Preply Tutors Academy

Remember that students are not language learning experts. They will tell us what they think they should focus on, but their choice is limited to what they've heard in school or on the internet, and they are not always able to identify what is really holding them back. For example, a student may say they want to focus on vocabulary, but it's because deep down they feel they struggle to express their opinions easily - which may or may not be fixed by more vocabulary, depending on the situation; a student may say they want to focus on grammar, when in reality they are looking for a structured way of learning where they can feel they are progressing through a program - which doesn't necessarily need to be grammar heavy; or they might want to focus on pronunciation, but only because they feel embarrassed when they speak the language, even though their pronunciation is ok. If we acknowledge their perceived needs and then politely and expertly guide them to understand better what they really want to improve, we can show value.

Fluency and confidence

Check with the student - what do they think it means to be “fluent” or “confident”? They might have surprising answers, which you can exploit to plan relevant lessons. Try and think of how their fluency or confidence can improve in ways other than improving overall language level. For example if the student says “I need more vocabulary, I often don’t have the right word so I get nervous”, long term they need you to help them expand their vocabulary, but short term you can already show value by focusing on compensation strategies (i.e. strategies speakers use to allow the communication to continue even when they don't know how to express a particular idea, because of lack of vocabulary or grammar). 

💡 Lesson idea

Paraphrasing and using synonyms are extremely useful compensation strategies. Ask the student to explain a tradition from their own country, or one they have experienced in their new country. While you listen, write down three words that are key to the student’s explanation. When the student is finished, ask them to repeat the explanation, but this time they cannot use the three words you chose - they’ll have to find ways to paraphrase, or use synonyms, or make themselves understood in some way. Then repeat, adding more and more words the student is not allowed to use. This will make them feel more confident when they are missing vocabulary in real life. 

Accuracy

Ask the student why they feel they need this. Is it that they are scared of making mistakes, and that’s holding them back? In that case you might want to help them build confidence instead of reinforcing for them that they really should improve their accuracy before they start communicating. On the other hand, sometimes a student can be very communicative but very inaccurate, and be aware of it. 

⚙️ Technique

 Chatting in writing actually helps with speaking accuracy. This is because the student is forced to take more time to convey their meaning, and they will see in front of them the vocabulary and grammar they are using, allowing them to notice their mistakes and language choices, whereas in speaking it all happens too fast for them to “edit” what they say. Explain this counterintuitive concept to your student, and then you can use this in various ways:

💡 Lesson idea

Start or finish each class with 5 minutes where you and the student interact in the chat instead of speaking

📚 Homework idea

Ask the student for homework to write down a short dialogue of a situation they were in today (e.g. today they got spoke to a travel agent, so they can write a short dialogue based on their real conversation)

💡 Lesson idea

Have a conversation in writing in the chat, and then have it again orally (without looking at the chat). It will not be identical, but the student will have already thought out the language to use so they can reinforce this orally. 

Vocabulary

Show the student you’re taking this seriously by setting them up with a vocabulary tracking method immediately. For example, show them the Preply vocabulary feature, ask them to share screens and show you their student home page so you can look together at what the student can do with it outside of class, and encourage the student to commit to a vocabulary learning routine. 

📚 Homework idea

For example, for each piece of vocabulary added during a lesson, the student has to write three sentences using the vocabulary. Two should be true and one false. At the beginning of each lesson, choose one piece of vocabulary from the previous lesson and ask the student to read out the three sentences. Ask them questions to guess which sentence is a lie.

Pronunciation

If it's difficult to understand the student, there might be two problems at play. 

1) They mispronounce individual words because they don’t know how to pronounce these specifically, and/or

 2) They have systematic issues with certain sounds of the language (e.g. Spanish students systematically pronouncing /v/ as /b/). 

Take notes of these as you hear them in your student's speech and correct the mistakes in 1) and commit to reviewing these regularly as you would vocabulary items. 

For 2):

⚙️ Technique

Search online for explanations of why that happens (e.g. in Spanish /v/ doesn’t exist, so the student need to learn how to make that sound. They should have their upper teeth lightly touch their lower lip, and then gently let air through while their vocal cords vibrate. Another way to explain this is to ask them to make the /f/ sound, and then change it by starting to vibrate their vocal chords). Introduce these physical explanations, and then have “focused moments” during each class where for a few minutes the student should do whatever speaking activity is in your lesson plan, but paying special attention to the sounds they find difficult.

If it's easy to understand the student, but they tell you they want to sound more native, ask them if they have to speak to native speakers in their daily life. If not, gently point out that acquiring a more native like pronunciation could actually make them more difficult to understand for their usual interlocutors: the same way native speakers are tricky for them to understand, they’d be tricky to understand!

Listening

What do they need to listen to in real life? Do they have to listen in an interactive setting, where they can ask for clarification or repetition or where they are expected to show understanding, agreement, disagreement, surprise while they listen? Or do they need / want to listen to podcasts or watch movies? Do they need to listen to native speakers (whose pronunciation is difficult), or speakers from a specific other language (whose pronunciation is very specific)? Find out from the student, so the listening practice you bring to class is relevant to the student. 

Also, what do they think they struggle with? They can’t understand because they don’t know the words (i.e. even when they read the transcript of a film or conversation, they don’t understand). In this case it’s more about expanding vocabulary than practising listening. But they can do both, by watching videos, films or TV shows with subtitles. 

They can’t understand because the sounds make it difficult (i.e. if they read the transcript they do understand, they just don’t recognise the words when they hear them in real life). In this case the student needs practice with decoding and inference.

💡 Lesson idea

Introduce a topic the student finds interesting and knows quite a lot about. Play a 60 second audio track about the topic - in the student’s language. Even if you don’t understand it. While you play it, mute the video a couple of times for just a second or less in random spots. Ask the student to explain to you what the audio said, and ask them: was it a problem when you couldn’t hear for a second or less? The answer is usually no (unless you got very unlucky and muted a keyword). Elicit from the student that this is because our brains don’t need every single sound and word to make sense of what we’re hearing - we can skip some and still understand fine. Repeat the exercise but this time use an audio track about the topic in the language you’re teaching. Guide the student to understand the audio even with a couple of seconds missing. After you have introduced this concept, you could make this a standard practice: every time you work with audios you will mute a couple of spots for just a second or less. Eventually the student will not even notice. 

Reading

What do they need to read in real life? Knowing this will help you focus on practising on the of the following skills.

Things you scan: a menu, a bus schedule, an invoice etc. are things you quickly scan to find what you are looking for, not things you read from top to bottom.

Things you skim: A newspaper article about how my football team did last night is something I will read very quickly just to get the main idea: did we win? Did we play OK? But I will not read every single word paying maximum attention to details.

Things you read for detail: A novel, an article about a technology that is very interesting or relevant, a request from a client that I need to use to write product specifications are all things we want to read carefully, so as to get every detail. 

What do they think they struggle with?

I can’t understand because I don’t know the words. In this case it’s more about expanding vocabulary than practising listening, but they could also benefit from practising inferring meaning from context. 

⚙️ Technique

In a reading lesson, after the student reads the text for gist (quickly, for the main idea), ask the student to underline five words they don’t know (not all of them, or the lesson will lose momentum). Look at those words: could the student guess the meaning from context? If so, guide them to do it. Example: “The football match was utterly boring: nothing happened, nobody scored, nobody even tried”. Ask the student: was the match boring? - yes. How boring, do you think? - very boring. Yes: utterly -> very. 

I understand every word, but I get lost in the sentence and text structure. In this case, you’ll have to find materials or create your own materials that use texts and a series of questions or tasks to help the student practice.

💡 Lesson idea

This activity is called "Jigsaw reading" (a jigsaw is a puzzle). Take a medium length story or article (e.g. max one page), cut it up in four or five sections and shuffle them on the whiteboard. The student has to read the shuffled paragraphs and put them in order to reconstruct the text. (Warning: make sure you would be able to re-order these yourself!)

Writing

What do they need to write in real life? Whether it’s emails, instant messages, blog posts, essays or anything else, writing is not just about spelling, vocabulary and grammar: it’s about genre, register and conventions. 

💡 Lesson idea

Imagine the student has to improve their writing because they have friends abroad who they communicate with through instant messaging. Your student wants to be able to answer faster. Look through your own messages and choose as many of them as possible that you are comfortable showing your student, or write examples yourself. In class, look together at these and ask the student to underline all the useful phrases and conventions they see and would like to use in the future (e.g. how do they start and end conversations? How do they disagree, agree, or suggest different options? How do they arrange to see each other on day x? How do they say they will be in touch soon, or to let them know if there are any changes to the plan?). Noticing these frequent patterns is the first step towards automatising using them, which is what allows us all to write and communicate as fast as we do. For homework, the student chooses a message conversation they had in the past and rewrites this to include some of the language they noticed in class).