Learning One-to-One by Ingrid Wisniewska

(Book Review)

Started: April 6, 2020
Finished: May 5, 2020

Background
Published as part of the Cambridge Handbook for Language Teachers series (series editor Scott Thornbury) in 2010.

Why I Read This Book
5 years ago, this book was on the discard pile in my school's library.  I picked it up to save it from the trash.  I was thinking at the time it might be useful for the tutoring I was giving to my Vietnamese girlfriend (now wife), but our regular studying session petered out, and this book sat on my shelf unread.
But then, with the school shut downs in Vietnam - earlier this year, I ended up picking up a private student online.  (A friend of my wife, who I tutored online via zoom.)
It had been years since I had had a regular private student (going all the way back to my days in Japan), and back in those days, my approach was very haphazard.  I would either just try a free conversation, and hope it was productive.  Or I would grab a page from a textbook, and hope it was interesting.
But now that I'm older and more invested in myself as a professional teacher, time to try to take a more systematic approach to teaching private students.  So I decided to read this book.

The Review
A very slim book--only 200 pages.
It's divided equally into 2 parts (exactly close to exactly 100 pages for part 1, and 100 pages for part 2).
Part 1 is the theory and principles for teaching one-to-one lessons.  Part 2 is a compilation of suggested activities that you can do with a one-to-one student.

Part 1 contains a lot of basic common sense advice about how to structure lessons with a one-to-one student.  Like a lot of common sense advice, it's obvious in retrospect.  For example, always have a plan for the lesson, ask the student for feedback regularly, agree on the ground rules ahead of time, etc.  While I was reading it, I kept thinking to myself, "This isn't new information.  This is just obvious."  But then I realized that I hadn't actually been doing a lot of this common sense stuff, and that it was good to be reminded of it.  It seemed obvious after I had read it, but it wasn't stuff I was doing regularly.

Perhaps my most important take-away from this book is that the teacher needs to plan a syllabus for a one-to-one student in much the same way that you would have a syllabus for a class.  Again, this seems obvious in retrospect, but I have to admit I've never actually done the work of designing a syllabus for my one-to-one students.
I think this is partly because I've never had to design a syllabus before at all.  (Excluding Delta Module 3, but that doesn't count because it was just an academic exercise.)  I've always worked at schools where the syllabus was pre-designed.  I suspect this is true for most teachers.

Chapter 3 of this book covers the basics of syllabus design "Needs Analysis, course design and lesson planning".  It's good practice advice as far as it goes, but it's only 30 pages--possibly not sufficient for a teacher to feel confident in designing their own curriculum.  I recommend this book be supplemented by a book on course design.  I recommend Designing Language Courses: A Guide for Teachers by Kathleen Graves.  (In fact I feel that the real value I got from Ingrid Wisniewska's book was simply reminding me to use what I had learned from Kathleen Graves book in a one-to-one context).

I was initially worried that much of this book wouldn't apply to me because I was teaching one-to-one via zoom, but actually this book has anticipated that a lot of one-to-one teaching these days is over computer, and it talks a lot about how to apply the principles to distance learning.
I was also worried parts of the book that talked about technology would be dated (this book was published in 2010), but it seems to have held up pretty well.  It talks about a lot of things that are still current in 2020 like using google docs to edit a document together with your student.

What has not aged very well, however, is all the talk of learning styles.
To be fair, this is mostly a result of how quickly the group-think in the field has changed, and not the fault of the author Ingrid Wisniewska.  In 2010, everyone in ELT (English Language Teaching) accepted learning styles.  In 2020, most people in ELT view it as an outdated pseudo-science.  (See HERE and HERE for more background on the backlash against learning styles.)
Still, even given the fact that this stuff was more accepted back in 2010 than it is now, Ingrid Wisniewska seems to have gone a bit off the deep end on some of this.  For example, on page 24:

"Another way to observe learning styles is through insights offered by Neuro-Linguistic Programming. One example is to interpret your student's learning style by observing their eye movements.  Looking upwards and to the right, for example, is said to indicate use of visual imagination; upwards and to the left is said to indicate imaginative recall." 

[Sidenote: It's amazing how much the field has changed in just 10 years, isn't it?  10 years ago this kind of talk was perfectly acceptable.  And this book was published by Cambridge University Press and edited by Scott Thornbury, so this is right in the mainstream of the field.  Now most people don't even want to hear the words "learning styles".]
Anyway, for better or for worse, references to learning styles and Neuro-Linguistic Programming pop up all throughout the book.  To be fair, not all of it is completely crazy.  For example, on page 22:

"Every learner brings with them a history of successful (and unsuccessful) learning.  They will be used to certain methods of learning and teaching and therefore deal with them well, but will find other methods difficult or unfamiliar."

...and that much is fair enough, I thought.

Chapter 2 breaks down the various roles that the teacher will have in a one-to-one lesson.  Conversation Partner, Observer and Listener, Feedback Provider, Mentor and Guide, and Learner.  The book then describes what is expected of the teacher for each role.  It's mostly useful advice, but I was slightly nervous about the advice for "Mentor and Guide" section, which contain sentences like: 

"As a mentor, you can also help your student develop independent learning skills by encouraging them to find says to study outside of class" (p.32)

I often worry that independent study for second language learning is a separate field of expertise.  Many English Language Teachers are monolingual speakers who have some training in classroom management techniques, but are not experts in second language acquisition.  It could be dangerous to push them into the role of language study expert, even though in reality many students expect it, and many teachers readily assume this role.
But that caveat aside, I thought that the section on teaching roles was well done and useful information.
Chapter 4 was on selecting and adapting material, and it gave some good ideas about how simple everyday textbook exercises on grammar can be easily adapted and made more interactive with a few simple adjustments.  I found this part very useful.

And then onto part 2, which is just a long compilation of suggested activities.
Part 2 is divided into 5 chapters, which corresponds to the 5 teacher roles that were identified in chapter 2 of part 1: Conversation Partner, Observer and Listener, Feedback Provider, Mentor and Guide, and Learner.  So, for example, one chapter on all the activities that can be used for conversation partner, one chapter on all the activities for Observer and listener, etc.

Part 2 is no doubt what many readers of this book came for in the first place--some practical ideas and activities that they can use as a life-raft to get through the lesson.
It is, however, not very interesting to read through from beginning to end, as I did.
To be fair, it's not meant to be read through from beginning to end.  It's meant to be skimmed through, or used as a resource.  (This is-  a - constant - problem I have when I'm trying to read for professional development.  I always try to read a book from cover-to-cover before I review it on this blog.  But many of the books on ELT are meant to be used as resources, not reading material.  And that's definitely the case here with Part 2 of this book.)
The other problem is that unfortunately it's very difficult to come up with a large list of activities that are successful in any context (as Ingrid Wisniewska acknowledges), so of the 60 or so activities listed, only a handful will be actually applicable to any given situation.
I was constantly reading through the activities and thinking, "No, that one's too advanced for my student.  No, that one won't work with distance learning.  No, that one won't work in my student's culture.  Ah, here's one that may be good."
The individual reasons for accepting or rejecting activities will be different from teacher to teacher, but I'm guessing most teachers will end up having a similar ratio to me.  Of these 60 or so activities, only about a quarter will be actually usable with their student.  It almost makes me wonder if the space could have been better used to talk more about general theory. 
Also, as interesting as some of these ideas are, a lot of them seem to be a bit random.  (e.g.--here's an interesting activity on writing a business letter.)  A teacher who was over-reliant on the activities in Part 2 would have a very random and scattered curriculum--which would seem to undercut the advice in part 1 about how the syllabus needs to be organized and responsive to the individual needs of the student.
All that being said, I did get some useful activities out of Part 2, and I did use a couple of them with my student successfully.  So it would be an exaggeration to say I got nothing out of it.

Video Review (Playlist HERE)
Video review HERE and embedded below:



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