Giving private language lessons

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Marah
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Giving private language lessons

Postby Marah » 2015-07-10, 18:44

Has anyone here experience with giving private language lessons? If so, how did you go about it? :)
I'm contemplating the idea myself!
Par exemple, l'enfant croit au Père Noël. L'adulte non. L'adulte ne croit pas au Père Noël. Il vote.

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Re: Giving private language lessons

Postby linguoboy » 2015-07-10, 18:48

A couple people said to me, "I want to learn German" and I said, "I can help you with that."

Generally, I would use whatever materials they wanted me to (usually they had a book they were working from already) supplemented by handouts saved from my own German instruction or downloaded online.

Teaching a less well-documented language would be a different sort of challenge altogether.
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Re: Giving private language lessons

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-07-10, 20:24

Marah wrote:Has anyone here experience with giving private language lessons?

Yes, although not a very successful experience, and this was about a dozen years ago, so forgive me for my hazy memory of it. :P This was what led me to eventually start a website.
If so, how did you go about it? :)

When I was in middle school (7th grade), one of the neighboring kids made friends with me and sat with me on the bus to school. I don't remember how I ended up teaching him Malayalam, though. I think he was just intrigued when I started telling him once about my heritage language and asked me to teach him a bit of it. He had his own website on geocities and convinced me or at least inspired me to start my own for teaching Malayalam.

Anyway, as I recall, I started out by teaching him the alphabet, bit by bit (and in order), and (eventually, once I started getting into developing my website at least) letting him quiz himself over more and more of the alphabet using a technique I borrowed from India's Learn [language name] in 30 Days series: showing him a bunch of letters in some arbitrary order and getting him to identify each letter. I also gave him a few links so he could teach himself how to write the letters (although I never actually gave him a writing quiz FWIR :P). At one point, I showed him a kind of short reference manual all in Malayalam intended for schoolchildren so he could see the letters being used in actual words, and I taught him a few really random words from there (one of them was 'stork'). He was a really good and eager student, but unfortunately, our lessons were cut short within a few years, because I was one grade ahead of him. High school students don't ride the same bus as middle school students, and I almost never got to see him again.

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Re: Giving private language lessons

Postby dEhiN » 2015-07-29, 5:10

Hey Marah, not sure if you're still looking for advice or experiences, but I've done quite a bit of it. It started of through one-on-one language exchanges and progress to private paid lessons. I think the first thing is to figure out what you can teach. Do you want to focus more on conversation practice (which is by far the easiest as you just chat and correct them). You will still want to come up with topics to chat about. The first lesson or so you could use to get a feel for their level, their comfortability, etc. Ask them what is it they want to practice?

If you are going to give grammar lessons, you could either pick a book to work through, or use a book to create your own lessons. Your own lessons could be very structured, or fairly loose - a lot depends on who you are as a person and your teaching style.

The other main type of lesson is helping someone with a specific task - homework for example, or preparing for a proficiency test. These are usually pretty simple as well since you just use the resource they already have, and you are mostly clarifying/explaining concepts to them they don't understand.

Every lesson is unique and the best is to play it by ear. Figure out what you're comfortable doing, then ask the student what they are looking for, and see if they match. If they want something you haven't done before but are willing to give it a shot, go for it. Also, for price, if this is your first time, start a little low. Not too low since you are still providing a valuable resource - your knowledge and expertise of the language. But keep in mind, if this is your first time, you aren't that experience in teaching and delivering your language expertise. So your first few students are guinea pigs, in a way.\

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Re: Giving private language lessons

Postby Michael » 2015-07-29, 14:24

I offered to teach my cousin Greek, but she thinks I can't teach her just 'cause I'm an amateur. Oh well. Guess I will have to wait till I get that PhD in 20 years…
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Re: Giving private language lessons

Postby dEhiN » 2015-07-29, 15:06

Michael wrote:I offered to teach my cousin Greek, but she thinks I can't teach her just 'cause I'm an amateur. Oh well. Guess I will have to wait till I get that PhD in 20 years…

Haha! Does she think you can't teach because you're an amateur teacher, or an amatuer in Greek?
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