I've organised a first lesson with a student and I was wondering if anyone with a bit of experience could chip in some advice.

I'm familiar with planning lessons for the classroom, but I don't know what a typical tutoring session would involve, and Google hasn't been much help. I did "tutor" my friend before to try out some classroom-based plans I'd made. There were other mini-stages but the general model was something like this:

- discuss a topic (usually from some pictures or something)
- do some reading/listening on that topic with comprehension questions
- focus on some language from the material
- do two or three production activities using the language
- finish up with error correction

The student just wants to work on speaking, so the second and third stages are the problem for me. What's a good way to introduce language in this situation?

I don't think she's going to be expecting reading and activities. In fact, since she's Japanese and mentioned the word 英会話, I don't think she's expecting anything more than a paid conversation. I'm trying to get useful experience out of this, so I won't be happy unless I actually teach her something.

Any ideas? Or any useful resources?

For one whole minute. I thought you were discussing tutoring Japanese.

I haven't tutored English nor 英会話 before but is she part of a class? Is there a textbook? If not then I assume you are supposed to be a conversational partner and mentor.

I'm guessing she wants to practice conversation. You could bring some "English" items like a menu, invitation or flyer, and song lyrics. You could discuss what kind of resteraunt it could be or what the flyer is trying to sell. I think adults would rather try to discuss real subjects rather than artificial material. Discuss the possible meanings of a song lyric and look at some poetry. Find items or material that help start a conversation. It's easier to talk about somehting physical, right next to you.

That's all I have to say.
牛ジュース

Yes, it really is just paid conversations and less of being a 'tutor'. However, You can structure it a bit by offering some controlled methods of talking so you can gauge her abilities and maybe offer some tangible benefits from the time.

00-10 minutes: Have her read a page or two of a simple story. It may be something you read to her first as she reads along, then she reads out loud.

10-20 minutes. Print out a "script" of a TV show she likes, and you both read from respective parts of the script. Probably cool if it's a male/female dynamic. Maybe try "Sex and the City" to spice it up a bit here.

20-30 minutes. Have prepared subjects for her to discuss. If it helps, there are nice "Point and Speak" travel phrase books (ones densely packed with lots of drawings inside) that are great to get ideas to talk about.

30-50 minutes: Free discussion between the two of you. Most likely, she'll lean back on what you covered in the first 30 minutes, so that's cool.

I've done portions of the above during some Eikawa's in Africa, but never in a one on one situation of somebody paying for my time. If they're paying, they do have some say of what they want, while you as the "tutor" can still control a bit of what goes on. The reason I put in time limits is to prevent getting stuck in a mode.

She's attending an English college, and I'm guessing she's using some sort of coursebook. I'm going to spend most of the first lesson getting to know her and her motivation for studying English, how she studies, what her goals are, strengths and weaknesses etc. I should be able to note down some firmly rooted problems (especially pronunciation ones) as well.

I'm probably worrying too much too soon. I don't think I'll have any trouble keeping the conversation going, but I was interested in hearing ways of teaching vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation through conversation (or at least making it seem that way), or just general tutoring techniques. I want the speaking to have a purpose, and something to measure it by at the end of the lesson, just like it would be in a classroom.

My advice is very simple.

There is really no way to predict how things will turn out.
There is no one correct teaching method that will work with everyone.

So just learn from your mistakes as they happen and try to make sure they don't happen again.

When you're done with your meeting, spend some time thinking about the good
and bad things that happened during your encounter.

What works on one person will not necessarily work on another.

For example, 90% of my conversation partners HATE when I turn kaiwa meetings into
schoolwork. When I bring my textbooks and drama TV scripts (with highlighted notes),
they get bored and don't look like they're having fun. These people tend to ONLY want fun, light, not-so-serious conversations.

But there's 10% that LOVE it when I bring my questions from textbooks and drama scripts. In fact, the first thing they ask me when I meet them is "Where are your textbooks and drama scripts? You always have interesting questions for me". The funny thing is that those 10% turned out to be much better conversation partners and last much longer for me.

But it may be different for you.

So basically:

1)Find out what your partners like
2)Find out what your partners don't like
3)Try #1 and #2 on ALL of your new partners to find out if they like it

Over time, you'll start to realize the different personalities that people have
and get used to it.

Just ask the student what they want. It's quite likely that they just want to practice conversation if they already have a formal class and they don't want you explaining grammar. It's good to teach stuff that they wont get taught in school though, mostly casual speech and point out any things that they say that no native would actually say (even tho it's grammatically correct). The 'purpose' of eikaiwa is speaking fluency rather than accuracy, a lot of students know a lot of grammar / vocab but cant produce it very quickly.

I'm sure you'll get the hang of it, just make sure the student does most of the talking, not you.

I always use this site with my students who don't have any specific requests of things to do or materials to use during the lessons.

http://iteslj.org/questions/

For the students that don't know what they want, you can just print these free lessons, and tailor it to their needs:

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/