S7E1: A Guide to Teaching One-to-One with Rob Howard

Business owner Rob Howard shares his experience and tips on teaching one-to-one English language classes.

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Key talking points

Challenges we may encounter in moving from teaching groups to one-to-one

• The multiple skills a one-to-one practitioner needs

• The difference between teaching, facilitating and coaching

• The value in using student-sourced materials to plan and deliver tailored lessons

To learn more about Rob's work, visit his website here. Check out Rob's publications, including Activities for Speaking for One-to-One or Group and One to One: An Updated and Practical Guide to Teaching, on his Amazon author page here.

To watch this episode with closed captions, click on the video below or scroll down to view the transcript.

Transcript

00:00:00:07 - 00:00:25:18
Laura
TESOL Pop Season seven Episode one. Hello, and welcome to TESOL Pop the mini podcast for busy teachers. My name is Laura and joining me today to talk about teaching 1 to 1 classes is Rob Howard. Rob is the online language center and Business Language Training Institute owner, EFL Talks founder, a teacher, trainer, coach, writer on business English, entrepreneurship, 1 to 1 and online teaching.

00:00:25:20 - 00:00:44:01
Laura
He's also IATEFL Poland vice president, IATEFL B-SIG Joint Coordinator, Gallery Teachers Masterclass Presenter, iTDi TOEFL Trainer and Independent Authors and Publishers Co-Founder. My goodness, you do have a lot of busy things to keep you preoccupied, so I really appreciate your time. Welcome to the show.

00:00:44:01 - 00:01:07:16
Rob
Rob Oh, well, thanks for having me and all those things, that's just Monday. I didn't give you the rest of the week yet.

00:01:07:18 - 00:01:13:02
Laura
As with many episodes, today's topic is relevant to many teaching contexts, no matter what subject you teach.

00:01:13:04 - 00:01:34:02
Laura
So why not continue the conversation by sharing today's episode with your teaching community? A good place for us to kick off this conversation, Rob, is perhaps to think about what the differences are between that group class dynamic and the 1 to 1 class setting, because I think a lot of teachers are very familiar and comfortable with the group setting but may not have experienced the 1 to 1 setting necessarily.

00:01:34:04 - 00:01:41:07
Laura
Could you tell us a bit about those differences and some of the challenges that teachers may experience in transferring from that group to 1 to 1?

00:01:41:09 - 00:02:15:21
Rob
Yeah, I think the biggest problem is people just really don't know how to deal with individuals. You would think it would be very easy, but working in a group dynamic is good because you're really just almost the conductor where you're orchestrating the room and you're getting the students within the room to interact with each other and of course, you know, you're still leading the way and giving information and teaching as you go.

00:02:15:23 - 00:02:42:24
Rob
But when you're dealing with groups a lot of it is just orchestrating the room. Now, when you switch over to dealing with 1 to 1, all of a sudden you're put on the spot and you're dealing with an individual directly. The nice thing about it is it allows me to look at each individual and help each individual, but I have to be prepared for that.

00:02:43:01 - 00:03:11:24
Rob
And coming out of a group setting, not many people are able to make that transition so quickly. I like to think of it as for from a student's point of view, when you're going to a group dining room class or general English class, it's like, Oh, I have a pain in my side. So I go to the doctor and the doctor will figure out what has to be done and take care of the problem.

00:03:12:01 - 00:03:40:13
Rob
But if we find out it's something specific, let's say it's a liver problem. I then go to a specialist and I need a specialist who understands exactly what to do to treat the liver, not the whole thing. So a good 1 to 1 practitioner is really a specialist. And to be successful at this, you have to be a specialist in many different specialties.

00:03:40:15 - 00:03:44:23
Rob
So this is where the major difference will come in.

00:03:45:00 - 00:04:00:08
Laura
You've mentioned before in some of your talks and publications that as teachers, especially 1 to 1 teachers, we have to wear lots of different hats. And I wondered if you could expand a bit more on that idea of this different hat wearing and particularly in the 1 to 1 setting?

00:04:00:10 - 00:04:15:05
Rob
Well, it's interesting because, number one, you call me an English teacher, I don't consider myself a teacher. I actually call myself a facilitator of advanced communication skills. And do you know what the difference is?

00:04:15:07 - 00:04:25:04
Laura
I think, it would be good to clarify for our listeners what those differences are, because it's certainly more of a trending term that may be quite new for others. So please elaborate.

00:04:25:06 - 00:04:53:14
Rob
It's the difference between the facilitator and a teacher is about $100 an hour. So for you teachers out there, start charging more. No, but what it comes down to is you need multiple skills. And, you know, you start off most of us have started our careers as general English teachers, and that's good. We've learned the basics. We've learned how to teach everything else.

00:04:53:16 - 00:05:18:23
Rob
But there's often times, depending what the student's needs are, where we could be a teacher, we might be their tutor, we could be their mentor, we could be a trainer, we could be a coach, we could be their therapist. In some cases, when we have people like my girlfriend who just couldn't speak, she really needed, you know, almost therapy.

00:05:18:23 - 00:06:03:24
Rob
It wasn't an English class to get her to feel confident. So the nice thing about knowing all these different methodologies is that within a class you may be three or four or all of them within the setting, depending on what you're doing in what you're working on. So I recommend for people out there, if you're coming from a general English course, like most of us, and you've learned teaching, I know you're good, go out there, take something on coaching, take something on tutoring, look into it, do a little bit of study and give it idea of what the differences are.

00:06:04:01 - 00:06:28:02
Rob
Because ultimately what we want is, you know, you say wearing a lot of hats. There's two different things. I do woodworking, so it's having the right tool at the right time. Or if you're a golfer, it's having the right club for the right shot. Sometimes the best way is to just teach, and sometimes the best thing is to coach.

00:06:28:04 - 00:06:48:20
Rob
So getting all these tools in your bag of tools or in your hat is very valuable. It makes you more valuable to your client, which means you can charge a lot more money and it builds up a better reputation for you and for your business.

00:06:48:24 - 00:07:09:10
Laura
Going back to teaching 1 to 1, there's obviously activities, materials that work really well in the setting, and I know you've written about it in your book, which will of course be referred to shortly, but could you highlight some of these materials and activities that teachers could try out if they're quite new to this 1 to 1 class?

00:07:09:12 - 00:07:38:05
Rob
Yeah, well, there's a lot of different things. What I first of all, I recommend for most 1 to 1 classes and again, I'm very picky on who I choose for a student I can be, which is nice. I'm primarily working on communication and I mean oral communication. So, you know, I don't need materials for reading. I usually don't need materials for listening.

00:07:38:07 - 00:08:08:16
Rob
These are things that they can do on their own. I can push them in the right direction. I often tell my students they should be listening to directed podcasts for their industry or for the accent that they're looking to understand. So but this is all stuff they can do at home by themselves. My idea is to build in a time and a speaker and you know, eventually they're going to keep learning for the rest of their life

00:08:08:16 - 00:08:40:12
Rob
and I'll be long gone. So I give them the tools to be able to do this. So when they're coming to me, primarily I'm going to deal on speaking activities or sometimes writing activities. Most of the writing I have them do on their own outside of class, and we bring it to the class. This is one of the things for me is materials specifically for what a student needs.

00:08:40:14 - 00:09:16:05
Rob
That's difficult because today I have a student who came to me who is actually a psychologist and a coach, and what she's working on is presentation skills for what she has. Yesterday I had a student who was a lawyer who's working on their writing capability. Before that, I had a journalist. Before that, I had a tele-journalist who is making presentations all over the world.

00:09:16:07 - 00:09:51:15
Rob
So getting something that puts all these materials together in one place is not very easy. And the other problem is there are some great course books out there on let's call it Business English Don't run away, you know, because most of the people that are learning English are learning it, quite frankly, for their job. And when you're talking about business English, there are so many specific things it's impossible to find one book that will cover everything.

00:09:51:17 - 00:10:20:23
Rob
And that's one of the reasons that I came out with the activity book that we did. And this is really covering general conversation. Most of what I deal with and most of what I do is talking to you specifically about the things that you need, keeping in mind the needs analysis, which, you know, we have done and we continue to do throughout.

00:10:21:00 - 00:10:57:17
Rob
You know, once we fix one problem, take care of that challenge and we've got the solution. We've reached the objective. We look for the next, this is part of coaching, which means sometimes another maybe mini needs analysis and we go after the next. So, you know, finding materials to do all of this, a lot of times it's difficult. It's probably going to get a little easier now that we have Chat GPT because you can generate materials, but are they relevant?

00:10:57:19 - 00:11:15:04
Rob
I always say that the best relevant material that you can use for your classes is the material your clients or your students bring to the class from their job, because this is the reality that they work with every day.

00:11:15:06 - 00:11:23:12
Laura
Rob I'd like to hand over the microphone to you to tell our listeners where can they find out more about you and also the publications that you have out so over to you.

00:11:23:14 - 00:11:49:09
Rob
Yeah, I've got a lot of different books and publications out, but the one that we're most proud of, my partner, Andrew Stetson, who was from the (IATEFL) BeSIG he's also here in Poland with me. We decided to write a book together on 1 to 1 because there was nothing out there. And it's both something that we're passionate about.

00:11:49:11 - 00:12:14:18
Rob
So it's just about a week away from being done. It's with the editor right now, and we'll have that on the market. And, you know, while we were doing that, we realized, well, you know, we're talking a lot about what material people need and we realized there was not material for that. So at the same time, we wrote a new series.

00:12:14:18 - 00:12:44:06
Rob
This one is available right now in its “Activities for Speaking”. And what we've done is there's a teacher’s book and a student’s book. The idea is so many of you are turning to becoming freelancers now. And the question is, where do I get materials? Because it takes a lot of time to come up with materials. So what we've done is we basically come up with a system where you'll get the teacher's book.

00:12:44:08 - 00:13:10:19
Rob
You recommend the book to your students, they'll get the student book. And what's inside are just basic conversations that we're going to have and work with. But what we're going to do is we're going to flip the classroom. So for instance, I'm going to tell the student for the next class we want to work on chapter 24, which happens to be talking about a bucket list.

00:13:10:21 - 00:13:42:05
Rob
And what we have is four or five different questions that the student can sit and think about and come up with answers beforehand. So what this does is it gives them a chance to think about the question, to look for a new vocabulary that they may need and to write out some answers. And when they come in to class, the teacher basically can help them with fixing the language, improving the language, doing everything.

00:13:42:07 - 00:14:05:11
Rob
And what we did is we made this so you can use this book for A1, A2, all the way up to C2. So it's the same book. It depends on the complexity of what you get into. And the idea behind it is this one book will give you 50 classes if not 100. So this will last you a year.

00:14:05:13 - 00:14:15:16
Laura
It's all there and I'm going to include those links in the show notes so you can easily find those for those who are listening or watching on YouTube. Thank you so much, Rob. It's been an absolute pleasure.

00:14:15:18 - 00:14:21:24
Rob
Thank you, Laura. It's been a pleasure for me and hope to be back again to tell you how to make $100 an hour.

00:14:21:24 - 00:14:47:04
Laura
Yeah. So if you have a question you'd like us to answer or, like Rob, you have a topic to pitch for an episode, then you can contact us via Instagram, Facebook or the website tesolpop.com. Finally, you can support the work we do at TESOL Pop by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen to the podcast, sharing his pop content with your teaching community, or by even buying as a coffee at Kofi.com/tesolpop

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