When it comes to language, though, it’s simply not possible to predict the emergent language they will need to communicate an idea, and so rather than plan, we un-plan and build up from what’s within and around us. This un-planning sometimes results in a walk around the neighborhood where we take some pictures on our way to the nearest park, and we sit down on a bench and talk about the images and the conversation usually takes us to unpredictable and powerful dialogs.

Learning happens everywhere.

 

Assessment

I don’t usually grade learners’ work.  I don’t think they need a grade, however there’s lots of feedback. Besides, the more I dig deep into questions like “Why do we learn?” and therefore “Why do we teach?” the more I move into uncertainty whether learning can be really measured.

I try to put emphasis on what they have achieved. I provide clear examples of what they have managed to identify correctly, information about the use of language, vocabulary, effort, creativity, and any other relevant information. Sometimes I record videos, providing emergent language needs from their productions; and encourage them to re edit their work.

Last year, I invited some learners to create their own e-books. Because we don’t follow textbooks we use Google docs to collect notes, links, projects, ideas, reflections and I thought that putting their productions together would be exciting and motivating. And it was…

However it went far beyond that. It turned out to be a self-assessment project. Having done this activity at the end of the year somehow proved to them that learning had happened.  I will hardly ever forget their pride in becoming writers of their own learning journey.

 

Delivery

One big challenge I face is that learners tend to cancel classes, which is undoubtedly detrimental for learning. On the other hand, when we are freelancers and teaching one to one, we don’t usually get paid for classes we do not give. I have been reflecting on finding ways to deal with this, and I am piloting the idea of “delivery lessons” as I call them. So, when learners cannot take the class they know I’ll email them the class.

Here are two examples:

Describing people

Simple Past, Present Perfect & more

 

Final Words

Teaching one to one or teaching groups is sometimes a choice and sometimes a question of professional opportunities or needs, but what I do know is that I teach because teaching makes me happy. Please scroll down to view examples of some of the explorations my learners and I have made on our joyous learning journey.

 

References

Burnard, P. (1999). Carl Rogers and postmodernism: Challenges in nursing and health sciences. Nursing and Health Sciences 1, 241-247)

Wilberg, P. (1994). One to One, A Teacher´s Handbook. London: Heinle.

 

Some examples of our learning journey

Storytelling:

Allie visits White Planet http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/?id=53440

Last Joke in Life http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/?id=38099

The Case against Good and Bad-How the story can be perceived from different perspectives using adjectives http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/?id=45183

 

E-books: We created them using Pages for Mac and exported them as epubs, so learners keeps their eBooks in their devices, in order to share an example I uploaded one of them into http://issuu.com, which unfortunately does not support embed videos or podcasts.

My 2013 English Journey

 

Dealing with the news: Writing about the news and reporting the news

Npaper-First edition

6 o’clock News

 

Which job would you like to apply for?

Which job I would like to apply for

 

Dealing with art

Salvador Dali

Community Project: Vincent Van Gogh

Sharing stories about holidays

 

Reading (Glogster works better in Chrome or Firefox) Of Mice and Men

Emergent Language and Needs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVV0CHZYMJc&feature=share

 

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