P. Osborne Pavilion 2005, 216 pp., £14.95 isbn 978 190454903 Learning One-to-One I. Wisniewska Cambridge University Press 2010, 207 pp., £23.40 isbn 978 052113458 Having cut my teeth on one-to-one language teaching more than 30 years ago, I must start off by admitting that I have not kept abreast of the professional literature in the field. So, I hoped that reviewing these two titles would give me an insight into new content and approaches. I began with a quick Amazon search to get a feeling for what else I might have missed in the intervening years. Not much, it appears. Up popped four titles, the endorsement for one of which read: There are very few books available on teaching English one on one but as most teachers know private students are the bread and butter of an English teachers (sic) income, especially in Asia. 350 Reviews Downloaded from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ at Victoria University on November 3, 2012 Teaching English One to One This book proved to be very valuable in helping me to plan classes and provide a better service for my students. So, prima facie, the profession is hardly inundated with guides to earning one’s daily crust. Good prospects then for the authors of the two books for review. According to the cover, Teaching English One to One is aimed at the professional English language teacher. A moment of perplexity. Did this mean language teachers who are professionals? Or those language teachers who work with professionals? The disambiguation came fairly swiftly. Two target groups are addressed: In terms of experience, I would assess the content as appropriate for those teachers who already have an understanding of language analysis and experience of language teaching principles and practices. The contents page shows the book’s division into 13 wide-ranging chapters: from ‘Getting started’ to ‘Visits and project work’. Feeling that I needed more of a structure, I reclassified the parts into: 1 Introduction: a differentiation between group and one-to-one teaching, both in terms of observable course features, for example cost, intensity, pace, as well as the psychological factors, for example rapport building and adaptability. 2 The pedagogic cycle from pre-course preparation, through needs analysis, course design, teaching techniques, and lesson feedback. 3 Different course types and modes of delivery: n Business English n homestays n children and teenagers. 4 Back to the pedagogic cycle: n lesson planning n end-of-course feedback and suggested next steps. 5 Challenges specific to one-to-one teaching and how to deal with them. 6 Alternatives to classroom activities in terms of visits and project work. The book ends with recommended resources, a glossary of pedagogic terms, and a bibliography. Reviews The chapters are clearly laid out with a variety of inputs: text, tables, forms, and bulleted lists. This variety makes for interesting reading as well as diversified content. The author’s style ranges from gently didactic, telling us what we should (as opposed to must) do, to descriptive, explaining the options available to us, to questioning, encouraging us to reflect on what will best suit our teaching situation. It avoids the prescriptive approach. Interspersed throughout the books are lesson ideas and classroom tips. In general, the teaching points are easy to follow. I particularly liked the real-world examples describing a specific student’s needs, course programme, and lesson plans. Unfortunately, the chapter on course reports reflects my own experience: that writing a set of recommendations after a one-to-one course tends to drift towards generalities rather than focusing on truly personalized follow-up. I fear that teachers and language schools may be missing out on opportunities by failing to capitalize on the importance of the ‘what next’ phase of learning. They need to remember that the individual course that they have provided is only one small step in a much longer process, one which I am sure they would like to be central to. The chapter towards the end of the book on challenges highlighted some of the practical issues that teachers may need to face in the real world. The suggested answers will certainly help less experienced teachers to deal with solvable problems and more experienced teachers to reflect on their own preferred approach to difficult situations and people. However, what is left unresolved is how far the teacher in the one-to-one situation should engage with personal issues spilling over into the classroom. Building rapport can indeed be a double-edged sword. The final chapter provides a list of recommended resources. While this list, especially web-based items, may not stand the test of time, I suspect that the advice, examples, and forms, given throughout the book, will. In conclusion, I feel that Teaching English One to One is useful for teachers coming from different backgrounds. Firstly, for those who have classroom experience working with groups, this book highlights 351 Downloaded from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ at Victoria University on November 3, 2012 1 Language teachers who focus on language, i.e. four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) plus general and specialist vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. 2 Communication trainers who focus on business skills, i.e. presentations, meetings, negotiations, telephoning, business writing. As I worked my way through the book, I realized that I would have preferred to have those chapters which relate to the pedagogic cycle together to create a kind of unity: from needs analysis to suggested next steps. This would have created a more coherent structure. Maybe others will disagree. issues specific to the one-to-one classroom. Secondly, for teachers with limited one-to-one experience who would like to validate their experience and expand their knowledge of techniques for teaching one-to-one, this book provides clear guidance and practical ideas to improve their competence. The first sentence of the Introduction left me in no doubt: ‘for anyone involved in teaching English or another language to individual students’. The contents page showed the book’s organization into two equal parts: Basic principles (1) and Activities (2). The Introduction sets the scene, defining the one-to-one teaching context, before summarizing advantages and challenges. The author explains the organizational link between the teacher roles described in Part 1 and the teaching activities presented in Part 2. Part 1 starts off with some logistical pointers (how to set up the study area, clarifying the business relationship, managing diversity of communication styles and cultural backgrounds). All good stuff to prepare the ground, even if the artwork is, in my opinion, a little cheesy. I move on to Chapter 2, ‘Teacher roles’, in which the author identifies five roles that the teacher may switch between. My first acquaintance with the five roles is a cursory skim. It is not till later that I realize how critical these are for an understanding and appreciation of Part 2. So, because of their centrality to the coherence of the whole book, I shall list them. They are: 1 2 3 4 5 Conversation partner Observer and listener Feedback provider Mentor and guide Learner. For each, the author: n raises questions through a reflective task n explains the role characteristics n exemplifies classroom practice with mini-dialogues. This works well until I get to the section on mentor and guide, which are bundled together with adviser, 352 Reviews I move on to Chapter 3. The tables and checklists for needs analysis, course design, and lesson planning follow well-trodden paths for any teacher who has completed their basic training. The photocopiable forms, which all appear as pdfs on the accompanying CD, are excellent resources (even though, as pdfs, they cannot be modified or customized). Chapter 4 shows how published materials, written for the multi-participant classroom, can be adapted for the one-to-one classroom. This seems fine until I reach the instruction ‘Work in pairs. Compare notes’. I think some comment by the author is called for here. In general, this chapter on criteria for materials selection presents what I would expect from any professional EF L teacher, selecting materials for their group. I would like to see more tips on creating personalized (rather than adapting commercialized) materials, including those for jobrelated communication activities. I was looking forward to Chapter 5 on feedback and reflection, as it mirrors two concerns of mine. Feedback tells us how well or badly we are doing. However, the phrase ‘negative feedback’ stops me in my tracks. I thought we had moved on from ‘negative’ to ‘developmental’ feedback so that we can more easily and clearly separate performance of the task (that which needs to be developed) from criticism of the person (that which, I believe, should be avoided). Of course, negative feedback is hurtful, as the author states; it is also not, in my opinion, very useful. Judiciously balancing constructive and developmental feedback is critical for positive learning outcomes; and managing feedback giving in an effective way requires both a sensitivity to individuals and their personal differences, as well as an ability to isolate the key elements in task completion. A starting point for this process is reflecting on one’s own learning outcomes Downloaded from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ at Victoria University on November 3, 2012 The second title is Learning One-to-One, part of Cambridge University Press’s series of over 40 titles, offering ‘practical ideas, techniques and activities for the teaching of English and other languages, providing inspiration for both teachers and trainers’. The title left me momentarily perplexed (or was this a déjà vu from my first review?). Is this a guide for learners or for teachers? counsellor, and coach. Lumping these roles together obscures essential differences between them and failing to clarify what each is makes it difficult for the reader to know which are valid roles for the one-toone teacher. If it is appropriate for me to be asked to mentor, what exactly do I do? The author suggests that ‘as a mentor, you can also help your student develop independent learning skills by encouraging them to find ways to study out of class’. The traditional understanding of mentoring is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. Has E LT developed a new model of mentoring? Notwithstanding our differences, the list is an interesting and original starting point for exploring the diversity of teacher roles. and feedback experiences. Help yourself in order to help others. Having covered the basic principles (Part 1), I move on to Part 2: Activities. In order to understand the internal organization of this part of the book, I need to remind myself of the different teacher roles presented in Part 1. The author proceeds to use the five-part classification to present a range of activities. This is a very neat and original idea. And it works well . . . up to a point. Having now understood how this part of the book works, I move on to Role 2: the teacher as observer and listener. Here, we find a series of teacherdesigned, but student-led activities, allowing the teacher to identify learning needs and preferred learning styles. While the tasks are (again) varied and creative, I am not sure if they are clearly different in content from the Role 1 tasks. Or is it simply a change of role focus? However, I again appreciate the balance between activities to develop fluency (without correction) and those to improve accuracy (with correction). Role 3 is the teacher as feedback provider. The author presents us with a range of speaking and listening tasks and then explains procedures and areas for feedback. In the suggested procedure, positive (constructive) feedback precedes developmental. But what does the learner do with the feedback provided? This is surely an area that needs exploration in the one-to-one classroom. And then, without further ceremony, the book comes to end (except for four pages of references, further reading, and website). Both titles cover enough of the core issues around one-to-one teaching to make them excellent sources of support for teachers with some ELT experience. Of the two, I found Osborne’s Teaching English One to One. easier to follow and more predictable in its scope and content. Wisniewska’s Learning One-toOne, despite our differences of position, is a more challenging book, and ultimately one that encouraged more reflection on my own one-to-one teaching practices. Both books certainly deserve reading; for the intending or experienced one-to-one teacher, the question is which one to start with. The reviewer Nick Brieger, after a first degree in law, a postgraduate teacher training qualification in T EFL , and an M A in Applied Linguistics, has added language teaching and teacher training throughout Europe and Asia to his career. In recent years, he has specialized in professional language and communication training, especially in the field of Business English, and teacher training in Business English. Email: nickbrieger@hotmail.com doi:10.1093/elt/ccr039 Role 4 is the teacher as mentor. The author advised me to go back to its first mention, where I refreshed my memory of mentoring as ‘helping my students develop independent learning skills by encouraging them to find ways to study out of class’. I found the tasks here less convincing partly because of differences in our understanding of mentoring and partly because I do not see how the activities lead to learning or learner independence. That they contribute to the learning process, in general, I have no doubt. The final role is the teacher as learner. Here, we find a collection of student-led activities, typically in explanatory mode, where the learner ‘exploits the natural information gap that exists between the expert and the non-expert’. The activities are all Reviews 353 Downloaded from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ at Victoria University on November 3, 2012 The first set of activities presents the teacher as conversation partner ‘in order to build confidence by encouraging participation’. The tasks are varied and creative, ideal for fluency development. For the reader, it would have been useful if the author had explained why there is no language feedback in these activities. Obvious to me, but what about to less experienced teachers? open-ended information gap activities. As such, they exploit the gap in order to give a reason/need for communication. However, I am not sure whether they demonstrate the teacher as learner. Perhaps, to demonstrate true learning, it should be the teacher who gives the follow-up product description presentation to show just how much learning has taken place.
