03/07/2024, 19:58 Gmail - Quick tips for dealing with unmotivated one-to-ones

Lys Tenório <ltenorio2011@gmail.com>

Quick tips for dealing with unmotivated one-to-ones

ESL Brains <newsletter@eslbrains.com> 3 de julho de 2024 às 11:59
Responder a: hello@eslbrains.com
Para: Lys Tenório <ltenorio2011@gmail.com>

Get them hooked on English again

Hello Fellow Teacher!

If you struggle to keep your one-to-one students motivated, we have listed

some tips that might help.

1️⃣ Show interest

This could be as simple as starting the lesson with: What was the most
difficult thing you had to do this week? or What is the thing you are
most proud of this week? Also, make sure you respond to their opinions
and ideas, don’t just say ‘OK’ and move on. Ask follow-up questions and
encourage your student to do the same when you share your point of view.
Never underestimate having a good rapport with your student!

2️⃣ Set realistic goals

Students sometimes lose motivation because it’s difficult for them to see any
progress. Solution: set goals. Here are some examples of realistic goals that
you and your student can set together based on what the course content is:

feel confident when talking about the past,

be able to use vocabulary related to work,
use new vocabulary while speaking in the lesson,
understand the difference between different conditional sentences,

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03/07/2024, 19:58 Gmail - Quick tips for dealing with unmotivated one-to-ones

explain what a video, an article or a story was about using your own
words, etc.

Return to those regularly with your student, tick the ones that they have
achieved, and add more.

3️⃣ Offer choices

It might seem silly but if we are given a choice of what we do or how we do it,
we get more excited about the activity. So you might ask your student to
choose one of two topics that you will cover in the following lesson.
They could choose whether they want their homework to be a gap-filling
activity to revise the learned vocabulary or more of an open-ended task (e.g.
to find more information about what you discussed in class). You can also
offer a choice or revision, warm-up, and/or filler tasks.

4️⃣ Use varied tasks

We often stick to a set of tasks we do repeatedly in every lesson. But it is
really worth doing something different from time to time. It might turn out that
a task you thought was ineffective is actually something that a particular
student enjoys and that helps them. When was the last time you tried the
following with your student: create a sentence with the target word, ask
your teacher five questions about their weekend, tell a story using the
listed words, picture dictation (draw what I describe or describe so that
I can draw it)?

What do you think about that? Share with us your stories of dealing with
unmotivated students!

We'll be back in your mailbox with more teaching tips next Wednesday!

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03/07/2024, 19:58 Gmail - Quick tips for dealing with unmotivated one-to-ones

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