Fees for Tutoring ESL Students

I received an email from an elementary school teacher who is planning to take on her first adult ESL student. She wrote to my other website Teaching ESL to Adults to ask me how much to charge for her ESL tutoring services. She is somewhere in the United States. She didn't provide her city or state.

To find out how much to charge for ESL tutoring services, especially in the U.S., I recommend visiting www.craigslist.org and looking at their "Lessons" section. You can limit your search to "ESL" or "English" to find out how much other tutors are charging in your area (or nearby) and use that as a basis to charge your private ESL students.

Another tip for finding new ESL students is to peruse the above section of Craig's list for students. Often, adult students looking for a private tutor will post their request. I've actually gotten a few students this way in the past couple of years.

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Contractions and ESL Speakers

Many of my private ESL students are advanced level ESL speakers. Many come to me because they want to sound more like a native English speaker. Together, we work on many ways to improve their American English pronunciation and reduce their native accents. We look at intonation, pronunciation of words and of individual sounds, we look at voiced and unvoiced sounds, etc.

We also look at reductions and contractions. Most advanced ESL students are very familiar with contractions. They've been taught about them many times. However, very few of my students use contractions. As a matter of fact, when they are reading aloud to me, they will even take apart a contraction. "I'll" becomes "I will" when they are reading. So it is often very difficult for ESL speakers to consistently use contractions.

And yet, the use of contractions during speaking is one of the best ways to move toward sound more "native." With a lot of practice and reinforcement, non-native English speakers can move towards sounding more native by using this one technique.

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English Only for ESL Students

I'm not very fond of the term "English Only." In my home state of California, "English Only" used to be (and to some extent, still is) the slogan of people who felt it would be better do eliminate bilingual classrooms for children. For many reasons, I don't believe this is a good learning strategy for children who must learn not only a new language, but also different subject matter content (history, science, math, etc.).

So when I used to teach adult ESL classes and I found myself reminding students, "English only!" I felt a little strange saying these words. However, it was a useful reminder for students paying a lot of money to learn American English.

I'm a private tutor now, so I don't find myself saying, "English only," too often, because I only have one student at a time. I had the opportunity today as two of my students who know each other had an opportunity to chat as I took a short break between students. They are both advanced level students, but they still chose to speak in their native language instead of English. I decided to let this one slide.

It just reminded me of the feeling I used to have when I said, "English only," to my former classes and how strange that expression was for me to say.

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Steps for Teaching Past Tense Pronunciation

When I teach my ESL students how to pronounce regular past tense verbs (those ending in "-ed," I follow a step-by-step process.

Here are the steps I follow:

1) First, I teach the concept of voicing, or voiced and unvoiced sounds (aka voiceless sounds).

2) Next, I teach how to pronounce /t/ and /d/.

3) Finally, I teach the rules for which past tense verbs end with /t/, /d/, and /id/ sounds.

I find that that this methodical approach works best to help my ESL students really learn past tense pronunciation. It takes more time, but I find it very effective.

Here's more info on English Past Tense Pronunciation.

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Saying "Goodbye" to ESL Students

One of the great pleasures I get from teaching ESL students in the U.S. is that I get to "travel vicariously." I really enjoy meeting people from other countries, learning about other cultures, and generally, meeting new people.

I just had my last meeting with an ESL student that I have been meeting with two to three times a week for the last year. It was such a pleasure "working" with him. I put working in quotes because this was indeed a case of "do what you love and the money will follow."

My student's English improved significantly while he was here. He was really determined to improve his English and he did a lot of studying outside of class. He worked with me primarily to improve his speaking skills, which he did significantly.

I really learned a lot from him, as well. It was a great pleasure meeting with him and I will miss our discussions.

I love my job! (Mostly.)

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Comment on "How English is Really Spoken"

A couple of days ago, I wrote How English is Really Spoken. Steve, from www.eslspider.com and www.healthyexpat.com submitted a comment about his experiences. I’m not sure if people have a chance to read the Comments, so I wanted to post Steve’s comment more prominently.

“I think every ESL instructor faces the same situation. There is textbook English and there is real world English. You can tell the students what you know to be the truth, often it is best for them to come to a truth on their own. The way I deal with this is to simply play a scene from some English movie which is popular with the students at the time. Provide a copy of the script if possible, simply Google for it and print off a copy for each of the students. Perhaps they can write the script as they hear it. Then show the official copy. In this way they can hear and see the real world English, I then show a scene from some Shakespeare movie (recent famous actor is best). So, I ask....which is English? Let them talk it out and vote on the outcome.

It is the same in any language I know of, textbook v real world. Once they can relate it to their own language, they can see it is the same with English.

Another suggestion, take a popular English song and have the students in class write out the lyrics as they hear them. Then produce the actual lyrics, which is correct? Are the lyrics textbook English? I doubt it. Deal with slang, regionalism, mention that you cannot sometimes understand someone from another country speaking English. I mention some of the most beautiful pronunciation and vocabulary is in fact spoken by people from African countries. Most students in Japan found this hard to believe. Some students think real English is spoken by only this or that nation or people, which is wrong. Part of being in the ESL business is to break down the untruths, to open your student's eyes and ears. Let them know they are speakers of English, they will be understood.

Keep grinding away,
Steve”

Thanks, Steve, for the comment.

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ESL and Telling the Time

One basic thing that English language learners need to know is how to tell the time.

I was talking to one of my ESL students today. We were practicing prepositions of time (in/at/on). I asked what time he left for work. He said, "I left at 8:05." However, when he said "8:05," he said, "eight-five." He left out the "oh."

It's actually a little strange to pronounce the "O" in 8:05 as the letter "oh." One might expect it to be "eight-zero-five" since the "0" is a number. However, native English speakers say the time from one minute after the hour through nine minutes after the hour with "oh" instead of zero.

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