I had a student today that I had for the first time. She was well-spoken for a pink student, so I asked her to give me a little introduction of herself. She gave me an explanation of where she lives, her occupation and several hobbies that she made sure she made time for during the weekend. She is on a very tight schedule! For the first ten minutes, she did all the speaking, besides some minor grammatical errors that I helped to fix. Asking students about their background is a great method to encourage them to speak in English. Overall, I was able to allow the student to speak 70% of the time, and the rest was for me to respond to any of her questions she was unsure of, or rephrasing any sentences that would be hard for an English-speaking person to register.
This is the motto that we (Coaches) all follow; where we are to guide the students into speaking about a topic they are comfortable of addressing. Having two or more students in class is also very helpful in sticking to the 30%-70% rule. My third class consisted of three students, and as they were close to being fluent, I provided them with some idioms that they could practice using. This gave the opportunity for all three students to use their English skills and to have a conversation, while I refereed and made sure that they understood how each idiom is used.
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