Working One-to-One with a Student
It is fair to say that today’s teacher of Russian as a foreign language has to be an all-round professional: they must be able to work with learners at different proficiency levels and nationalities, have some knowledge of psychology, understand the theoretical foundations of language-teaching methodology, including RFL, and apply them in practice, both offline and online, in groups and one-to-one.
This article focuses on one particular teaching skill: working one-to-one with a learner and conducting individual lessons.
Many teachers combine work at a language school or university with individual tutoring. Let us consider how one-to-one lessons differ from group classes.
Materials. Materials that work well in group classes are not always suitable for individual instruction. Textbooks contain many tasks designed for dialogues or small-group work involving two or three learners, especially among the final tasks in each lesson.
A learner can still complete final assignments – such as planning routes, creating mind maps or telling stories from pictures – but must do so individually. In one-to-one teaching, particular attention should therefore be paid to the communicative component of the course: dialogues should still be role-played, with the teacher taking one of the roles.
Individual learners also often progress more quickly because there are fewer slowing or distracting factors. As a result, the teacher may need to prepare more supplementary materials, worksheets, illustrations and similar resources for each lesson.
This is also because materials for private lessons are highly individualised: their content depends on the learner’s level and on their specific grammatical and lexical “gaps”.
Games. Games naturally work differently in individual lessons. There is no opportunity to divide learners into teams or organise competitions and quizzes. Nevertheless, teacher and learner can still play roll-and-move board games and use activities involving verbal creativity – for instance, describing scenes from Wimmelbooks, solving picture-based riddles and working with illustrations. In such activities, the teacher should take part in the game as the learner’s partner. This is essential for making the activity work. The teacher must also grade their language to the learner’s level and adapt their speech to the current lexical and communicative context. Games can help reduce the communication barrier between teacher and learner.
Pace and the Learning Process. It is difficult to predict the exact pace of one-to-one lessons in the same way as group classes, because it depends directly on the learner’s language-learning aptitude, current level, motivation and the number of lessons per week. The pace may be faster at some stages and slower at others. The teacher needs to develop a feel for the learner’s pace and, on that basis, propose an individual programme combining a core textbook with supplementary grammar materials and an appropriate reader. Usually, a single textbook and a few manuals are not enough for one-to-one lessons, so the teacher may need to build a tailored course using worksheets, visual materials, games and other interactive components. In private lessons, the teacher acts not only as an instructor but also as a mentor, helping the learner organise their studies and approach particular topics. This is one of the advantages of individual instruction over group learning.
Developing Speaking Skills. One-to-one classes give learners more opportunities to develop speaking skills, both through spontaneous conversation and through exercises prepared by the teacher. At the start of each lesson, the learner can talk about how they are doing, what is new and what they have been doing recently. It is important for the teacher to share some of their own news and recent activities as well. This helps the learner become accustomed to natural conversational Russian while developing listening and communication skills. Such conversation may take ten to fifteen minutes at the beginning of a lesson. At the same time, both teacher and learner should avoid allowing the entire one-to-one lesson to turn into unstructured spontaneous conversation.
If that happens, the development of the learner’s other language skills may suffer.
The Function of the Board. A classroom board is one of the basic teaching tools in group lessons, and one-to-one lessons also need an equivalent. This may be a large sheet of paper, a small portable whiteboard used specifically for Russian lessons, or – in online classes – Google Docs or another shared collaborative workspace that can serve the same function. The board is an important tool for organising lesson material and helping the learner structure it mentally. It should not be neglected as a means of organising and analysing information. Visual notes and illustrations created by the teacher can also support the learner’s associative memory when new vocabulary and grammar are introduced.
A major advantage of using the board in individual lessons is that the learner can take an active role in recording the material and adding their own notes and sketches.
Individual Work from a Psychological Perspective. In one-to-one lessons, the teacher’s attention is focused entirely on the learner, while the learner’s attention is focused on the teacher. This can make such lessons challenging, particularly with a shy learner who is reluctant to communicate. Some learners may even find it difficult to make eye contact with the teacher.
In a group, such learners may be able to avoid interaction without attracting much attention. In individual lessons, however, reluctance to communicate becomes much more visible – and it can sometimes occur on the teacher’s side as well. Other psychological difficulties experienced by the learner, such as nervousness or depression, may also become more apparent. Occasionally, teacher and learner may also be psychologically incompatible – as if they are on “different wavelengths” – which can lead to mutual irritation. In such cases, both should consider whether continuing to work together is productive and how much the tension interferes with learning. Otherwise, the teacher should be prepared to offer reasonable support to learners who find interpersonal communication difficult.
That said, lessons should not turn into psychological counselling sessions, as this quickly makes the teaching process ineffective. The teacher needs to know how to turn personal difficulties into material that can support the learning process and how to reduce the communication barrier even in challenging situations. If a learner is reluctant to speak, excessive pressure is unlikely to help. Instead, the teacher should try to understand the reason for the learner’s reluctance to communicate before choosing a teaching approach. Some learners are unwilling to engage in spontaneous conversation but work conscientiously on exercises designed to develop specific communication skills.
The Learning Environment. Individual lessons are often held outside a traditional educational setting – not in a language centre, school or university, but at home or in a café. Teacher and learner should therefore try to create an environment that feels appropriate for a Russian language lesson.
A dedicated study is not essential, but there should be enough space to work: a large table for materials, suitable chairs rather than sofas or armchairs, and, if possible, a small board. Russian-language posters, both educational and entertaining, can also be useful. The teacher and learner should sit at a comfortable distance from one another.
A computer or tablet with internet access is also useful, as it broadens the range of possible activities: the learner can watch videos, complete interactive exercises, read texts, explore maps, photographs and illustrations, and so on.
Using New Technologies. In individual lessons, the teacher can easily add supplementary exercises and tasks, which helps vary the format of the lesson. The learner can work with a wide range of pedagogical or adapted texts and authentic texts, listen to podcasts, watch videos, complete interactive activities, plot routes on virtual maps, create word clouds and mind maps, and so on.
Teachers with extensive experience of private lessons will undoubtedly have further observations to add. Here, we have tried to describe the main features of one-to-one work with learners and to consider both the advantages and the limitations of this approach to teaching Russian as a foreign language.
Author: Yulia Amlinskaya, teacher of Russian as a Foreign Language and administrator of the “RFL Teachers” professional community.