Hello my dear colleagues

I�m turning to you once again to get some advice. You have been so helpful all the time before and always gave me such great advice, so I hope some of you may have an idea on how I can deal with this situation. I�ve been teaching for about 12 years now and I have seen many children with difficulties, but now I�m teaching a child (around 11 years old) � and I really have no idea how to do with him anymore.

This year was his first year of English in school. He came to see me for private classes in the 2^nd half of the school year because he just doesn�t understand anything the teacher tells him in school. So I�ve been working with him once per week and I found that he is really slow in comprehension. When I explain something, he doesn�t understand it or he thinks he understood it, but once we start the exercises he does them wrong. I have tried all kinds of approaches. One example is, to explain the simple present sentence structure, I made a table for him with subject verb object, that he would just have to follow in order to do the exercises done in school. But even with this table next to him on the table he does mistakes.
I have worked with boardgames from eslprintables (thank you so much for those contributions) and first I thought it really helps as when we were playing the boardgames, he seemed to have understood. But as soon as the structure changed a bit he was totally lost again. For example I asked him a question in the game which he answered perfectly fine. Then I ask the same question in an exercise on paper and he wouldn�t get it at all. When I explained again, he asked me  �ah, just like in the game?�. But then in the follow up lesson, I start all over again. It�s like he really doesn�t� understand anything, no matter which approach I�m trying.
In the last school test he had to write a dialogue between a waiter and a guest and he didn�t even write full sentences because he can�t express himself at all.
I asked him what he thinks where his problem is (like doesn�t understand the tasks since written in English, concentration problems etc). But he just doesn�t know. He said he thinks he understands, but then sees exercises and he just can�t do them.

 In all the years I had students like that, but at least found an approach that would work after a while, but this time I really have nooo idea anymore what to try.

The kid is not one that just doesn�t want to work and therefore refuses to understand things. He is really trying. He has problems in other subjects as well and has private teachers in Math in French. And he told me he understands a bit there (his marks are sometimes good sometimes bad, not constant at all), but in English they are always low.

I know that the situation at home isn�t that great either (his father doesn�t care much about him / doesn�t live with him, the mother is putting pressure on him always saying he has to work hard to not end up like her) etc.
I talked to the mother and told her that it has to stop, but whenever I hear them talk I hear the same things over and over again.
So I thought maybe something is blocking him due to the home situation, but then again, shouldn�t it be the same then in all subjects �

So I start wondering if I�m a bad teacher, or what I can do to help him, because he and his mum are both getting pretty desperate. And me I start wondering about my own capacities.

I�m sorry to have kept you busy with reading all this. It was good though, to get it out of my head J and I really hope somebody may have a little advice on how I can do better in future?

I hope you are all having a great day and a lot of sunshine like we do in Paris :)

Hugs

Sara

Dear Sara,

I have had similar problems. Some people just can �t do languages. The fact that he didn �t start until he was 11 isn �t going to help his situation. You �re just going to have to go slow. With people that don �t get grammar, I tend not to use it in the lesson. What �s the point of telling them "subject, verb, object" etc when they don �t know that means in their own language? You have the right idea by using games, and the fact that you have had some success in that seems to prove it. I had a difficult student that could grasp conjugations in English so, I used to do the "famous person 20 questions" game. I would write down names of about 30 famous people with a small amount of information (job, nationality) on cards. And then ask her simple question to practice short form responses ("Is he a man"? "Yes, he is." "Is he from Europe?" "No, he isn �t." etc.) And after I got her saying "yes, he is/no he isn �t" correctly, I would reverse, getting her to ask me questions so that she got to practice "is he ...?" I would repeat that until she could do it asleep and then change it to first and second person singular by telling her that she was the person on the card and then I was so that she could practice "Yes, I am/no, I �m not". "Yes you are/ no you �re not" etc. I even did nations, pop groups and football teams to practice the plural. Slowly but surely she got it. I used the same thing for the past (famous dead people) and similar games for practising verbs in the present tense (What �s my job? 20 questions).

It �s going to take a long time but you won �t get anywhere using grammar with him.

One thing to remember though, and it �s very important- it �s not your fault!

There are lots of students like this in every school and the fact that you are taking time out to help him says a lot about your work ethic.

Keep up the good work and best of luck!