It is without a doubt that online tuition, or tuition in general, has become an excellent way to support students alongside their studies and provide them with that extra boost that they may not receive from school, so that they can reach their full potential. This is especially the case for one-to-one tuition, as it allows students to ask questions that they might not want to ask in class, and of course in this way sessions can be tailored to the exact needs of each student.
However, the fact of receiving extra tuition for a subject does not necessarily mean that a student no longer has to put in extra work and extra hours outside of their sessions, and this proves to be especially true for languages. Learning a language requires time and dedication, as not only do you have to learn a tonne of vocabulary, but also understand and remember how to form all the grammatical structures which make up the language, such as all the different tenses and pronouns. On top of this, school and university students need to be well versed the areas of reading, listening, writing and speaking, which all require consistent practice in order to maintain fluency.
Bearing all this in mind, there are a few different things which I encourage in my sessions to really make the most out of them:
Vocabulary tests
No matter how much new vocabulary we go over in a lesson, every student is bound to forget some words from time to time, and if they are not continually revised it is easy to forget them all together, meaning that all the hard work put in by the student in lesson may end up going to waste. In order to avoid this, I have encouraged (and still encourage) my students to do weekly vocabulary tests. This normally starts off with me setting 5 new words that we looked at in the lesson to learn for the next week, and then slowly increasing the number of words as the weeks go on. This has proved very successful in the past, and has really helped my students to no longer face any vocabulary barriers when it comes to understanding more difficult texts.
Worksheets
Worksheets are a great way to consolidate any topic covered in a lesson, whether it's to do with a grammatical aspect of the language, or something based around a particular topic, such as 'family', 'sports and activities' or 'healthy lifestyle'. I have a wide range of worksheets covering all of these areas, and can easily send them to my students for them to complete for the next lesson. They are also a great way for me to measure their progress, as I can easily identify what areas may need to be worked on a little bit more. Many of my students often ask me to send them extra worksheets after a session, and in this way they really have the opportunity to practice what they have learnt and see if there are any gaps in their knowledge.
Writing practice
Achieving top grades in writing and speaking exams requires a certain level of topic specific vocabulary, and also knowledge of things to include to impress the examiners, such as opinion phrases, phrases to structure a piece of writing, and also high level structures such as those which use the subjunctive (and the imperfect subjunctive in Spanish). Therefore, I often encourage students to write paragraphs, answer essay questions or complete speaking cards to help them continually develop these skills, which I then mark and subsequently go over in the next lesson, so the student can see what areas they need to improve on for next time. After all, practice makes perfect!
I would just like to reiterate that all these activities are by no means obligatory throughout my lessons; at the end of the day it is completely up to the student how much work they want to do outside of school and our sessions. However, in order to truly maximise learning potential I would highly recommend that my students do most, if not all, of these things - no knowledge should ever go to waste.
If you would like to book some lessons with me, I would be more than happy to set any of these activities completely according to your educational goals, so that you can really make the most out of your online tuition.
Happy learning!
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