Читать книгу Start & Run an ESL Teaching Business - T. Nicole Pankratz - Bodner - Страница 37

If your primary market is young international students who are enrolled in elementary or secondary school for a year or more, you could specialize in homework help. Often students have trouble keeping up with their classmates in subjects that involve a great deal of reading and writing. You could help them improve their writing by editing their school work and discussing the changes you made.

An effective way to do this is to have them send you their written work via email. You can then use the triple-copy method of editing. First, you turn the submission into a Word document (if it is not already a Word document). Then, after copying and pasting the submission directly below the original, you use the ‘track changes’ option in Word to highlight your edits. Lastly, you copy and paste the edited version below the original and then remove the highlights, leaving a clean copy of the revised version. The triple-copy method of editing allows you to show the student what kind of changes were necessary to perfect the essay. It also gives the student a benchmark for future essays. That is, the student can aim to have fewer edits on future submissions.

Another method of tutoring young students is to offer lessons that enhance their overseas school experiences. One way to do this is to create a project-based program for each student, based on their individual interests. For example, if a student is particularly interested in Harry Potter books or movies, you could work together on writing a fantasy story. You could devote one lesson to talking about characters and mapping out a storyboard that highlights the main actions of each chapter. Subsequent lessons could be devoted to writing out one chapter at a time until the story is complete. With a lower-level student, you may have to be more hands-on with regard to both story development and the writing itself. By contrast, when working with a higher-functioning student, your role may be more about editing chapters that the student writes for homework.

Below is a list of some of the other reading and writing projects I have worked on with young international students enrolled in the public school system:

• A five-part detective story about a missing kitten

• A board game based on questions about famous people and places

• A mini-magazine that featured articles about winter activities, recipes, a winter word search, and a Christmas crossword puzzle

• A radio play about forest animals who save a river from factory pollution

• A comic book featuring a teenaged girl who saves her school from bullies

One of the best things about using a project-based program is that the students always have something palpable to show for their hard work. They can even bring the finished products back to their home countries to show their parents, teachers, and friends.