By taking English lessons, you're giving yourself the best opportunity to improve your English.
Not everybody gets the opportunity to study the English language so make the most of your lessons.
In this article, we'll be looking at how to get the most out of your one-on-one English lessons with a private tutor.
Learning English as a Second Language with Face-to-Face Tutoring
The problem with any kind of private tutoring is that children often see them as a punishment. This is especially true if they don't particularly like school and they see their private tutoring as just more school.
It's just more of something they don't enjoy and while there are lots of benefits to private tutoring, they mightn't realise this at first.
Once they see that private tutoring is usually more useful and enjoyable than the lessons they have in school, they won't see private tutoring as punishment anymore.
A class of dozens of students can be difficult as students need to work and collaborate with others while also learning what their teacher is trying to show them.
It's also complicated because the teacher can't focus on each student as much as necessary whereas a private tutor has all the time in the world for the students in their tutorials.
In a private ESOL lesson, you can learn one-on-one with your private English tutor. You'll be the only thing your tutor needs to focus on and they can work meticulously towards improving your English skills.
Make sure that students appreciate that private English tutoring is a privilege rather than a punishment, even if they're initially unwilling to spend more of their time studying English.
In the very first private English lessons, it's common for the tutor to analyse the student's abilities and personality so that they can tailor their lessons to them.
Students that struggle in English can use this extra tuition to catch up with their classmates or go back over English topics they found difficult in class. Advanced students can use private English tutoring to maximise their test results and scores or just get ahead of the curriculum.
With English lessons, it's important that you fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
We understand why some learners dislike the idea of getting a private English tutor, but a simple change in perspective can turn private English lessons from a punishment to a reward.
The extra time you spend with an English tutor now is time you'll save further down the line where you won't have to study as much on your own to get the same results.
Use Private ESOL Tutoring to Focus on Your Difficulties
In your one-on-one English classes, you'll want to make sure that they're carefully planned with the student in mind.
Your tutor will likely put together a personalised learning plan that focuses on your strengths and weaknesses, your level, and what you want out of your language classes.
By taking the time to plan a detailed learning programme, your tutor will better understand you and work on the difficulties you have in English that your teachers at school can't fully help with.
You don't want your private English classes to only focus on what you find difficult as this can be demoralising and it can sometimes help to get an easy win by covering something that you've mastered.
For students that struggle to speak English (particularly those learning English in their everyday classes at school), tutors can give students a lot of opportunities to practise speaking the language.
In most English classes, students don't get to speak English for a long enough period of time to really progress as English speakers.
Even a few hours a week with a private tutor will give students a chance to focus on English conversational skills and pronunciation as well as reading and writing just as they would in their classes at school
In private English lessons, you're free to focus on whatever you want. If English grammar is causing you problems, your tutor can provide you with information on grammar and make sure that the course features English grammar exercises more often.
As they have more freedom in terms of their classes, they can also throw in fun quizzes and grammar exercises to practise adjectives, nouns, and the different grammatical tenses you need to learn for your English at school.
After all, it's very common for English exams and tests to cover a broad range of topics including grammar, spelling, speaking, pronunciation, and writing.
Get Help with Your English Homework and Exam Preparation with a Private English Tutor
With any private ESOL tutor, you'll want to improve your understanding of the English language concepts you've been struggling with, but ultimately, you'll want to get better grades in your English exams.
Naturally, by getting better at English, the odds of getting better results in your English exams will improve.
A private English tutor can help students achieve both of these goals.
In every academic year, you'll likely sit a few exams or at least take tests or assessments in every subject including English. These may be full exams or simple quizzes where you're tested on your ability to conjugate irregular verbs, use different grammatical constructs, or understand passages in English.
There are two parts to doing well on any English exam: being good at the parts of the English language you're being tested on and understanding the exam and what's expected of you.
An English language tutor can help you with both your English skills and what you need to do on a given exam. Revising is far more fun with a private tutor than it is sitting on your own in your room.
It can also be useful having a private English tutor there to make sure what you're learning is correct. After all, their English is excellent and they're also an expert in learning and education and can provide you with effective learning strategies and approaches.
Teachers in your everyday English classes at school can't always tailor the lessons to each student and how they want to learn but private tutors can ensure that everything is adapted to you.
Throughout your studies, you'll see that exams, especially language exams, follow a fairly standard format. With English exams, you'll regularly be tested on the four main parts of language: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
English exams like TOEFL and IELTS exist to show potential employers your level in English so it's important that you get the best possible grades in them.
Fortunately for you, private English tutoring can help you learn the English you need for these exams while also preparing you for everything you can expect to see in these exams.
Test preparation is an important part of the courses being offered by a lot of private tutors and English language centres because testing is such a huge part of learning languages nowadays.
Even students with an excellent level of English may perform poorly on an exam if they're not familiar with the format or the kinds of tasks that they'll have to do. This is why tutoring and private English lessons are so important.
Practice Speaking English with Your ESOL Tutor
In your everyday English classes at school, you probably won't get as much time as you'd like to practise speaking English.
Since most schools focus on getting students to pass exams, their classes don't focus on making students confident speakers of any language.
With so many students in each class, you're unlikely to get more than a few minutes to practise English. In reality, it can weeks of speaking English for a few hours each day to become fluent so it's astonishing that schools still teach languages in this way.
With a private English tutor, however, you can have the opportunity to practise speaking English for the best part of every hour and work towards becoming fluent in the language.
Initially, even if your level of English is very good, speaking is quite different and you'll find that you won't be able to express yourself exactly the way you want to. Don't worry, though. It's very common for ESOL learners to speak more slowly as they think about what they want to say and look for the words they'll need to use.
Luckily, your fluency will improve as you continue to practise speaking English with your private tutor. You'll also get to hear the proper pronunciation from your tutor and express yourself in English just as native speakers do.
Speaking languages is the best way to learn them and you'll find that the more you speak English, the more quickly your English will improve. Whether you're speaking with your private English tutor or your classmates, you'll have opportunities to talk about lots of different things in your English conversations.
Speaking with native English speakers is the best way to improve your accent as not only will they be able to correct you when you mispronounce a word, you'll get to hear them pronouncing words correctly, speaking English the way native speakers do, and using common everyday English expressions that you can use to make your English sound more authentic.
Keep in mind that the English spoken in New Zealand isn't the same as in Australia, the UK, the US, or Canada. It doesn't matter too much which version of English you learn as most speakers of English from around the world can understand each other without too many problems!
The best part of learning any language is the fact that you can express yourself and share your thoughts in said language. As you gain fluency, you'll be able to tell stories, share a joke, and let people know what you think about certain topics.
To get there, you'll just need to practise a lot and by working with a private English tutor, you'll get lots of chances to practise!
Start Your Private ESOL Tutoring by Testing Your Level
Before you start any language course, you need to make sure that all your knowledge is up-to-date.
A bad result in an exam doesn't necessarily mean your English is poor, especially if you just had a bad day and misunderstood some of the tasks on your exam (which is why exam prep is so important).
That said, gaps in your knowledge will make it harder to advance. Before you move to a higher level, you'll need to have mastered your current level.
We recommend that you start your tutoring by brushing up on your current level before moving on to new topics. The best way to do this is by choosing an English tutor who suits your individual needs.
In a lot of ways, the English language is simpler than others, at least when it comes to regular verbs and the relatively low number of conjugations. Before you can move on to the more annoying parts of English (and there are a lot of them), it's a good idea to make sure you've mastered all of the easier stuff.
It might seem boring at first, but by mastering the easy stuff, you'll likely never have to worry about it again.
Even if you're learning English as an adult!
Knowing that you rarely ever make mistakes with the easy parts of the language will free up your mind to focus on the more tricky parts of the language.
Enjoyed this article? Leave a rating!
Loading...
