Teach English in Guo Zhen - Baoji Shi

While accepting a position as an EFL teacher, we seldom have freedom to choose if we want to teach groups or take one to one classes. It depends on the availability of students and the language school perhaps to give us a group or an individual for teaching. A group may not have the same competency level and it can get totally boring for an individual to take classes every single day. Let’s have a look at the one to one teaching. One to one teaching has its own advantages and disadvantages for the teachers and the individuals in question. What can be the advantages for the teacher? 1) The teacher doesn’t have to spend time in bringing the varied group of students at a single level to start teaching. As it is just one student, the teacher can start at the level of the student straightaway. 2) The selection of the course material becomes easier if the teacher has a good rapport with the student and knows the student well during the course. The teacher knows exactly what to select for the student and that makes the life of the teacher easier. 3) The teacher can track the progress of the individual student very easily. The teacher can understand easily if the student is able to understand the lesson or not. What can be the disadvantages for the teacher? 1) There is no possibility to give such material to the student which can be done by a pair or a group. The material should always cater to individual needs and should be prepared keeping only a single person in mind. 2) There are very few resources available online which help in teaching students one to one. Most of them are targeted for groups or pairs. 3) The teacher’s personality may differ greatly from the teacher and then it might pose a problem while handling topics and working on materials which are very different than what a student really likes or wants to do. Just as there are advantages and disadvantages of one to one teaching for teachers, there are also advantages and disadvantages for students. Let’s have a look at the advantages for students in one to one teaching here: 1) The students get complete attention of the teacher. There is no room for favoritism or group politics. 2) The students can take their time to come up the learning curve and there is no pressure to match up with others in the group. 3) The students can get feedback more often and can improve their learning accordingly. What can be the disadvantages for students in one to one teaching? 1) It can get boring to meet and see the teacher everyday with no other contact with anyone else in the class. 2) The students have to do all the class work, worksheets etc. by themselves. They don’t have anyone to share the work. 3) The student may have a very different personality and it can get difficult for him/her to adjust with the teacher every day. What can be done about the disadvantages? - Pair work is not possible, but teacher is always available for clearing the doubts or in participating in a discussion. It may take longer time for designing the activities for individuals, but it is manageable - Adapting the online material for individuals can create a nice fun activity for the students. - Regarding the personality difference, it is very important to be professional and avoid any conflicting situations and try to find a common goal. - It can get boring for a student to be alone most of the times in the class but the teacher can plan different activities and participate whenever and wherever possible. The student won’t feel alone in an activity if the teacher actively participates. Teaching individuals can be a learning experience for the teacher and can be made interesting with a teacher’s imaginative capacity. After having a look at the one to one classes, let’s see how different is it to teach groups. The groups can have different individuals with different levels of ability. It’s very rare that all students in a group have the same level of understanding and aptitude. So it is very important to check with people who assign us groups the possibility to re-organize groups which may be just a group of friends. There should not be extreme differences in the levels of the students. It often happens that the lowest levels are placed with the highest level students and then it can get boring or difficult for both the sub-groups. The students of the lower levels should be given some activity while the higher level students learn. It can be achieved by giving different activities. One such activity can be graded activities which has a whole set of questions. The first five questions shall be the easiest and then they start becoming harder and harder. Care should be taken to arrange groups in pairs who have roughly the same level. The lower levels are likely to cover the easiest questions and the higher levels may answer more questions. Another method could be giving different levels of activities to different levels of students. The lower levels would get all the information needed to complete a particular task and the higher levels will get lesser information and they will have to figure it out on their own to a large extent. A group of three to four people can be made where there is a mix of higher and lower levels. The higher levels can learn from teaching lower levels and the lower levels can learn from the higher levels. The lower level students can be given certain tasks or activities outside the class to bring them to the level of other higher level students. Teaching groups can be fun, interactive and interesting. It can make learning effective and students can form good bonds with each other and also with the teacher.