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A teacher as a profession means that you teach something to students. Being a conscientious teacher covers much more than that. A good teacher should be kind, patient, should be able to motivate students and to switch between the roles of the teacher: manager, organizer, assessor, prompter, participant and tutor. In this essay the main topic is the difference between teaching one to one and groups. I will enhance the advantages and disadvantages of both cases. The primary benefit of teaching a group of students is related to students talking time. Automatically increases students talking time if you can organize the students in small groups or in pairs so that they could discuss topics together and not only to respond on your questions. You can easily manage students to speak to each other and so at least the half of the class can speak simultaneously. A group- or pair-work generates student interaction even if the primary aim is to answer together on the questions or to produce or create something. Even if the purpose of the exercise is not speaking to each other, the tool what they use to accomplish is definitely talking. There are many activities that you can only use with more than one student. These are mostly activities based on games such as role-play, surveys and mill-drills, producing materials, communication games, debate/discussion, story building. Another advantage is that with a group of students it is much easier not to let them be bored. However teaching a group of students also has some disadvantages. In larger groups can occur disciplinary problems. Pair- or group-work can be very noisy. It is important to plan and organize the activities so that you should be able to switch anytime and advise students to the next step/activity. Teaching one to one means that you teach only one student at a time. The student can only interact with you. This way the student can get easier bored and there can be some topics that he just don’t want to discuss with you. An extremely important advantage of teaching one student is regarding feedback. It is hard to manage to respond to individual differences in larger groups in terms of pace of learning, learning styles and preferences (The Practice of English Language Teaching, Third Edition, page 115). Teaching in such a scenario is also less stressful. In conclusion I can say that both cases has some advantages and some disadvantages. The main difference could be observed by planning as well. We plan differently in order to have a successful class with a group or in one to one class. With a group of students the teacher have to spare time to find relevant and interesting activities because behavior problems occur in most cases out of boredom. In an one to one class you need to achieve that your student is active. There is no other classmate there to get each other excited about an interesting game or exercise. The teacher’s duty is to boost the student’s mood and to be a good partner in pair-work. In my view I think in both cases the secondary aim (first is the learners objective) is to not let students to be bored. Boredom generates different problems: in a larger group can arise disciplinary problems, can be very noisy and the teacher may find herself out of control. If there is only one student and that student find your class boring, he or she may will be passive which can lead to difficulties for the teacher.
