I started out teaching English when I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school. With high VCE scores in English and English Literature (and a 99% score for History - still don't know how I pulled that one off), I found it easy to find tutoring gigs with high school students who needed help with their essay writing skills. It was all 1-1 (one-on-one or one-to-one or whatever it's called now), and I really enjoyed it. Later I went on to tutor (again on a 1-1 basis) ESL students from university and business settings, and even tutored a businessman in Swedish.
Once I got into TEFL as a serious occupation, it was pretty much all groups. Again, I really enjoyed it. However, I was sometimes asked to help out kids 1-1 in special circumstances - mostly returnee students who wanted specialised instruction or (in one case) my school owner's daughter. This wasn't as enjoyable. Something was telling me this just wasn't right (or rather, I wasn't right for it).
After years of teaching English to groups, the Korean government finally changed some of its pretty bizarre discriminatory laws regarding spousal working rights, and foreign husbands of Korean nationals were finally allowed to run their own tutoring businesses (prior to this, only foreign wives of Korean men were legally allowed to do this, as they qualified for residence visas when foreign husbands did not). The Korean EFL context has a thriving private tutoring industry going, and I was happy to dip into it to try and earn some valuable extra income to help support a growing family. I also had some vague idea that I would be free and able to provide better-quality instruction given the chance to cater to only one student at a time.
Finally legally entitled to do so, I left the institute I was employed at and started private tutoring. It was definitely lucrative, and being somewhat "renowned" locally as a TOEFL specialist and Pearson Longman author, there was no shortage of willing students (or should I say parents?).
It was also definitely NOT my cup of tea. I still enjoyed certain teaching aspects of it (namely the chance to give one child all of my attention and time), but there was always a voice in the back of my head whispering "this isn't the way it should be - this kid should be interacting with other kids, not me." The few chances to teach adults 1-1 felt much more comfortable, but generally speaking, this tutoring thing wasn't sitting all that well with me.
Within four months I packed up shop and fled to a university job. In front of classes with up to 40 students, I felt much more at ease again. I could facilitate and get the learners working with each other. I was a guide, not the focus. There were still many chances for 1-1 work and discussion with students, but it was much nicer being shared around rather than being the whole focus of an 11-year-old's attention for a full 50 minutes.
I thought perhaps the course of my teaching experience and personal beliefs about language learning (interactivity and communication among peers) had made me much more of a "groups" teacher, but - and this is interesting - I had no such feelings of uneasiness when teaching students 1-1 online. In fact, with online teaching, I much preferred the 1-1 dynamic over groups.
Now back in Australia, I'm looking into ways to do voluntary ESL tutoring and mentoring for adult immigrants. Whether it is groups-based or 1-1 doesn't really concern me - they are both appealing prospects.
I still have a lot of friends in EFL contexts who do a lot of 1-1 tutoring and are really good at it (and make some pretty darned good money out of it, too!). For me personally, the memory makes me shudder with discomfort. Give me groups any day - even really big ones - unless it's online teaching, where I prefer the 1-1 dynamic.
So, using my example, it might be fair to say that teaching groups versus teaching 1-1 is not such a simple distinction to make. It obviously depends a bit on a range of other factors...
What about you? Do you have any particular preferences or experiences you'd like to share when it comes to group-based versus 1-1 teaching? What are the factors that influence your preferences?
:-)
