Lynn R

Just last week, I started helping a 13 year old girl with her English studies, after school - she just knocked on the door and asked to speak to "the blonde lady" and asked if I would help her, which I thought was very brave considering she didn't know us! She is a nice kid, very well behaved and polite, and I would like to help.

Has anybody else done this and do you have any tips to share on the best way to go about it, or tips from actual teaching experience? She brings her English homework along, and obviously I don't want to be doing it for her as that would do no good at all, so she works through it and I explain if necessary what the exercise involves, encourage her when she gets the answers right and let her know when she's made a mistake, get her to try to see what is wrong and explain why if she needs it, plus correct her pronunciation. Should I be doing anything else, or doing it in a different way?

Dxf

Hi

Well done - have a brownie point

Davexf

lynnxa

you're doing exactly the right thing - encourage & support

that's how I started - just a bit of homework support here & there for friends of my daughters............. it gradually grew & now I have 70+ paying students.........

Retired in Euskadi

Try to get hold of her current course book if possible, to give you an idea of where they're at & what they have to do. Try also to get a feel for the sort of English grammar that you may not be familiar with that foreign learners need to cope with, such as countable & uncountable nouns (some versus any or much versus many).
It's also fun to practice with them pronunciation difficulties, such as "hill" & " heel", ship & sheep, sheet & s..t!
Let her work out the answers for herself, rather than give her the answers, which will boost her confidence.
Sounds as if you're doing fine though.

steviedeluxe

If you bear in mind she'll have plenty of access to grammar exercises (make sure she does them though), the one thing that she'll need that she can't easily get elsewhere - is conversation with a native speaker. Ok, there is skype and the like, but it's not the same thing.
Assuming she has reached at least intermediate level, here's a web that has lots of discussion themes - she'll learn a lot from just going over the discussions with you each time. For instance you can ask, if talking about education "What is your favourite subject at school - and why?"
http://edition.tefl.net/category/talking-point/

Try not to over-correct during the conversations, write down common mistakes and point them out later.

Rosemary

I help two 11 year olds and a 9 year old in the same way. I have also found it useful to go over past school work with them as quite often if they have done it wrong they do not necessarily know why so this is another way of helping them.

Find some pictures with lots of people doing different things in them and get her to tell you what is going on in the picture because this helps with the nouns, verbs, order, sounds etc.

Rosemary

Lynn R

Thank you all so much for the advice, I will take it on board. She seems very conscientious and is careful not to miss anything out or try to skip the grammar bits, and quite bright as she remembers a lot of the vocabulary she's been taught, and catches on quickly when something is explained to her.

I have absolutely no ambitions to become a teacher so I hope she doesn't tell all her friends!

paintermujer

Its slightly different in our household.My 12 year old daughter is the one who gives the lessons to her class mates.I speak in english so they get a better idea of what the language sounds like but when it comes to the real lesson plan I am sent out of the room and she gets on with it...revising current work etc.Im very proud of her.

Pocaloca

Oh, she will - or her parents will! You have to make it clear from the start that you aren't going into business as an English coach. I speak from experience ...

One of the things they get most frustrated with is the absence of clear rules in English. Sometimes what they are taught in class looks intuitively wrong to a native speaker. But you have to reinforce the rules "in the book" - at least till they've passed their exams.

Domino

an acquantance was most upset when her son failed his English, because despite having been born here with 2 English parents, he answered the practical with the way they do at home - not as taught.
tough perhaps, but .......

Pocaloca

It is tough, but it's a nightmare for teachers who aren't native English speakers. The kids are encouraged to read books and magazines in English, and they see grammatical constructions and phrases which will be marked as errors if they use them in their exams.

And I'm not just talking about things we would regard as "bad grammar"; for example there is a rule that you can only use the Saxon genitive (possessive apostrophe) with people, as in "Mary's book". Then they see a TV show called "The World's End" which according to the rules is grammatically incorrect because the world is not a person!

paintermujer

"Whose" is another grey area...being used for people and animals but not for inanimate objects.Which is used here so it is said...technically speaking.
Eg "The tree whose leaves were dropping" is techically wrong but you cant say
"The tree which leaves were dropping"...so it is suggested that the sentence is reworded...how long winded is all this.

But as Pocalaoca says to a non native english speaker using whose may be marked as an error if it is used for something not living...Im not surprised they have trouble learning our lingo.

Retired in Euskadi

There's nothing wrong with using 'whose' for inanimate objects. Fowler (English authority on grammar) mentions it as being fine, since 1926!!

Retired in Euskadi

Never heard of that rule. There's nothing wrong in writing "the water's edge" for instance.
Where many English people slip up is when there's a plural possessive, such as in "the lambs' tails" or "the boys' books" (many books, many boys) compared to "the boy's books" (1 boy, many books).

scot47

And what about the millions of poorly schooled native speakers who have no idea about the Grocer's Apostrophe ? I mean the use of 's to form a plural !!!

You know - "Apple's 65 cent's a kilo !!!!!!"