Perhaps the most difficult thing about reviewing language that group classes have had difficulty with is that different students often need to revise different points. This problem doesn’t come up in classes with just one student, so revision in private classes should be a cinch! However, many of the activities that are used in group classes to test recall of recent language such as written tests and vocabulary games can seem strange in a class that more often consists of a teacher and student chatting naturally. One-to-one classes also lack another student to chip in when one student has totally forgotten something, so such forgotten language will be unusable without careful prior thought and preparation by the teacher.
It might also be difficult for the teacher to remember what language needs revising with each of their private students, given the tendency for random language points to come up in private classes. This article gives tips on how to keep track of such language, and then on how to revise it.
Deciding what to revise with one-to-one students
Perhaps the easiest way to keep note of what a private student has had problems with is to give them a sheet of feedback from each lesson (arranged in sections for “new language”, “errors”, etc) and for the teacher to keep a copy for themselves. You can then go through recent sheets and circle the things that most need going through again.
Revision activities with one-to-one students
A great thing about review with just one student is that you can often do it very naturally simply by guiding the conversation to topics that should bring up the same language, e.g. asking about next weekend’s plans if they had problems with future tenses in past classes, or checking how their project is going if you presented vocabulary to talk about it.
There are also more structured activities for revision that can be made to work one-to-one without seeming strange.
Revision games with one-to-one students
Miming and drawing revision games
The teacher and student take turns miming and drawing things from the revision sheet until the other person guesses which thing they chose. This is good because you can include definitions of the language on the worksheet so the student can use language that they had forgotten, and those definitions won’t ruin the activity as they still need to show their understanding through actions and sketches. It also makes private classes more dynamic than their usual static style, and teaches the two vital communication skills of gesturing and making pictures.
Revision board games
Board games only work if they are carefully designed so that the student and teacher need to use the target language to do what is written on each square, but that doesn’t mean that the teacher will be successful every time and so that they won’t inevitably win every game. Examples of suitable challenges in board game squares include having to use the language to guess something true about the other person, and trying to get what you want from the other person in a roleplay.
Hangman plus
The teacher and student guess the word or expression letter by letter (in any order) as they hear definitions, watch mimes and/ or look at drawings of recent language. This is good in one-to-one classes as the student can often guess the spelling even if they can’t remember the word, and the teacher can deliberately guess letters they know to be wrong if they want the student to provide more explanation. Students will probably need their dictionaries in order to do this, but they should close them again if they are going to define the language for you.
Definitions game/ Taboo
This is the classic revision game in which one person explains what the word or expression means, its opposite, etc until the other person guesses what is being defined. This is also good practice of the vital skill of talking around words which they don’t know in English instead of getting stuck on unknown vocabulary.
For this to be successful even with language that the student has forgotten and also in a way that doesn’t take away their need to make their own definitions, you will need to supply pictures to show the meaning of each word or expression. This means that some language cannot be practised this way, but it could be done before or after the miming and drawing activities above so that all the useful language is reviewed.