Tutor-Private Teaching and Learning

Vocabulary has always been considered a matter of utmost significance in the classroom. Recently, methodologists and linguists have been turning their attention to vocabulary, stressing its importance in language teaching and reassessing some of the ways in which it is taught and learn.

How can the student improve his vocabulary? For most of us the great source of new words is the printed page. Anyone who wants to increase his vocabulary should do a good deal of reading. At the colleges and universities teachers usually require to read more critically and more extensively, but if students want to increase their vocabulary they should supplement required reading by a program of voluntary reading. This is the sort of reading that follows students` personal interests and needs. This reading should be regarded as pleasure not a chore. Only this sort of reading can develop a liking for the process on the whole. A student who likes to read will find a lot of things especially valuable and interesting for him. If a student can learn through reading, he will discover the techniques of increasing vocabulary. Usually he doesn`t even recognize that they are techniques.

The main techniques for recognizing the meaning of new words. Practice shows that the best way to improve your recognition vocabulary is to watch context. This method can be used in understanding spoken communication as you cannot stop a speaker to look up an unknown word in the dictionary. If a student acquires skill and confidence in interpreting words from the context, he will learn to spot the ways in which a speaker or a writer explains the meanings of unusual words and makes them clear. When a student looks up a word in a dictionary he should try to find out as much as possible about it. The more you find about new words from your dictionary, the better you will remember them. The method of recognition by word analysis is also helpful. You are to look up an etymology of a word and it will lead to word analysis. Lots of Latin and Greek words were borrowed and assimilated by English. So, the knowledge of the most common Latin and Greek prefixes and roots helps us recognize the meanings of many words.

The communicative approach to language learning is based on group activities. Everyone knows that communication is possible between two or more persons. In the process of communication there must be a person speaking and another listening. In recent years foreign language teachers succeeded in organizing cooperative learning.

What is cooperative learning? There is no doubt that the communicative approach usually takes a lot of time to develop but it can pay big rewards in increased student learning over time. In cooperative learning group work is the most important. As a result students get an opportunity to work with their English speaking peers where the language is directly related to real life and real situations. If a word is not understood, the student can ask his English speaking peer for clarification. If there are mistakes in speaking, the student doesn`t feel embarrassment he may feel when speaking before the whole class. Cooperative learning also allows for social as well as academic development. In this manner students can support each other`s learning in socially appropriate ways. By using group work all class members become language tutors for each other. The atmosphere at such lessons becomes friendly and more congenial than in teacher-centered classrooms. It`s very important for a teacher to remember that the cooperative learning concept is not simply choosing a group to complete some activity during one lesson. The class is to be divided into groups at the beginning of the school year and these group members are to work together during the entire year. The students may work on some one-time daily class activity or on a long-term project that takes weeks to complete. In doing this, students learn about cooperation and group dynamics.

How to make cooperative learning more efficient? Before implementing permanent groups teachers should do some preparatory work. They should learn more about their students. Teachers should not only know the language and academic proficiency of their students, they are to know a lot about their students` personalities. Only after doing all this, the teacher will be able to determine how the groups are to be arranged. It`s very important that the concept of cooperative learning will need to be introduced gradually. The teacher`s task is to work with his students to help them develop a sense of cooperation. Group work may start with pairs, later the group can be increased to 3 or 4 and 5. In such small groups every student talks more and as a result more ideas are generated. By good group selection the teacher will find that all of the groups of students work with minimal help and make progress in speaking English. All these good results are worth the effort necessary to build the successful group.

Every teacher is sure that by no means, every student learns what is appropriate. Learning is an activity. Every activity is the response of an individual to a specific real situation. Activities are produced by specific motivation and organized in specific conditions. Accordingly, in order that learning to emerge, there must be stimuli in the learning situation that motivate the students to mastering of special forms of knowledge and skills.

What is motivation? Motivation is considered to be one of the basic psychological categories. It doesn`t exist in a vacuum. It is connected to various human needs, ranging from physical ones to needs for self-actualization. According to scientific research, there are two types of motivation: external and internal. External motivations include all the stimuli that push towards an objective from the outside. Knowledge and skills in such cases serve only as a means to achieve other fundamental objectives. In such a situation learning is viewed by students with indifference and dislike. Internal motivations are quite different. They are optimal from the pedagogical point of view. Internal motivations include specific motivations that attract towards the objective. In such a situation learning doesn`t contain any internal conflicts and psychological tensions and neurotic collisions don`t occur. The teacher`s task is to create the situations of this type.

What can influence motivation? A teacher should be aware that there are several factors which influence the internal motivation as well as the teaching-learning process in general. Among them are physical conditions, teaching methods, the personality of the teacher. Physical conditions may change a student`s motivation either positively or negatively. If the students find the method they are taught by boring, they will become de-motivated. The students` attitude to the method depends on the teacher`s personality. Two teachers using the same method can have different result. Didactic, academic, speech, communicative abilities as well as abilities for organization, distribution attention among the students are demanded from a good teacher. But even all these cannot guarantee students` motivation. Every teacher should keep in mind that not only complete failure but complete success can be de-motivating for a student.

The audio-lingual method is considered to be one of the most popular oral methods in foreign language teaching. Every teacher will agree with it. But what is special about it?

The advantages of the audio-lingual method. The basic principles of the audio-lingual method contribute to its popularity a lot. It`s important that students don`t use their native language in the process of learning and a foreign language is learned through imitation and an analogy. The audio-lingual method gives a teacher an opportunity to use such sort of exercises as substitution and transformation because foreign language patterns should be practiced through intensive drills. Listening and speaking habits should precede reading and writing habits and it`s quite natural to start teaching a foreign language with audio-lingual method, that is the most useful for the early stages of learning. But is this method as suitable at the intermediate and advanced levels as it is at the elementary level of learning.

Language learning is a natural creative process rather than habit formation. Many teachers using the audio-lingual method had long wished for some improvement or modification of the accepted methodology. Although they found the memorization and pattern-practice exercises useful for the early stages, they felt a need to build a bridge from those highly structured activities to the freer, more creative use of the language at the intermediate and advanced levels. Creative teachers argue that the audio-lingual method and its components don`t provide a satisfactory solution to this important problem. Good foreign language teachers early saw that a potential drawback of the audio-lingual method was its tendency to be dull and uninspiring for both students and teachers. Resourceful teachers try to make the drills more interesting by varying their form, by providing a meaningful context, by using visual aids and they often succeed admittably by such means. Nowadays a good foreign language teacher should provide guided practice in thinking in the language rather than more repetition drill. Such mental involvement tends to make language learning more enjoyable for study, which must itself be a positive factor contributing to improved attitudes and better results.

There is no doubt that books have played a major role in shaping the cultural life of any society. They broaden our outlook, develop our artistic taste, give us a lot of useful information. I don`t think I can get along without them.

The price of progress.
People read for different treasons. Some of them read for instruction, some for pleasure and some read from habit. What should a teacher do, if a child doesn`t read at all? He certainly can but he doesn`t want. In one of his novels I. Asimov describes the life of our planet in the future, where only mechanical teachers exist, there are no schools, there are no books with pages. The dusty old book, found by the children, seems to be something particularly wonderful. Was the story written to amuse the readers or to warn them against possible problems of the future. There is a proverb: “Choose an author as you choose a friend”. And a child does. More and more often he chooses… a computer. Sometimes I simply cannot understand why otherwise intelligent humans have gone computer-mad. It starts early: a teacher despairs of time-telling when a pupil sports his hideous digital watch that peeps, plays tunes, starts and stops, even shows firework displays but instills no sense of the hands moving majestically round a clock face. Instead of learning mental arithmetic a child grows up thinking, that a calculator is his right.

How to get children to read.
It has always been difficult to get children to read. Nowadays the situation grew worse. It`s in a teacher`s power to improve it. Teachers are always trying to come up with new ways to get kids excited about learning. They get pupils to special projects to make the process of learning more interesting. Several special programs that are to help the pupils to discover the joys of reading have been introduced in many schools. The pupils are to reach their individual reading goals within four months. The pupils not only read, but they discuss what they have read with their classmates. The winners of the program are to get the reward for the entire class. This fact makes the kids be more diligent and responsible. In one of his famous essays F. Bacon wrote: “ Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take it for granted: nor to find talk and discourse: but to weigh and consider”.

In what way do people usually choose their future profession? While they are at school and making the decision doesn`t? threaten yet, everything seems to be cloudless. But one day you go to school for the last time. What to do after? You realize that the time to choose one job out of hundreds has come. It`s a hard choice, but nobody can make it for you. Usually a person asks himself a lot of questions. What is he good at? What does he enjoy doing? Does he like meeting people? Does he prefer using his hands?

Why do young people choose teaching as a career?
Many young people choose teaching as a career. It`s not surprising: after the parents the teachers may be the most important persons in your life. I don`t feel like underestimating the teachers of other subjects but foreign language teachers are quite different. It`s natural. The lesson of a foreign language, where pupils can write, read, speak as well as sing songs, play games, paint pictures, organize performances, cannot be compared with any other lesson. Teaching is not at all easy, but teaching a foreign language is a real challenge to your character, abilities and talent. No wonder that foreign language teachers are sincerely admired and loved by most pupils at any school. A good foreign language teacher is genuinely interested in what he is doing. If he isn`t, he won`t be able to organize discussions and debates in class or use language games.

Teaching a foreign language is a constant stream of decisions.
For pupils it`s very important to experience real communicative situations in which they are taken seriously as people. Learning is more efficient if the learners are actively involved in the process. The degree of a pupil`s activity depends on a teacher, who tries to arise pupil`s curiosity, to make him laugh and to take the tension out. If a teacher has a sense of humor, if he smiles at his pupils, they won`t be afraid of making mistakes, they won`t get nervous and will be eager to work. A good language teacher integrates theory and practice and learns all the time. He learns from life, from colleagues and from his pupils. John Steinbeck, writing about his school days said: “I`ve come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and you know how few great artists there are in the world”.

There is a problem that every person faces sooner or later. This problem resolves itself into a few important questions: What is education for? Why study? What way of learning is more efficient? Most of us will be quick to answer. It is a common knowledge that education helps us cope in the modern rapidly developing world where we are to add money up, to fill the tax declarations in, to read maps and street signs. No doubt, we are speaking only about the lowest level. It is a first step on the way to getting education. On the next level everything is getting more complicated, because one should think of some kind of job that will give an opportunity to succeed in life.

We still live in a very competitive society. Competition has been the driving force behind improvements in most areas of our life. The existence of competition has always meant to do things quicker and better than others do. If a person wants to be a successful competitor he is to decide what way of learning will assist him to achieve a long-held ambition and to rise to the top of a chosen profession.

Certainly, there is no right or perfect learning style. Everyone is, to some degree, a mixture of various learning styles. If a teacher at school fails to find out a pupil`s domineering learning style, a tutor is a person who can help in such a situation.

To be properly enjoyed, the process of learning shouldn`t be organized in big groups. If a child is usually surrounded by other children at a primary school, a senior pupil is always accompanied by his fellow students, it is no longer learning in anything but name. Other students may crowd child`s meandering impressions with their own, they may mislead him and obstruct his view.

If a tutor works with a person things seem to be different. A student is able to stop and go on, to have his own pace, he can be open to all impressions and let his brains take all the information from what he sees, hears or reads in a company of his tutor. The work eye to eye with a tutor is particularly important while learning a foreign language.

Learning a foreign language is not just a matter of memorizing, it is closely connected with our personality and culture. Quite an important factor is a tutor`s personality. The atmosphere during the lesson is determined by a tutor, who sets the tone by choosing the types of exercises and topics, suitable for a certain pupil. A qualified tutor can catalyze in his pupil the irresistible wish to obtain knowledge, to do it every day and everywhere, to learn something new and to become something new.

A person can get knowledge in smaller or bigger groups, the number doesn`t matter. If a tutor is in charge of the process, one`s getting knowledge turns into learning for the sake of learning and afterwards for the sake of one`s successful future. What else can be more important…