Advice request...teaching English remotely

[arjayel71]

Hi...any advice appreciated. I'm a native English speaker, and a friend in south east Asian country has asked me to speak with their children (aged 13 and 15) to help them with their English. Both have a good standard already. Communication would be via WhatsApp or MS Teams. Any thoughts on the best way to do this? I don't have any teaching qualifications, and I'm wary of doing more harm than good...

 

[Tarheel]

I would make it clear what my qualifications are. Then I would tell them what the plan is. What would that be? It would be to talk to them. After discovering what their weaknesses are we would work on them. I'm sure I would use a conventional style.

 

[jutfrank]

Play games with them, particularly ones that require lots of communicating. You don't have to be a teacher to help them learn so don't try to be one. You just have to use your own English as a model for them, give them plenty of chances to listen and speak, and correct them when required.

 

[arjayel71]

Thank you, and sorry for the late reply. Playing games worked well, we did some simple online crosswords. Gives a bit of structure to the conversation. Any other thoughts on online games appropriate for a 1:1 or 1:2 discussion appreciated.

 

[Tarheel]

You could ask them to keep a diary in English. Then they could tell you what they wrote, and you could tell them what they got wrong and what they got right.

 

[emsr2d2]

How about a job interview? However, instead of you interviewing them for a job, they have to interview you. You come up with a job title (the more ridiculous the better), and they have to interview for that job. I used to do this with my adult one-to-one students, with some amusing consequences. It really helps you find out how inventive your students can be, as well as whether they have the vocabulary for all sorts of different topics.

My favourite experience of this was being interviewed for a job as a coal miner. Once I'd got my student to understand what that was, she reduced me to tears of laughter with her very first question - "Do you like getting dirty in the dark?"

The reason I did it this way round was that students get very used to being asked questions, and they can frequently fumble their way through an answer by using bits and pieces of answers they know they've given in the past. If you reverse the situation, not only do they need different vocabulary, but they need to know the correct word order for questions.

I think this would work for the 15-year-old at least.

 

[kttlt]

"Do you like getting dirty in the dark?"

Was she being funny or was it unintentional?

 

[arjayel71]

What seems to work best is simple QA...we draw tickets at random with a tooic, and they have to ask me a question on the topic, and lll answer...then vice versa.

 

[emsr2d2]

What seems to work best is a simple Q&A. We draw tickets at random with a topic, and they have to ask me a question on the topic, and l'll answer, then vice versa.

See above. What do you mean by "tickets"?