Sample text for advanced students

Extreme Views on the Internet

The Internet has suppressed the sharing of opposite views and their discussion, or so says recent studies. It takes little effort and even less time to search and find sites, online newspapers and magazines, blogs, and forums which support your views, whatever they may be. Believe that global warming is a hoax, for example? Google the phrase and over one million sites pop up. Or how about the US government masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Over seven million sites purport this as fact. The potential effects on society, government, and human relations in the future are immense.

With little to no debate also comes imbalanced views and extremism, as niches of like-minded people engage in one-sided discussions. If a group of supporters discussed the benefits of the Kyoto Protocol, for example, it stands to reason that few arguments would get raised about any possible negative impact. From this evaluation stems the idea that confidence grows with the absence of persuasive naysayers. An overabundance of confidence produces extreme views - a mob mentality on the Internet, if you will.

Discussions by large groups of like-minded people have the potential for good in the world, though. The Civil Rights Movement in the US and the movement for gender equality all over the world are but two examples. But it doesn't take much effort to realize the negatives, such as terrorism, cults, or fanatical regimes like the Khmer Rouge. There is the risk that people will band together and be both brash and utterly wrong in their views.

Unfortunately, sociologists worry that the harm to society's general welfare is more likely than any possible benefits. Suspicion of others whose views differ, unjustified rage, and the fragmenting of society are all grave concerns. Any adversaries could be viewed as the enemy in some kind of future war of ideals and beliefs.

This is an example of the type of text that can be used with an advanced student.Particular vocabulary is highlighted for discussion and clarity and there is a lot of scope to develop conversation with this kind of topic.

Advanced Students

I have begun to do away with the need for an agent to help me locate students and through social net working I am now beginning to teach an even wider variety of nationalities.The demand for lessons is relatively high within the UK ,particularly among the more advanced speakers.
In the last week I gained two more students who are both at this level.The main problem they feel they have is the confidence to speak and they often find themselves not finishing a sentence because to their ears it just doesn't sound right.They have lost confidence in their abilities with the language.
For these students the important thing for me as the teacher is to very quickly develop a rapport so that the student feels safe to communicate and make mistakes.

I use a fairly clear structure in my lessons with advanced conversational /general English students.We usually have a warm up -a word game related to the topic.This is followed by a questioning activity based on the topic.I then provide a piece of text ,usually with underlined phrasal verbs(to highlight their use) and some more complex vocabulary.The student reads the text ,we discuss unfamiliar words and phrases and this is followed by more questions which requires the student to respond using the new language.The lesson ends with another game which highlights the that the learning outcome has been achieved.These types of lessons do vary a little.Sometimes a student will have watched a talk,video clip or read a newspaper article in advance of their lesson and we use this material for our lesson.
For advanced students its not just about chatting.Error correction is essential as is the introduction of new phrases,idiomatic speech and so on. Using more complex grammar easily is also very important so I try to include a grammar element to our lessons.Here are links to some sites I use as a basis to these lessons.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts
http://www.ted.com/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/
http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/
This is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what resources I use.Because of how long I have been teaching English I have now created and built up a range of lesson types for different abilities.