General Tutoring Tips

• Reading activities, which are done in context, allow the learner to better understand the meaning of the text. It is a good idea to keep the same theme for your listening, speaking, reading and writing activities. The listening and speaking the learner has done prior to the reading activity will help her understand the text. Prior knowledge is important in reading.
• Reading materials do not necessarily have to come from a textbook, there are many places where you can find text to read. Examples include: advertisements, phone books, bills, medicine labels, menus and signs.
• You may even want to start you own reading file, which could contain a variety of reading texts. Items for beginning and intermediate learners could include cartoons, want ads, bills, bus schedules, or even pictures of traffic signs. Learners could then pick what they want to read from your file.

Teaching Grammar

While grammar should not be the focus of your lesson, research has shown that teaching grammar can be helpful to learners. Because grammatical forms vary from language to language, having a tutor help unravel the meaning of these forms will make the learning process quicker for ESL learners. Learners who do not understand grammar will have a lot of difficulty understanding and communicating since they do not know how to put English words together and how to interpret the words they receive.

Take a look at how the paragraph above would look if written using Korean grammatical forms.

Grammar Teaching

Grammar your lesson the focus (of) should not be while, [according to] research (has shown that) grammar in a meaningful way teaching to learners helpful can be. Grammatical forms from language to language vary because, (having) a tutor these forms the meaning (of) unravel help for ESL learners (the) learning process quicker will make. Grammar don't understand learners (who) understanding and communicating a lot of difficulty will have since they how (to) English words together put and how (to) they receive (the) words interpret don't know.

Translation done by Ellen Chun Hee Son. * The words in brackets do not exist in the Korean language. They were added to this particular piece of work to make the meaning a bit clearer for the English reader. Now, read this again without the words in the brackets.