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I have been teaching English for more than three years. My first Teaching experience was in my home country. Here I had to teach huge groups of students. I think my average class size was about 50 students at a time. I went through mi initial training and all of it was just about how to teach students in groups. I had never gotten any training or experiences a one on one class setting. I taught for 2 years in my hometown until an opportunity presented itself for me to go teach English abroad in China. This turned out to be an eye opening decision. At home English is a very common language and you hear it almost every day but in China there was hardly any English spoken in the public. My job was to teach at a university in Hubei province. Each class would have around 35 students and I adapted well to the fact that they expected to get most if not all their English material from me. Then one day the dean approached me and told me that I would have to be taking some one on one extra classes. Having never been in this position before meant that I did not know what to expect but still I had to agree. When the time came I was a bit nervous and so was the student. It really is a different ball game when you teach individuals. There are many differences, advantages and disadvantages that come with this type of teaching. The most obvious is the class size. Having one student is a drastic reduction from having 50. It requires the teacher to form a sort of friendship/bond with the students. Some students find it more comfortable to learn in the background amongst their classmates and friends where if they make a mistake it is not highlighted as much. This means in a one on one class situation the teacher will have to form a sort of bond with the student so that they can feel confident. There are also different techniques that a teacher can use in a one on one classroom that might not work in a group setting, for example having the students read text out loud and concentrate on perfecting the speech.(In a big group there might be too many students to just focus on one like this).This also means the student will have more attention from the teacher and they can work to fine tune their understanding and production of the language. Another difference I saw was in the way I had to prepare for lessons. I had to be a bit more meticulous and calculated when setting the lesson plans as I had to make sure to switch things up more as I would be dealing and talking to one person the whole lesson. This means I had to switch up the structure of the lessons way more than I used to in a group lesson so that the student would not get bored. I also had to offer an increased amount of encouragement to the student so as not to be intimidating. Another main difference I saw is you can demand more from your student in a one on one situation compared to a group situation. Generally, there are so many differences between the two types of teaching but at the end of the day the teacher will just have to find a compromise that works for both parties.
