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- Ask them for their opinion often
Might it be for grammar question or about their last holidays.
The subject doesn’t really matter neither as the answer…! The point of asking your students is to keep their curiosity awake, and to show them you care about their opinion. Try to get them speaking. No matter the content of your lesson, they will quickly lose interest if they feel that their opinion is not being taken into consideration and that your lesson could be aimed at anyone else. Especially for man-to-man lessons, you have to show that your student is special in a way.
Then he will be confident that first you’re listening and caring about what he thinks and also and that you know what he needs to know in order to improve his English skills.
All student’s needs, weakness and opinions are different, you don’t need to have the same opinion to be a good teacher I think, you just need to care about your student’s one.
- Congratulate them when they do well.
Students never know their actual level and will always have doubt about their skills until then turn fluent, they will always apprehend to speak and mostly will be scared to do mistakes. It is your job to tell them when they did right because they won’t understand it by themselves. Also congratulating them is the best way to keep them trying hard. Show them that they’re going in the right direction and they’ll gain confidence and will try more. Being always uncertain of our level is the best way to stop trying.