How many times have you had a 1 on 1 class where the student tells you. “I just want to learn conversation.” It can frustrating experience for teacher and student alike. In that first class, you need to find their level, their objectives, and even a little about their personality. Never fear, this activity helps you get all three.
When I run into these 1 on 1 nightmares, I pull into my reserve. I have made up a set of special 5 x8 inch laminated cards, but you can use anything from index cards up to A4 Letter size sheets laminated, it is up to you. You need conversation ideas to get your student speaking and interacting so on these cards, you need to have images. You can animal images, celebrity images, sports images, travel images, basically anything that might interest your target student age group. I keep about 20 to 30 cards on hand.
Where do you find the images? All the major search engines have image search. For example, Bing and many other search sites allows you to search for images. Just typing in what you are looking for and click on search for images. You will get a large selection of images and you can narrow it down for larger images. Larger images work better if you are printing out on letter size sheets.
You can save the images and then insert them into a Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer doc. When preparing the sheets for printout, it is a good idea to think of a couple of conversation starter questions for each image. You can type these just below the picture. Do about 20 to 30 of these sheets and you are in business. If you are using letter size, I suggest you laminate the sheets so that they last longer.
When you start the 1 on 1 class, pull out a few cards that you think might interest the student and try asking one of the questions from the card. When the student responds, you can gauge their interest and their ability. This way you can change cards or questions to better fit their interests. You can also get them to expand on their answers by using probing questions. You can eventually steer the conversation into finding their objectives for 1 on 1 study. These objectives can help you come up with better lessons over their course.
This activity may not be the best example of a triple P lesson, but it sure is a lifesaver for 1 on 1 TEFL classes and sure to get you through the tough bind of a first class and be able to find out a lot about the student.
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