Education of the republic of uzbekistan termiz state university department of english language and literature

2.2 CLIL and One-to-One Classes
More often than not children are nowadays overburdened not only with school obligations, but numerous extracurricular activities, one of them being private English classes. Owing to that, they sometimes lack motivation and their concentration span is rather restricted, which hampers their progress in language learning. Consequently, they lose interest for learning the foreign language completely or experience frustration as they witness no progress in their own learning. This presentation is based on one-year research in which CLIL was been used as a possible motivating factor in teaching one-to-one classes to primary school students. Even though the research is still in progress, the improvement of students’ motivation and the progress in their knowledge of the language are quite obvious even at this stage of their research.

However contradictory it may sound, education in the new millennium seems to be more demanding than ever before. Teachers have at their disposal an abundance of teaching materials and teaching aids, advance technologies, the Internet, a myriad of ready-made lesson plans and the like which should all ease their workload. However, the real situation is quite the opposite. To meet their students’ particular needs, teachers are obliged to update their knowledge and skills constantly so as to ensure they are savvy enough in applying advanced technologies and making use of numerous online teaching possibilities. Moreover, teachers are instructed more and more frequently to empower their students so as to enable them to pursue their own interests in learning and apply the acquired knowledge. It is the teacher’s responsibility to provide for a safe and secure enough learning environment, which is an essential prerequisite if smooth and equal students’ progress is to be achieved.

More often than not, English language teachers in Serbia are faced with the challenge of teaching large classes (the number of students can sometimes be over 30). In primary schools students usually have two 45-minute English classes a week. When the stated facts are considered, it goes without saying that even in situations when time and classroom management are carefully planned, not all students have equal opportunities to practice and learn the language. Moreover, it is rather difficult to cater for different students’ needs, interests and characteristics in large classes.

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When the lack of adequate teaching and learning conditions (large classes or mixed ability classes for example) is coupled with the teacher’s inexperience in teaching a large class, students achieve little, if any, progress. On the other hand, when compared to one-to-one teaching, teaching a class provides the language teacher with more possibilities to introduce different work formats in the course of a single class. Students sometimes find it easier and more motivating to work in teams with their classmates than working solely with the teacher. Learning in a class can also be inspiring for many students as it is at young age that they like to compete, imitate and find inspiration in other students’ work. In comparison to teaching a class, teaching individual students may be much easier, yet more difficult in some ways. On the one hand, a single student has the teacher’s undivided attention and the overarching goal of one-to-one teaching is meeting the student’s needs, interests and wishes in order to provide stimulating enough a learning environment for the student to achieve the desired result, be it acquiring knowledge, improving a skill, a school grade, and the like. Moreover, it is easier to choose, design or adapt teaching materials to suit an individual student than a whole class.

Learning language in a group, i.e. class, provides opportunities for acquiring skills and types of knowledge other than linguistic – team work, cooperation, negotiation, meeting a deadline, project work, peer revision, etc. Individual classes, however, help students develop feelings of achievement, fulfillment and satisfaction due to reaching a personally set goal. The teacher’s and the students’ roles change significantly depending on the teaching context. In one-to-one classes the teacher usually becomes more of a friend to the learner. The student, however, is given more opportunities to take an active role in making decisions about the classes. Moreover, the teacher engages in the learning process herself, so the student mostly uses the teacher as a resource, unlike the classroom context in which students cooperate to obtain necessary information and

pieces of knowledge. In such a situation, one-to-one classes can become mentally and physically tiring. To overcome the problem of exhaustion, it is of vital importance for teachers to have the ability to discern the moments during the course of a lesson when it is necessary to change the pacing of activities and/or even switch the roles.

When teaching a one-to-one class, the teacher has a higher degree of responsibility as s/he is to meet a particular student’s needs and interests and help the student achieve specific results. What makes this teacher’s role much easier is the fact that one-to-one classes are usually taken by highly motivated students, usually very gifted, whose thirst for knowledge is not quenched in the classroom. Moreover, one-to-one teaching is often applied when students have poor knowledge of the subject; they are usually determined and, more often than not, highly motivated to improve their existing situation.