English language levels description:

 English Basic User (A1,A2)

o A1 (Beginner)

o A2 (Elementary English)

 English Independent User (B1,B2)

o B1 (Intermediate English)

o B2 (Upper-Intermediate English)

 Proficient English User (C1,C2)

o C1 (Advanced English)

o C2 (Proficiency/Mastery English)

One To One Teaching Activities

☼People watching
Go for a walk outside or look out of the
window and analyses passers-by. Have your
student create crazy stories about people
and be creative.

☼Picture analysis
Take in pictures for your students to
analyses. Take the pressure off yourself and
get them thinking.
☼Dialogue
Prepare some dialogues or co-write some
which are relevant to the topic of your
lesson. Go through them together, playing a
part each then switching roles.

☼Reading comprehension
Use reading materials in your one to on
lessons. This gives you some breathing
space and gets them speaking. Analyse the
text, teach them what new words mean, ask
them questions about it, play grammar
games, have them re-write part of it or
anything else you can get out of it.

☼Hangman
This is a classic word game whereby you
think of a sentence, set out the underscores
on the paper where a letter goes and have
them attempt to guess the phrase.

☼Word cards
Prepare some word cards to make sentences
with. Give them a piece of paper and take one
yourself. Draw a 10 squares grid and write a
verb in each of yours and have them put a
noun in each of theirs (for instance). Tear
them into individual cards and get them into
2 piles face down. Turn the top card from
each pile and have them make a sentence
with the words.

☼Battleships
Give your student a blank piece of A4 paper.
Have them draw a grid as demonstrated
below:

Swim Run Drive

I
You
He
She
They

Use the relevant vocabulary according to

your grammar point. Instruct them to draw a
happy face in any 3 squares and to keep the
locations of their faces hidden from other
students. In pairs, have them battling to get
rid of their opponent’s happy faces by asking
questions. For instance, in the above
example, by asking questions ‘Can
I/you/he/she…?’ If there is a face in the
corresponding square, the response is
positive and the face is eliminated. If not,
student gives a negative response.

☼Brainstorm
Pick a theme or grammar point and
brainstorm examples and ideas together on
the board. When you’ve finished go around
each word and have them make a sentence.

☼Using ‘because…’
If your student has reasonable English ability
but is a bit limited in terms of speech, tell
them that it is incredibly important to use the
word ‘because’ when you speak English- in
order to justify a statement. Every time they
make a statement ask them ‘why?’ This helps
to get them speaking more and thinking in
more depth about their language use.

☼Vocabulary pass
Set the topic, you say a related word then
they say another, keep going backwards and
forwards. Throw out new words along the
way to teach them.
☼Board games
There are hundreds of board games you can
play with your one to one students to break
the ice and break the monotony. Use some of
the old favourites like Scrabble and Guess
Who or design your own.

☼News stories
After each class tell them to find a news
story to tell you about in the next class. You
can also bring some materials in to act as
reading material and hopefully to set up
some discussion.

☼Family trees
Teach your student the terminology for
family. Draw an imaginary family tree on the
board using celebrity names etc to make it
humorous. Quiz them the relationships
between any 2 given people. Have them
create one for their own family.

☼Job interview
Role-play a job interview scenario with your
student. Take turns to play the parts of
interviewer and interviewee.
☼Roll the dice
Bring a dice to the lesson. Allocate a task or
forfeit for each role such as spelling a word,
saying a grammar point etc. Take turns with
them to roll the dice and carry out the task
for the number it lands on.

☼Ball passing
Simply stand at different sides of the room
and pass a ball back and forth. Each time you
throw it, ask a question, when you catch it
give a response. This works as a good ice
breaker.

☼A-Z
Set them the challenge of giving you a word
beginning with each letter of the alphabet.
After doing it once, limit their options by
telling them to only use words within a
certain setting i.e. the classroom you are in.

☼Shiritori
You start by saying a word. Your student has
to say a word which begins with the last
letter of your word and the process continues
back and forth.
☼Tic Tac Toe
Play this game as an ice-breaker and keep
the conversation flowing throughout.

☼Card games
There are many card games you can play
with just two people. Use the cards as an ice
breaker to distract them from the fact that
they are practising their English and they
may be more willing to open up.

☼Go for a walk

You don’t necessarily have to stay in the
classroom or teacher’s office to teach a
student one to one. Go to the local shop and
have them try to name items, go to the park
and do some people watching or go and have
a coffee and relax in a nearby cafe.

☼Lie to me
Tell your student to tell you complete lies
about their life. They may feel less limited
than just talking about their actual life which
probably revolves around school and
computer games. Encourage them to
exaggerate about what they have done earlier
in the day etc.
☼Truth, truth lie
Tell them to write and/or say 3 things about
themselves- two of them are true and one of
them is a lie. You do the same and try to
guess each other’s lies.

☼20 questions
Write a word on paper and don’t show it to
your student. Give them 20 questions to ask
questions in order to ultimately guess your
word. Only give them yes or no answers.