I volunteered to become an esl tutor. I have no teaching experience but went to a 12 hour training session. The main emphasis of the session was teaching low level adults. I just found out that I will be tutoring a group of 4 ladies from different countries that have been taking ESL classes for a year now. I would appreciate it if some of you could provide ideas as to what I need to include in my lesson plan. We will meet once a week for 1.5 hours. Do I mix things up every week or do the same thing to be consistent? Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Why not start by getting each student to tell you what they have the most trouble learning in English...or what is their biggest English learning problem? This way you don't spend time going over what they feel they already know.

You don't want to spend time with lessons that you create that are solutions looking for a problem. If they have been studying ESL for a year, they certainly have their own challenges and issues. So to help them make real progress, get them to tell you where they think they have trouble.

You can also do some review lessons with them on material they already covered. This can help you detect some problems with things they thought they learned and mastered in their previous studies.

Use English commonly associated with daily life routines. The more often they use it, the less likely they are to lose it. Find out what each student does in their daily routine. Then find photos of items and situations associated with those situations. Randomly distribute the photos and have each person try to talk about the picture to another student. Get them to dialog about the photo as a group to fill in or help each other out with the English with you coaching from the side lines.

Share food. I used to get students together for informal conversations at lunch....but the rule was you cannot start to eat lunch until you say one sentence in English. Adapt this to the level of English of your students. Get them to tell the name of the food, describe the flavor, identify the ingredients, tell how it is made. Food and sharing food (especially across cultures) is a great way for your students to become teachers, teaching you about their culture...but please, do it in English.

This can be extended to their traditional holidays vs. holidays in the English speaking world. Clothing, art, music, and so many other topics for "sharing" will certainly enliven the ESL lessons in contrast to the text book.

Hope this helps. Best wishes.

When you establish routines, your planning will be cut in half. E.g. free discussion, guided conversation (e.g. current events) & vocabulary building, guided reading, writing workshop with grammar taught in context based on the student's writing... That way, all you have to do is pick a topic and an article/piece of reading each week and off you go. I love the book "Zero Prep" for instant language and literacy activities that don't require any prep and can be adjusted to any topic you teach. I also agree that when teaching adults, it's best to find out from them what they are interested in. What are their most immediate needs in terms of expressing themselves in English? Where in their daily lives do they need it most urgently. What type of vocabulary does that involve? What topics are they are interested in?

Arm yourself with as many ESL books as you can get your hands on. My ESL bible is called Streamline Departures, by Oxford University Press. It's the best book ever for someone new to teaching ESL (and even people who've been teaching for years still praise this series). If the Departures level is a little too easy, try the next level up, called Connections.

Follow the link below for more info about the Streamline series.

Good luck with the class.