TEACHING ENGLISH ONE-2-ONE •
Gain the students attention by using a little bit of humour, tell them a couple of things about yourself such as your interests/pets to see if they can relate to any of them. Common ground is often good to get anyone talking.
If your student has had a bad day and is finding it hard to concentrate, along with treating you like a counsellor as they want to discuss their problems there are some possible things to try or remember. •
You are the teacher so you are in control, while you need to safeguard your student by ensuring their problems are just “a bad day” and nothing something that may require assistance, you need to move the lesson on.
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Use the student’s frustrations as a lesson. Where they might say they are feeling sad, push them into using better vocabulary and sentence structure.
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Get them to write their problems down and read them back to you, again using their frustrations as an exercise in learning rather than a ranting session.
If a student has poor listening skills there are a few solutions I would consider. •
First I would have to find out why the student had poor listening in the first place. This could be due to lack of motivation, lack of attention, a learning need or their receptive skills just weren’t as strong as their productive skills.
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All distractions from the room should be removed.
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Lack of attention or motivation would suggest that they weren’t the ones paying for the tuition in the first place. Talking about things that grab their attention or motivate them would be a good start.