Blog
Tutoring English Students on Speaking Skills? Set Clear Expectations!
Why setting clear expectations as an English tutor is important
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
Are you tutoring English students on speaking skills? How do you effectively teach speaking skills to a English language learner as a private tutor? What will you actually do for 60-120 minutes together? How will you make the conversation lessons meaningful enough that your client feels satisfied and wants to retain you for future lessons?
Speaking English means being able to actually hold clear, comfortable conversations. Yet holding a conversation in English remains a challenging task for many ESL and EFL students. Personally, I blame an old-fashioned, grammar-obsessed curriculum for creating the common situation in which students can recite obscure grammar rules, but can’t discuss their weekend plans or talk about the movies. Yet here we are. Students want to develop their speaking skills, but crowded English classes provide little opportunity for authentic conversations. Therefore, many English students hire English tutors to help them develop their conversation and speaking skills.
Yet effectively tutoring English students in conversation can be more difficult than it sounds. What does the student want to learn? What will you really teach? How will progress be measured? While sometimes younger students just want to talk and be heard, I have also worked with older, more serious students. Time is money, and money matters.
I strongly suggest establishing clear expectations regarding both content and business matters. Some tutors even present a written contract outlining their rates, the location and times of meetings, and payment policies. One of my university colleagues makes students sign a form allowing her to videotape the entire tutoring session for her research. Another demands prepayment for packages of 10 sessions at a time. I have never needed to be that formal, but I have also never been burned the way some English tutors have been. In fact, I’ve had only very positive experiences with conversation clients and private English students.
Why? Perhaps luck, or perhaps because I carefully screen potential clients. I only work with professionals, graduate students, and/or friends and spouses of friends with a solid foundation in English. It is important to explicit about what you want and don’t want to teach a client. Be prepared to provide options for potential clients that you reject.
I also set very clear expectations. This process eliminates potential confusion and establishes clear benchmarks. We will review X number of articles and discuss Y number of topics during the next month or semester. We will cover a significant amount of ground in a comfortable, relaxed manner.
For students who want to improve their conversation, I strongly suggest that, as the English tutor, you select the topic and materials in advance. You can use newspapers and/or magazines to find appropriate articles to begin the conversation. I used to assign the articles a week ahead and give English students my conversation worksheets.
Partly as a result of these tutoring lessons over a few years, I wrote Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topics. The conversation book includes 45 chapters with over 1400 questions, 500 quotations, and 450 targeted vocabulary words. The combination of poignant questions, vocabulary lists, proverbs, and witty quotations makes your job much easier. Each chapter is self-contained.
If you have a weaker student looking to improve their speaking skills, then I would advise using a picture dictionary. There are several fine choices. You might use the Oxford Picture Dictionary to open conversations, and I would recommend asking the client to bring in photographs and ads each week. Confession: I almost always referred weaker students to other English tutors who enjoyed working with lower level ESL students more.
Naturally, you will need patience tutoring ESL clients on speaking skills. Be prepared to repeat words, listen very carefully, and remind students to pronounce word endings. Many students will want to work on their pronunciation. This is why recording, with audio or video, your tutoring lessons can be quite helpful for students. It also documents student progress.
You can also assign them listening activities on the web. I like Voice of America’s Special English programs for intermediate and advanced students. You will have to direct lower-level learners to websites to practice their listening and speaking skills with drills. They will love the work; on the other hand, you might go mad repeating vowel sounds and noting stress words.
Finally, the key to tutoring ESL students – or anyone else – remains respecting the students, meeting their needs, and providing a solid structure for your lessons. I have found that using a set text, developing a known routine, and combining conversation, vocabulary and some writing skills makes for a successful and satisfying experience.
As William Shakespeare noted four centuries ago, “All’s well that ends well.” Therefore, you should also have the grace to know when to end your lessons. Some clients will want to keep working with you. Therefore, set a clear goal for your package of lessons, and conclude when the students have reached that goal. As the Hollywood cliché goes, “leave them wanting more.”
What are your plans and goals for tutoring English students this year?
Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com
Journeys in Film promotes use of movies, documentaries to teach
How films can explore and examine cultures in classrooms
“Film has the power to educate the most visually literate generation in history.”
These objectives focus on social studies topic like China, India and South Africa, but the materials can easily be deployed in ESL and EFL classrooms to teach cultural awareness too. Film is too often overlooked as a powerful way to teach and shape ideas. In addition, English learners will benefit from hearing and discussing important topics based around an enjoyable activity. As the Journeys in Film’s website says, “everyone loves a good movie.” The strength here lies in Journeys in Film’s dedication to every second of the movie–the lesson plans provide specifics on where to “pause” to start discussion, and the worksheets tie in with the storyline and relevant historical aspects. In fact, in Discovering China, the curriculum guide even brings in elements like common Chinese phrases, ones that appear in the movie and give a glimpse of what life is like in the country. What teachers all around the world can appreciate is that Journeys in Film does not follow one state standard for teaching, instead, it adheres to the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) standards. The McREL’s five standards for foreign language emphasize conversation, familiarity, culture and communications–things any ESL classroom should strive to emphasize as well. Therefore, its lessons can be immediately employed in the classroom setting.
(By the way, teachers interested in using films to teach history or examine social issue will find both Teaching History With Film and Past Imperfect of considerable interest.)
THE CHALLENGE OF FULL-LENGTH FILMS IN ESL CLASSES
The challenge, as so often, remains how to effectively use full-length films in ESL and EFL classrooms. Many films span several hours and if the students not seem to enjoy a particular film, capturing their undivided attention may be problematic. There are reasons, after all, why using short film clips is far more popular than entire movies in ESL classes. Further, if films are not designed to teach ESL and EFL students English, and in this case, so often they are not, they may be teeming with idioms and unfamiliar situations unrelatable to the audience.
Still, it can be done. Many years ago I enjoyed teaching Groundhog Day to international students in an intensive English program (IEP). Some films, like the comedy Groundhog Day, lend themselves to intermediate ESL class because an action is repeated over and over. The vast majority, however, do not and require supplemental materials to help students benefit from watching the film from an academic perspective.
It is also important to choose films at appropriate levels–beginning, intermediate or advanced–and that illuminate a cultural aspect and provide new vocabulary. As noted in Journeys in Film’s lessons plans, know when to “pause” the film in order to ask the students questions, like “How does this compare to your household?” or “What does she mean when she says…?” Turn on the subtitles to reinforce the link between sound and print, and hold group discussions every now and then. The film becomes a teaching tool that automatically sparks up meaningful conversation and invites various opinions to the table. Journeys in Film lesson plans make this a much simpler task and provide expert guidance, including discussion questions.
Is Journeys into Film perfect for English and ESL classrooms? Probably not, but I still recommend their work because the quality materials offer valuable tips and practical techniques for teaching culture, film, or English. If you teach students from countries like China and South Korea, or plan to teach abroad in those countries, you will certainly find the detailed and visually-stimulating materials quite valuable. Perhaps I’m biased because I teach at USC, live in Los Angeles, and love movies, but Journeys in Film seems like an excellent concept to me. Besides, the comprehensive lesson-plans, with several relevant side-explorations, can be downloaded for free. What’s not to like?
How do you use movies in your English class? Do you have a favorite feature length movie that you show? Why does this movie work in your English class?
Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com
Volume Matters – Even in Personal Conversations
Why volume matters, especially in difficult student-teacher conferences
“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.”
Student conferences, especially those involving shy students worried about their grade or academic performance, can often be a bit awkward for both the professor and student. ESL (English as a Second Language) students, sometimes insecure about their pronunciation or vocabulary, can feel even more anxious about the meeting. ESL and other English teachers have to find ways to reduce student anxiety, provide a safe place for English students to speak, give feedback on student work, and uphold academic standards.
In general, I find that student conferences can be very productive and satisfying because they provide an opportunity to really work with a college student on their writings and assignments. I often feel that I learn as much as I teach in these 20-30 minute student conferences.
Sometimes, however, I have awkward conferences. For instance, if I have caught a student plagiarizing, I dread having this uncomfortable yet unavoidable meeting.
Yet sometimes, like during the last semester, an ESL student is so shy, so timid and so unsure that they speak so softly that I can’t even hear. Sometimes I lean forward and ask inaudible English students to please speak a bit louder. If a student continues in the same low volume, I might apologize for my poor hearing and again request they speak up. What does one do on the third request?
“Please speak a bit louder so I can hear you.”
Was this too direct? I wanted to say, “If I can’t hear you, you will be misunderstood. I want to understand you. Speak up!!”
Patience, this time, paid off. The student raised her voice to an audible level, and replied, “Okay.”
“Good to hear you,” I replied. We proceeded to have a productive end-of-semester conference.
English and ESL teachers at all levels, from elementary school and high school to adult school and university, need to emphasize the importance of student speech being comprehensible. That includes speaking loud enough that conversation partners, classmates, and instructors can hear.
Bottomline: students must speak up in conversations, conferences, and class discussions. Volume matters.
Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com
Creating Simple ESL Lesson Plans Around Top Ten Lists for Advanced English Classes
Advanced ESL/EFL classes benefit from making top ten lists
“Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.”
Americans love to create, read, and discuss top ten lists. Newspapers and magazines use the simple format to summarize large chunks of information in a friendly, easily digestible manner. Year-end issues often expand the technique to create “100 best,” “top ten” or “ten most” lists. Naturally, many English teachers also use this format in their classrooms to express ideas and create discussions.
Sometimes, however, students will simply create a list without providing clear reasons as to how the material is linked together. In order to emphasize the need to clearly share information and exchange insights, I often ask the students to compile a “top ten tips” on how to do something. This twist also invites a wider range of discussion topics from the practical to more philosophical, and shows respect for both the students’ knowledge and interests.
You can ask students for their top ten tips for:
choosing a school?
saving money?
staying healthy and happy?
making and keeping friends?
avoiding boredom and finding satisfaction?
getting good grades?
learning English?
traveling to a new city/country?
Break students into groups of 3-4. Give them 20 minutes to come up their top ten tips on a given topic. Ask them to provide at least one reason and/or example for each answer, and have them agree on a final order. During the discussions, students will use common phrases like “this is better,” “I disagree because…” or “what do you think?”
What does the teacher do during this time? Circle around, listen in and pass out different colors of chalk for each group. I ask more questions than I answer at this stage. Toward the end of the 20 minutes, I have each group select a student to write the group’s “top ten tips” on the board.
The instructor goes through the list, asking questions – both soft and hard, and engages student groups. Finally, after the instructor leads discussion, the entire class votes on which tips, of those on the top ten lists, are most helpful. This additional democratic element takes only a few minutes, and encourages students to participate and clearly display their opinions.
This flexible, communicative activity can be constantly used to create engaging, lively classroom conversations. Students enjoy sharing information, telling stories while providing examples and helping each other make sense of an often strange land where people speak a strange language. By giving students a chance to offer advice, you also get to learn as you teach!
What top ten lists will your students create?
Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.compellingconversations.com
Learning by Doing and Making “Good Mistakes” in English classes
Why English learners must practice and make “good mistakes” in order to grow
“A man’s mistakes are his portals of discovery.”
How can English language teachers create a rigorous, tolerant and focused classroom atmosphere?
One effective technique is encouraging English students, especially ESL students, to “learn by doing” and to “make good mistakes” as they expand their vocabulary, experiment with new sentence structures and use English more in their daily lives. A “good mistake,” as I explain on the first day of class, is follows logical thinking, but just happens to produce an incorrect outcome. For example, a young boy might think 2+2= 22. You can see the student’s logic, but the answer is wrong. The student needs to know that 2+2=4. But you can also acknowledge that “22″ is a “good mistake.”
Far too many ESL students, especially in countries that heavily rely on and sometimes worship standardized exams, have created psychological barriers to experimenting in English. These students often want to avoid making any mistakes, and prefer to remain silent in conversation class to expanding their verbal skills. The ESL teacher, therefore, has to directly confront this mentality. After all, you can’t learn to speak a new language without making mistakes.
So I encourage English students, in both conversation and writing classes, to make “good mistakes.” Take chances. Try something new. Stretch your learning muscles. And make “good mistakes.” By making “good mistakes” once or twice, and then correcting them immediately, students can learn not to repeat them. A “good mistake” is not a good mistake if you’ve made it ten times before in a class or on previous papers. Students with this mentality can usually understand the value of making mistakes and so they can relax a bit, and proceed to experiment a bit more in our crazy, confusing, and misspelled English language.
Our goal, I sometimes joke on that first day, is to make many “good mistakes,” learn from these “good mistakes,” and move forward to make new, different, and even better “good mistakes.“ We usually, whether purposefully or accidentally, realize this goal in our English classes!
How will you guide your students through their “good mistakes?”
Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com
