First Lessons

The first day is an opportunity for the trainer to get to know and evaluate students. Please cover the following in your first lessons:

Introductions:

Trainer:
When introducing yourself, try to include something personal, like your hobbies, to break the ice and help establish rapport.

Students:
They can interview each and then report back to the class about what they’ve found out. If they already know each other, try “Tell your partner five new things about yourself”. Other good activities are “Find Someone Who” mill drills. Choose your own by googling “esl” and “Find Someone Who” .

Needs Analysis:

Please see document entitled “Needs Analysis”. This worksheet can be used for one-to-ones, pairwork, and also groupwork. Using the needs analysis as a worksheet for students simply to fill out on their own is a heads-down activity and doesn’t incorporate speaking practice. The advantages to using this as an interview, in pairwork, and in groupwork are that speaking and listening practice are incorporated.

1. One-to-ones: Trainer interviews learner and fills in the form.
2. Pairwork: Students interview each other in pairs and fill in their partner’s answers.
3. Groupwork: Students fill in Part I on their own, then reach an agreement on one answer for Parts II and III. Students then fill in Part IV on their own.

Save this document and refer back to it during the mid-term feedback.

Rules:

Tell students, or decide together, what the rules of the class will be. Deciding the rules together gives students the responsibility for their own actions.

• Homework (encourage this)
• Punctuality
• Use of German (discourage this)
• Cancellations
• Cell phones

Tips for Learning English:

Ask students to complete the following sentence: A good way to learn English is….. See what ideas they come up with. You can give them the following tips, if they haven’t already mentioned them.

• Spotlight Magazine (bring one in)
• DVDs in English with English subtitles
• Monolingual Dictionary (Like the Collins-Cobuild Learners’ Dictionary)
• Websites for Learners (click)

Learner contracts:

Have a look at the document entitled “Learner Contracts” for more ideas on how to get your learners to commit to learning English.

Other:

Be sure to include a 15 minute filler activity in case you have some time left over. It’s good to give the students an idea of what the lesson will be for the following week. Thank the students and give some positive feedback. HAVE FUN!