Teach English in Wenchuan Zhen - Hanzhong Shi

There is an obvious difference between teaching one to one and teaching groups. Teaching one to one is focused on an individual student that he or she can get full attention from the teacher. While teaching groups is focused on the majority of students. Teaching activities can be differentiated based on the different levels of all students. Teaching One to One Some learners prefer the style of teaching one to one because they are very clear of their levels and what they want to improve. There are two aspects to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of teaching one to one. First, is the learner. The teaching content can be individualized based on the learner’s needs. The learning process can run rapidly based on the learner’s pace. It provides individual attention, feedback and instant correction when necessary. The drawback for learners are: they would get bored and tired due to no interaction with other learners. If the learner has not built a good relationship with the teacher, she or he would be nervous. Also, they might have to suffer the tension from the teacher’s high expectation. Second, is the teacher. Teachers can address the learner’s specific needs, which teaching is more straightforward. They can build a good rapport with the learner and study the student’s motivation and personal interest to make learning more interesting and engaging. With only one learner, it saves the energy from dealing with classroom management. There are some challenges for teachers. Most of the activities are designed for teaching whole and small groups. Teachers might need to research for resources that fit the learner individually. If the teacher has several one to one students to teach, they would need more time to prepare due to leaners’ different levels. Also, they have to prepare more activities since class might run faster than groups. Several factors that lead to the success of teaching one to one: First, we need to do a needs analysis. A diagnostic test is helpful to know leaner’s current levels and needs. In the diagnostic test, speaking, wiring, listening and reading assessment can be used. For specking specifically, we can ask questions that gradually goes from simple personal, descriptive, to more complex questions using a variety of present, past and future tenses, until we find the level of the learner. Second, we should try to cover receptive skills (reading and listening) and productive skills (speaking and writing) to balance our teaching. Sometimes, a leaner would prefer the skills of listening and speaking rather than reading and writing. In this case, we can carefully choose reading materials to arouse student’s interest. For writing, we can make the writing process more engaging by using graphic organizers, mind maps, and sentence starters and much more. Third, the teacher should focus on what the learners can do rather than what they can’t do to teach. Learning happens based on learner’s schema and prior knowledge. If we teach a low intermediate student with advanced level material, the learner would feel stressed and discouraged to keep going. Fourth, teaching one to one should not be predicable. We can vary materials and approaches to teach. When choosing materials, we can use course books as a reference to balance all the language skills and create our own materials for supplements. Sometimes authentic materials that reflect the learners’ interest can improve the effectiveness of teaching because when the learners understand the real materials, they get a sense of pride. Teaching Groups In school, teachers normally arrange small groups to teach students with different levels in a class setting. This type of teaching is to avoid too much teacher talk and bring in more student talk. When students work in small groups, they have to use language to communicate. They tend to use both listening and speaking skills. It is clear that with more student talking in a language class, more learning happens. Furthermore, students can gain confidence by practicing with their peers before they share to the whole class. Also, they can share the pressure by collaboration. In general, students can either get language development or personal growth from teaching groups. Several key points for teaching small groups: For teachers, they prepare and organized the lesson properly. They must be clear with the teaching objectives. They need to know the instruction well and think of a way to make it simple and accessible for all students. They must know how to use the space or areas within the classroom for different groups. While teaching, they need to know how to assist and monitor to make groups work. For classroom management, the teachers need to have essential agreements or rules with the students. Students also need to practice in small groups so they can adapt to small groups teaching. Sometimes, the advanced groups need to work alone while the teacher focuses more on low to intermediate groups. Therefore, teachers need to come up with some challenging tasks not just to keep them busy but also keep them engaged. Here, the activities must be well considered and designed. For students, they are the center of learning. It is important to build their awareness of their learning responsibility. They can share responsibility and collaborate to teach each other language skills. Jigsaw learning is a good example. Jigsaw allows for each group to have different parts of a text to read. With this activity, students do not need to read the whole text, but still understand the main idea of it. Sometimes, we can rotate the roles of members in each group such as predictor, summarizer, clarifier and questioner when reading. In this way, students can benefit from group teaching. In summary, teaching one to one and teaching groups both have their benefits. For adults, it depends on their needs and expectation to choose either way that fit their own situation. For children, it depends on their needs but also their assessment data for the teacher to consider what type instruction would best fit the student.