4 Golden Rules for Successful Conversation Lessons

How to guarantee your conversation lessons will be memorable, useful and popular!

  1. Always have a nice, professional-looking handout to base your lesson on. Or more than one, in case of emergencies! (Hint: there are 30 of them in this book!). This demonstrates that you are prepared to deliver a serious, professional lesson, even if you aren't.
  2. Pick out or underline some words or grammar structures from the handout that your students will not know or may need to revise. Teach them before you begin, or if the conversation starts to flag, do a “grammar focus” or “vocabulary focus” on the board. If your boss, or a student wants to know what the point of your lesson is, you can reply that you're focusing on the second conditional (“What would you do if...?”) or vocabulary related to whatever the topic of the day is.
  3. Make notes of mistakes and words which come up during the discussions. Feedback to the class at the end of the lesson. Listing the new words on the board so students can copy them is always popular and ensures that the class has something written down to take away. Writing the errors you heard, and eliciting corrections, convinces students there was a purpose to the lesson.
  4. Correct mistakes. Forget everything you have been taught or think you know about not interrupting free conversation to give correction. You MUST DO IT! Sensitively, yes, paying attention to the students underlying message, yes, but don't shirk your responsibility here! The corrections, even if only occasional, validate the lesson in the eyes of the students. Many or most of your clients will WANT TO BE CORRECTED (If you don't believe me, ask them!). If you are seen to be doing your job, here, everyone will be happy. If not, there will always be doubts as to whether, perhaps, more could have been learnt with a “proper” lesson. Will the corrections help students avoid repeating the mistakes? Probably not. Will they distract from the conversation itself? Possibly. Should you correct anyway? Definitely. Everyone needs that you are seen to be doing your job.

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