My private has told me that her boyf is keen on taking up English lessons. He runs a kitchen appliance factory/showroom and will be increasingly interacting with foreign clients in the months/years to come.
Thus his need to buff up his very basic English skills. He’s 30-odd and last studied English in high school. God knows what they learnt back then!
I’ve met him and he struggles to answer ‘How are you?’
Where do I begin with this chap? What should I prioritize (speaking/listening/reading/writing)? What material should I use?
it’s very tough to teach an adult from the beginning, because unless you have some chinese ability, you can’t explain anything to them. adults do not “naturally” pick up a second language as children do their first language. if you are confident in your chinese ability, and want to try, go ahead. but you might have hit the nail on the head when you asked if it will be worth it, for either of you.
Yeah, I’m thinking of passing the job onto a friend with better understanding of Chinese (Mandarin for the sticklers). I think it would be to the benefit of the learner.
PM me if you’re keen on twice/thrice-a-week sessions with the fella. One hour a go. Mornings or lunchtimes more suitable for him.
If you don’t know how to teach them, then passing the job onto someone who can is the noble thing to do. Also with absolute beginners, it can be extremely difficult to teach basic concepts if you don’t speak the language. It takes a lot of patience and a very good sense of humor on both the teacher’s and the student’s parts.
The first private I ever taught was the wife of a Korean. He was in my advanced ESL class, but his wife, being a housewife, spent very little time outside the home and had almost no interactions with native speakers aside from grocery shopping. One of lessons with her took over an hour to illustrate “and” and “or” with choice. She had some vocabulary under her belt by that point (had to use a lot of realia to get her there), but still not knowing those words in Korean made it that much more difficult teaching her the English.