ESL curriculum ideas for shy high school student

Hi,

Once a week I one-on-one tutor a h.s. junior for two hours at a private ESL institute. It's painful to watch her try to speak or respond to questions. She seems to be stuck inside her head and has told me she's also not very able to express herself in her native language. I feel like I'm bordering on doing damage to her by forcing her through the routine English grammar books (and running through practice Aiken interview tests).

She is Japanese. Does anyone have any suggestions out there? The last thing I want to do is create an aversion to the English language in her, to snuff out the natural curiosity only to replace it with resentment. Ugh...

Thanks in advance for your help!

Donna

Try lots of fun and humorous things. Songs, animal noises, sounds, Japanese loan words as compared to their US pronunciations, and so on. If she feels at ease, and has fun, she may talk. Don't forget to make a bit of a fool of yourself with your sounds and activities, then she'll feel no worse.

Try finding some plays and act out scenes with her. Give her the words to say so that she doesn't put so much pressure on herself finding them and she can just practice saying them.

TPR methods might work here.It worked much in my classes.Another thing is exaggerating;sometimes you have to act in a way that your student feels she/he is great at english although it is exactly the opposite! buildig self confidence plays a great role in improvement of english.