[Anygodwilldo]

First off, Hello all.
I am a recently qualified (CELTA) English teacher, and I've been approached by a Czech family (all adults) who want private lessons. I've just finished a successful month teaching in a summer school (my first real teaching job), but I have no experience in 1-to-1 lessons.
Could anyone who has experience in private tuition give me any advice, on type of lesson, subjects to focus on, style to adopt, etc?
The people involved have only quite a low level of English, and they have said they want to learn everyday conversational English as they are living and working in the UK.
Any help is appreciated. I have posted similar messages on other efl forums but no replies yet.
Thank you in advance.

[chokosaki]

I've only had a few 1-on-1 experiences but I'll offer what I can....

I divided my lessons into several smaller parts....

1.) Daily conversation. This was sort of like a warm up to get the student into the mindset of using English. We would briefly discuss all the usual daily stuff (like weather for instance).

2.) Work related content. Teach some useful English (phrases, vocabulary) that is specific to their work. Ask your student what he or she wants to learn in this part and go from there.

3.) Hobbies/Interests. You can generally get your student(s) chatting with topics that are of interest to them.

Of course, your planning depends on how much time you have. Good luck with your private lessons!

[Anygodwilldo]

Thanks for your response Chokosaki. The first lesson went well, I started with getting the students to tell me about themselves, then what they had done that day. I then moved on to general questions on personal information (basic stuff), afterwards we worked on personal descriptions.

They asked many questions, so the two hours was filled easily.

I can base future lessons on their work and preferred hobbies, as you suggested, and I want to do a lesson about shops and shopping. I have a set of common questions and vocab items based around the topic of shopping. Do you, or anyone else, have any suggestions on what else I could throw in (connected with shopping)?
Thanks again.

[chokosaki]

Glad to hear your lesson went well

Role play is always a great idea and is rather engaging for students. For a shopping lesson you could take on the role of a clerk and set up a store using flashcards (you can find tons of flashcards at Free Printables for Teachers | flashcards, printable games, worksheets templates, phonics materials, ESL printables, conversational activities and ESL Printables: English worksheets, lesson plans and other resources). Let your students become the shoppers and give them each a budget and a shopping list.

When making the list, you could add a couple items to each list that is not actually at the store. The students should react accordingly, truly taking on the role.

As for what you could throw in....

What did you learn about your students before? Did you find out what sort of shopping they usually do (ie, clothes shopping, groceries, electronics, etc). This could help you build the items for your store. I always want to personalize the experience for my students.

Good luck with this! If you have other questions feel free to contact me.

[mesmark]

I'd suggest looking into a textbook. You could continue to do other parts of the class based around your student's interests, but with the textbook you wouldn't be required to create every part of the curriculum and make sure you were building and moving in a upward direction. Making all your own lessons, start to finish, isn't hard at first but after a year or so of that you may find it more difficult. Most textbooks have a balanced approach and there's still a lot of freedom for expanding beyond the textbook and practicing certain grammar points and vocabulary.