How to teach English to a child one by one

On ESL forums, one often sees teachers asking for ideas to make their individual lessons more fun. Many teachers are brilliant in the classroom, but they have no ideas when it comes to teaching English to children in private lessons, and that’s a shame because teaching one-on-one can be very rewarding, as well as often being a good source of resources. extra. entry.

By far the best approach for children to successfully and fun learn one-on-one is to use games and songs. One of the tricks is to have a substantial library of games that can be used for one-on-one teaching. Another essential element is having a great sense of fun and being prepared to play games.

If you teach using games, children will love your private lessons, and their parents will love you for the results you achieve. A by-product of this already very successful combination is that by teaching children in a fun way, an important link is established between enjoyment and learning, which can enhance the rest of a child’s life.

Here are some ideas for using the games successfully when teaching one-on-one. Most games need more than one player, which means that sometimes you need to join and play as well. You could say, “well then I would win all the time”, and that may be true. So if you are playing a game that is not just pure luck, and where you would normally win all the time, then you can do things like this:

– Give your student a 10 to 30 second head start.

– Make your homework more difficult.

– Duplicate the task that you must complete in the same time that your student completes it once.

– Award your student three points to yours.

– Award your student 10 bonus points at the beginning of the game.

– Deliberately lose by being slow (but pretend you’re in a rush), or drop your pen ‘accidentally’.

Another way to add an element of fun to an individual lesson is to use a stopwatch or timer to add excitement. This allows your students to compete against themselves instead of always competing or playing against you.

Calculate your student’s time in each round of a game and see if they can beat the previous time. You can also use the stopwatch to set a time limit for an activity, with the goal of allowing just enough time for your student to be more stimulated than if they were simply working methodically on the exercise.

Oven timers that tick and have a bell that rings after the set time is up are good too. Your student must complete homework before the bell rings. Substitutes for a timer can be an alarm clock, a wind-up music box, or an egg timer.

The bells you find at hotel reception desks are fun too. Students run to ring the bell when they have their answer. This is most effective when you have two or more students, but is still an additional fun element for younger children, even in individual lessons.

And finally, always be sensitive: be careful that a person doesn’t always lose and only use the competition if they see that it improves the mood rather than causing unnecessary tension or a loss of morale. With children between the ages of 3 and 6, it is best to avoid any form of competition. You can play the game or use the timer as usual, but make sure you play to the end so that everyone wins, not just the person who finishes first, and with the idea of ​​the timer, it is essential that the child finishes before the time comes. moment. up to, even if you have to extend that time indefinitely. If a young child does not finish in the required time, it really bothers him and he will probably cry, and that is not the point of the game. Rather, you want the child to ALWAYS succeed, so that it feels good to learn English.

Watch the fun demonstration video on the Home English Teacher website for ideas on how to teach English to your children.

Teaching one on one is immensely rewarding, as progress can be rapid. In addition to games, making short plays with your student in front of their parents or friends is also a winning activity. Children love being the center of attention and showing what they have learned. Simple and repetitive scripts can be written with basic English, but with a touch of fun in them and this will give great pleasure to the child, who will be happy to rehearse and act, and to the parents who will be so impressed with their results that they will be assured to keep sending your child to lessons.

If possible, loan or recommend movies to watch for homework, such as Spiderman, Batman, King Kong or Cinderella and Walt Disney, all in English and WITHOUT subtitles. Your students will watch you many times willingly and will absorb a great deal of language subconsciously, even if they cannot initially understand the dialogues.

If you are considering the cost of buying videos, take heart. You can find very cheap second-hand videos and DVDs on the Internet.

You can also build a library of comics to read for homework. You wouldn’t expect your student to understand that much initially, but the subconscious will absorb language all the time.

Take a deposit for the replacement cost of the video or comic (including shipping) to encourage return of the video or comic.

The combination of teaching fun lessons with games, getting results, and offering additional services, such as a video or comic library, will set you apart from your peers and you are sure to receive many parent recommendations for private lessons.