One to One : Content and Methodology

Teachers are often justifiably nervous about taking on a one-to-one lesson. There is the feeling that it should be somehow “different” from a group lesson, and the fear that it will be much more demanding. So, how does the course content and methodology that you use in a one-to-one course differ from that of a group course? Should it differ at all?

At elementary and intermediate levels I think students need to follow a set programme, in order to provide a complete syllabus and a coherent course. If you are a beginner, it doesn’t matter how specific your needs are – you still need to learn the verb to be and then the other basic structures of the language, and you still need to do lots of practice exercises. This may be an ordinary coursebook, and/or an on-line course, presuming that there is a computer in the room where you are teaching. Including an on-line course in the programme gives you the chance to provide a change of focus during the lesson – particularly useful if you are with the student for any length of time, as you might be for example on an intensive one-to-one course. One which I’ve built into several intermediate level courses as supplementary material is Ten Days in Manchester from the BBC’s Learning English site.

Beginners also need to do all the things that they would do if they were working in a group. Teachers are often frightened, for example, of asking students to repeat phrases, to read or do written exercises in a private lesson. Don't be – they need repetition work as much as any other student and, especially if they're not doing homework, they also need written consolidation. Sometimes they benefit from working on an exercise with the teacher watching them as they write the answers and confirming or helping as they go along. At other times, however, they need to work independently. I always take an article to read or some marking to do while they work – so that they don’t feel I’m hovering and observing all the time. But they also need to know that they are my priority – as soon as they finish (or if they get stuck) they tell me and my attention switches back to them.

What about other aspects of methodology ? One commonly expressed misconception about one-to-one teaching is that “You can’t do pairwork!”. You can, and you should. Otherwise, the student will never have the chance to try out the language she needs to use in the real situation in roleplay and simulation activities. It's just that you have to be the other member of the pair! This obviously means that you can't monitor at the same time, but try recording the activity. You can then play back the conversation, the student can try to correct his/her own mistakes or reformulate the things s/he had difficulty with. Some pairwork activities can also be adapted to become individual activities in the one to one situation. For example a spot the difference activity with pictures, intended to be done with one student having each picture and describing it to his/her partner, can be done by letting the student see the first picture for ten seconds, then turning it over and showing him/her the second. The student then has to list, from memory, the differences. As the student is monologuing, the teacher is free to take notes as s/he listens.

Although I said above that I would generally want to follow a set course, the advantage of 1-to-1 is that you can also focus on things which are particularly relevant to the student. For example, with one beginner, I taught the simple past form of verbs (affirmative only) very early on. We then started each lesson with her telling me the things she had done in the preceding days. Because she was saying things like I went to a meeting about ... I had a problem with... the specific vocabulary she needed for her work came up almost from the beginning - which it wouldn't have done if we'd just ploughed through a standard beginners’ course. At this level, this often means using reformulation to help the student express his/her ideas. S/he tells the teacher what s/he wants to say (either in inaccurate English or in the L1), and the teacher restates it in correct English. If you do this keep two things in mind :

• Firstly, simplify the phrase so that it can be expressed within the student’s current competence – for example. If the student wants to say I’ve known him since 1978 but hasn’t yet met the present perfect, rephrase the sentence as I met him in 1978.
• Secondly, remember that if you say the correct form and the student just says “yes!”, she won’t learn anything. Always get him/her to repeat it. I also write it down in the L1 or in abbreviated form I - meet - my husband - 1978 and at the end of the lesson ask him/her to remember what they wanted to say and to say it again.At higher levels the course can be made far more specific by working on authentic materials based on the student's own interests - which may be professional or personal. One good source of listening material for example is Words in the News from the BBC Learning English site mentioned above. This covers a range of topics and comes complete with lesson plans. However, bear in mind that developing tailor-made materials is much more time consuming in terms of preparation than working on a coursebook, and if you’re setting your own fees, you need to factor this into the course price. You need not only to develop a unit around the material, but also to find it in the first place.

If you want to provide tailor made courses, where can you get your materials? At the moment, for example, I have one person responsible for energy issues - we're working on EU and other documents concerning initiatives on pollution (provided by the student or from the Net), as well as documentaries and news items from the BBC. Another, who I have been working with for about ten years now, has had two jobs in that time – both in local government but one concerned with vocational training and another with social services. Over the years we’ve worked on documents from British local government bodies, and documentaries and news items from the media.

Tailor-made courses don’t always have to focus on a student’s professional interests however. At the moment I am working with one person who is suffering from professional burn out and has asked to drop the job-oriented texts. He’s currently taking a high level sailing licence, so we're working on a diary of a round-the-world race, again from the net. In each case I divide the text into sections, and then turn it into a "unit" with pre-text discussion activities, general and detailed comprehension tasks, vocabulary study etc. As he wants to improve his listening skills, I again use short clips of video from BBC World which I work on in much the same way (we’ve just looked at a news item on the London Boat show).

Of course, you don’t always have to provide such detailed materials to personalise a one-to one course, and if you’re not being paid enough to make it worthwhile, you might decide mainly to follow a published course but occasionally to personalise without developing too many materials. For example, as Keith Taylor pointed out in his article on using DVD and video, you don’t always have to exploit the text in video material. Had my student been at a lower level, I might simply have asked him to watch the video without sound and to say what he thought it was about, before asking him to describe the last boat show he attended in his own country. Preparation time in this case would have been limited solely to the time necessary to find the material.


Acknowledgement
Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by septuagesima via flickr

Dealing with Difficult Situations : Negotiating Course Content

In this, the first in an occasional series on Dealing with Difficult Situations, we look at a common situation – the one-to one student who has different ideas to you on how the course should be structured. How do you react if you’re convinced that what the student wants is not what they really need? Do you insist on doing it “your way” and almost certainly lose the student’s belief in the efficacy of the course? Or do you give them what they want although firmly believing it will do little to advance their learning? This article looks at a response which worked well with one student.

I once had a client who came to Britain to do a two week, six hour a day, one to one course at the organisation where I was working. We had a clear statement from his company of what they expected from the course and, as always, before his arrival we did an extensive language audit and needs analysis, including analysing typical reports he would have to read and write, the minutes of the type of meeting he would have to attend and so on. He was at a lower intermediate level, with a grammatical, functional and lexical competence which was clearly inadequate for the high level job which he had. He needed to reach a level in which he was capable of attending meetings, giving presentations and negotiating in English, as well as writing complex technical reports. His two weeks with us would be the first step in a course which would then be continued on a non-intensive basis on his return to Venezuela. I spent much of the week before his arrival working on the course objectives and syllabus, and putting together the course materials.

On the first morning of the course, immediately after meeting him, I explained how the course would be structured, and how we had arrived at those specific objectives based on the information we had collected. He then politely, but firmly, stated “No, I don’t want all that. I just want to talk.”

This left me with a dilemma. First of all, I was convinced that, at his level and with the specific needs that he had, “just talking” was not going to help him very much. Secondly, that was not what his company (who were paying and who we had to report to) had asked for. And thirdly my heart sank at the idea of trying to plan 60 consecutive teaching hours of the type of chat he clearly had in mind in a one-to-one situation.

However, it was also clear that if I just refused to take his wants into consideration, it would have a negative effect on his attitude towards the course, which would mean that it was unlikely to be successful. There was also the possibility, however minimal I considered it, that he was right and I was wrong. On the spot, I therefore proposed a verbal teaching-learning contract : he would try it “my way” for the first two days of the course, after which we would switch to “his way” for the next two days. At the end, he could decide which approach or which activities had led to the most successful learning, and from then on we would follow that approach for the rest of the course. I also made it clear that he would have to play an active part in the “conversation” part of the course, thinking of and introducing topics as well as just waiting for me to do so. But both of us undertook to “give it all we’d got” for the full four days, temporarily putting aside whatever doubts we each had about the other’s methods.

We thus started working on the course materials which I’d prepared, and at the end of the two days I was starting to see results. But as he hadn’t changed his mind, we then switched. The first morning went well – he was a nice guy and he had plenty to say about his job, his life and his country. By the end of the afternoon he seemed to be starting to flag a bit, but he went away with both of us having agreed to think of various new topics for the second day. The next morning we kept going, but after lunch he came back and said he’d already made up his mind how he wanted the course to continue. He felt he had learned far more in the first two days than afterwards, and could we go back immediately to the programme that had been planned.

Despite the fact that we had “wasted” nine out of the sixty hours and the programme had to be adapted slightly, the course overall was extremely successful. From that point on, the student participated actively and enthusiastically, showing full commitment to the approach and to reaching the objectives which had been set. I’m convinced this wouldn’t have happened if I had just tried to convince him I knew more than he did about his needs and had imposed my syllabus on him. He needed to experience the difference in order to convince himself.


Have you experienced a similar situation and found another solution which worked well? Leave a comment telling us about it. Or if you’ve found a solution for a different type of difficult situation, why not send us an article describing it?

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by DavidQuick via Flickr

Teaching VIPs

Quite a lot of my past students have been VIPs - people whose names cropped up quite often in the press or on TV, even if only in Italy or in specific contexts like the business news. Or in some cases people who were just Very Important within their own organisation - Managing Directors of large companies and so on. In some cases I’ve thoroughly enjoyed teaching them – I’ve met some highly intelligent and very interesting people and it’s been a pleasure to work with them. But often there’s a lot of baggage to cut through before you can start to achieve results. Here’s a not-in-any-particular-order list of some of the challenges I’ve encountered, and a few suggestions.

1. The idea of teaching somebody high-powered can be daunting. This immediately makes the teacher feel insecure and unwilling to take the lead as s/he normally might. The NLP trick of imagining the client on their first day at primary school, or sitting in their underpants, often helps. But in any case it’s a trap to avoid. Tell yourself that in this situation you are the expert, and at this stage you probably have far clearer ideas than the client about what it would and wouldn’t be useful to do. Take the lead from the beginning, particularly if the student has assumptions which you feel would be counterproductive to the success of the course. A typical example of this is where you both sit. VIPs tend to have very large desks, and often expect the teacher to perch on a chair at the other side, too far away for comfortable communication and without a surface to write on. If there’s a meeting table in the room, and there often is, suggest that it would be easier to do the lesson there, sitting around one corner. If this isn’t possible, then suggest that you move your chair around to the side of the desk, where it will be easier to look at handouts together.

2. VIPs are used to being the leader. Very often they are experts in their field and high achievers who are used to being successful. It can be difficult for them to accept the role of the non-expert – the one who has things to learn and is liable to make mistakes on the way, who has to ask for help and explanation, or who might benefit from following another person’s suggestions. They may try to take over the course – the complete beginner who says s/he “just wants conversation” is a typical example. Or they may act defensively, blaming the teacher if they don’t seem to be making immediate progress. Because of this, it’s essential that the teacher conveys a professional image and starts to win respect from the beginning. Image is conveyed by a variety of factors, for example dress and body language. But a vital element is the teacher’s apparent knowledge of the subject. If the student sees you to be hesitant in explaining a grammar point or in thinking of a word in English which expresses the (often-highly technical) concept s/he is trying to get over, s/he may well seize on this as being the “explanation” for his/her learning difficulties and insecurities: “It’s not my fault, the teacher’s no good.”

Obviously, few of us are able to think on their feet all the time and you can’t always come up immediately with all the answers. Don’t fudge. Just say confidently, “I’m not sure, but I’ll find out for next time” – and then make a note of it and do it. The image conveyed is far more professional and far more likely to gain the student’s confidence. Once that confidence is gained, the student becomes more willing to see the teacher as an equal, more relaxed about their own learning progress, and more willing to negotiate methods, course content etc.

3. VIPs are used to other people doing things for them – secretaries making their phone calls, drivers waiting to take them where they want to go. It can be a shock to find that learning a language isn’t like that – the teacher can’t “do it for them” – and you often find yourself being pushed into spoon-feeding while the student remains passive. As an example, one of my students would never pick up a pen to write something down unless I specifically suggested it. At the beginning I suspected she was an aural learner but it was soon clear that nothing was sticking. In desperation, I started noting things down for her, but that didn’t work either. So I switched to noting down only the Italian translation, or drawing a quick picture. Then at the end of the lesson I gave her the list and a stack of squares of card – she had to remember the English expression for each item on the list, and make a vocabulary card for it. At the beginning of the next lesson we worked again with the cards from the last few lessons. This didn’t solve the problem, but it at least made her more active as a learner, and made the point that she was the one who had to do the work.

4. VIPs are also VBPs – Very Busy People. Their schedule is chock-a-block with appointments and lessons will often be delayed or cancelled so that they can deal with other things. This will play havoc with the course, as well as possibly with your income. If you teach for a school or other organisation, they will have a policy on payment for cancelled lessons. If you work freelance, you need to develop your own.

If it’s only an occasional problem, then a common solution is that lessons cancelled less than 24 hours in advance are invoiced as if taught, while lessons cancelled with advance warning are not. However, if the problem occurs frequently, you may want to change policy. One of my clients booked a course of two 1.5 hour lessons a week for five months. I saw him twice in that period, lessons nearly always being cancelled in advance and therefore not paid. So I was having to keep three hours a week free without earning anything. When he wanted to renew the contract I said I would do so only if he nominated a “back-up” student – someone who would take over the lesson if he was unable to attend. As a solution it worked well – he got the flexibility he wanted, I got the income I expected, and the company got a service for their money.

That doesn’t solve the problem, however, of the lack of regularity in the course and the effect it has on learning. By the time the clients come for another lesson, they have frequently forgotten everything that was covered previously. Being a VBP the client is unlikely to do anything between lessons either. Which means that not only do you need more consolidation and revision than usual, but also that a lot of the work that would normally done at home has to be done in the lesson. Which means that progress is painfully slow.

I don’t know if anyone else has an answer to this one – I don’t think I have. At higher levels lessons can be planned as “one-offs” and the course seen as maintenance rather than progress, but this doesn’t work with lower levels. The important thing is that the student understands the problem, and understands that the teacher can only do so much in compensating for it.

5. Levels and Materials. Because of the nature of their work and/or lifestyle, it’s unlikely that VIPs have contact with English only in the classroom. In some cases this can create the problem of clients who are apparently stronger than they really are because they are used to coping and “bluffing” their way through conversations. This type of client may well recognise the present perfect but have little idea of the verb to be, and have deeply fossilised errors. I’ve frequently made the mistake of putting this type of client onto materials which are way above his or her real level, and then had to backtrack desperately.

The type of materials you choose can also be a problem. A VIP client will almost inevitably have immediate specific needs which published materials don’t meet. With real high-fliers, published materials can also seem extremely banal. But do you have time/are you being paid what is necessary to design truly specific materials? If you’re working for yourself you can factor it into the price for yourself. But if you’re working for a school, it’s not always something that is taken into consideration when the course is sold.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by crjr2527 via flickr