How to teach English to a child one on one

In ESL forums, you often see teachers asking for ideas to make their individual lessons more fun. Many teachers are brilliant in the classroom but clueless when it comes to teaching children English in private lessons, and that’s a shame because teaching one-on-one can be very rewarding, as well as being a good source of additional learning. entry.

By far the best approach for children to have successful and fun individual teaching is to use games and songs. One of the tricks is to have a substantial library of games that work for one-on-one teaching. Another essential element is having a strong sense of fun and being prepared to participate in 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 made between enjoyment and learning, which can enhance the rest of that child’s life.

Here are some ideas for using games successfully when teaching one-on-one. Most of the games need more than one player, which means sometimes you have to join and play too. You might say, “well, then I’d just win every time,” and that may be true. So if you’re playing a game that isn’t just pure luck, and where you would normally win every 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.

– Give your student three points for one of yours.

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

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

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 each other instead of always competing or playing against you.

Time your student in each round of a game and see if they can beat their previous time. You can also use the timer to give an activity a time limit, with the goal of allowing just enough time for your student to be more stimulated than if they were just methodically working through the exercise.

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

The bells you find at hotel reception desks are also fun. 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 added fun element for younger children, even in individual lessons.

And lastly, always be sensible: be careful that one person doesn’t always lose and only use the competition if you see it as improving morale rather than causing unnecessary tension or 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’s essential that the child finishes before it’s over. time. until-even if she has to extend that time indefinitely. If a toddler doesn’t finish in the required time, she gets really upset and will probably cry, and that’s not the point of the game. Rather, you want the child to ALWAYS be successful, so that they feel good about learning English.

Watch the fun demo 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, doing skits with your student in front of their parents or friends is also a winning activity. Children love to be the center of attention and show off what they have learned. One can write simple and repetitive scripts with basic English but with a fun twist, and this will give a lot of pleasure to the child, who will be happy to rehearse and act, and to the parents, who will be very impressed with their results that they will be sure of. keep sending your child to lessons.

If possible, lend or recommend movies to watch for homework, such as Spiderman, Batman, King Kong or Cinderella and Walt Disney movies, all in English and WITHOUT subtitles. Your students will watch this many times willingly and absorb a lot of language unconsciously, even if they can’t initially understand the dialogue.

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 could also create a library of comics to read for homework. He wouldn’t expect his student to understand as much initially, but the subconscious will absorb the language all the time.

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

The combination of giving fun classes with games, getting results and offering extra services such as a video library or a video library, will set you apart from your peers and you will surely receive many recommendations from parents for private classes.

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