 I was trying to adjust this, this morning I ended up with one, Richard Carroll was not normal or not natural. One-to-one teaching is not natural when you think about it. You have a conversation for up to six hours, seven hours, with a total stranger and you're expected to talk. You're expected to come in and just dictate a conversation, make it flow, everything will be fine. The only stranger before I did this that I talked to for four hours was someone on a plane coming back from the Canaries with four or five genotypes. On a Monday morning coming in, someone you haven't met before, it's a different ballgame. My first experience of one-to-one was in Berlitz, it was my first job a couple years ago in Dublin. I've been working there for about a month with classes and then the boss, this isn't in film, is it? Has it been filmed? Frank comes into the story a couple of times. There's a very good documentary about the Eagles, the band, not particularly a fan of the Eagles but the documentary is very good. At one point Joe Warch joins and one of the other members of the band said I was delighted when Joe joined. He's an interesting bunch of guys. That was Frank, kind of eccentric, very bright, very good teacher, very good DOS. But he said to me after a month would you like to try one-to-one? I said yeah sure. Okay we have this Russian lady, you'll have her for two weeks, her husband is here already. We suspect he's an oligarch, he's very, very wealthy, he's very difficult, he studies in the morning or he's been told in the morning, you'll have this moment in the afternoon. So she was due to start at two o'clock, where it is a three or four story building, it was up in the very top rooms, kind of a windy staircase up into the attic, I'm waiting there. Two o'clock, nothing, five past two, no sign of her, ten past two, nothing. Just a bit to investigate when I heard a clumping sound coming up the stairs. And the room's quite small, I'm sitting at the back, the door's kicked open, kicked open. And I saw this big long boot, leather boot. Three or four brown Thomas bags, or don't, important. There's a pause, then another couple of brown Thomas bags. And she stuck her head around, very, very beautiful, long dark hair and I was just about to introduce myself and she says can I get coffee? And I said yeah, there's a kitchen next door, I go for it. I'm not to say what she says. I'm going into the kitchen and I'm not going to say she's just great. A little bit of background to that, I had been to the dental hospital that day. My front tooth had fallen actually, my crap. I was in a bit of pain, I wasn't happy. After about ten minutes of a couple of phone calls she comes back in. I introduce myself, she sits down somewhat reluctantly in front of me. I'm Richard, I'm Julia, people call me Julia. And I start to speak, I start to say well that's, you know, I've asked a few questions, we get to know each other. And she puts her hand up and says I don't want to be here. My husband wants me to be here. I don't want to be here, I don't think I need any lessons. And then something in my head just went snap. Like a little cheap and long, I can still hear the noise. I said do you know what needs to do I close my book, put the pen into my bag and stuff. So I think I'm going to go for a pint. So that's it, career over, job over, everything over. And then she said what's a pint? I said it's a unit of measurement, normally beer, but I think it might be wine. She said I like wine. I said do you want to come? And this was just for me to get out of the room. Yes, 15 minutes later in the pub down the road, getting on like a house and forth. Absolutely fine, no problem whatsoever, it was all of English understanding. Did I handle it well? Of course not, it was very... I was very lucky. She was really, really bright, very intelligent, very well read, wanted to talk about literature but wasn't quite sure I had to do it. She knew all about Russian literature, she wanted to find out more about Irish literature and English literature and so on. And various other interests that she had. She was a joy. Two weeks I didn't need to plan a thing. I would just turn up and we'd start to talk. She said to each other, it was very, very easy. After the two weeks Frank said to me, how was that? Oh, this is great, Frank, it was fantastic. I love one to one. I'm very good at it. She talked the whole time that she learned a lot, she was very happy. He said would you do another one? In a couple of weeks? Yeah, sure, okay. So he said this guy's from Brazil, he's Japanese parents. He's here to learn English. Okay, that's fine. He's waiting for me the week later. I go into Frank's office just before meeting this guy for the first time. I said Frank, what's his level? He doesn't have a level. But Frank was joking, he wasn't. I went and said how are you? And the guy just looked at me. He had nothing. He had absolutely nothing. I loved to buy weather, had to go here, had nothing whatsoever. So I panicked for a bit. But then of course I had a blank sheet. It was very, very easy. I used a picture dictionary. We talked about how to buy a cup of tea, how to get a bus ticket. After a while I had him making phone calls, ordering stuff. And it was nice to see him progress because it was just from, literally from the ground. And when he got something, he was a nice kid, he was about 22. He tried very hard. And when something went into his head, he'd go, oh, fantastic. Eventually I got into negotiation. He was coming up to Curtis. I said, I want to buy a diary from my father. We're going to get the best price in this shop. And he actually asked for it. And what they said to him, I had no idea. I was there beside, pretending not to know. But he came out. And he got a couple of euro off this 15 euro diary. Very easy. No planet. I didn't have to do anything. I just had to think about something that might be useful for him. Absolutely easy. A couple of others that followed were fairly easy as well. There was an Italian guy from... Sorry, Italian guy from Italy. Luigi. He was just setting up a tourist business. So that was his entire area. He was all about tourism. He wanted hotels, restaurants, that kind of thing. Nice and easy. There was another Italian guy from Google. Anyone ever told him Google? To the Google building. Very strange place. Very strange place. They have sort of their own language. It was difficult as well because I was going into his environment rather than him going to me, which was a point where to mention it. But he was actually a very, very Italian. Very stressed. Everything was a great stress. And I went in with a plan but he was not interested in the plan whatsoever. He wanted his emails to be corrected. So I started doing that. And all the emails said... He was quite high up and he had to address some English customer. And he said, I'm very unhappy to tell you that the delivery date will now be March instead of February. And I said, what are you saying? You're happy to tell him. I mean, you're giving him bad news. He said, well, initially, that's what we say. And are you initially not? No, I'm not. And he said, I've been doing that wrong the whole time. Yeah. Then he just got me to do his emails. Every time I have them, that's pretty much what I did. I collected what he did with them. They have a strange expression as well to the organizing and Google. They say, they'll reach out to you. I said that to me after the first class. I'll reach out to you next week. He said, like, the carpenter saw something. I'm very lonely here. Nobody say contact. Contact somebody. That was just their language. We had a kind of a few discussions about that. Again, nice and easy. It was no problem. It was an hour and a half, not too long. The agenda had been set. And I came away looking. That's fantastic. You do a good job. They've learned a bit. Maybe an expression they weren't sure of, or a word they had misheard. Maybe a grammar they had problems with. And it's fixed. And you're getting out of them. That's the thing, you're getting out of them. It's an unnatural thing, one-to-one. But if you get out of them, it's easy. That doesn't happen all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes, that's the way I might be feeling going into a class. Particularly you weren't... There was this business side. It was for a week. I kind of suppressed most of the memory of it. I won't say where it was from. My name is Fritz. And he was... He was in charge of a big part of a bigger company. And he knew it all. He absolutely knew it all. So I went in, thinking we'd have food all day with him. Bit of social and towards your hobbies, what your interests. And he sort of reluctantly answered the questions. Then at lunchtime, he went off and made a complaint. He said, this is trivial, the class is trivial. I mean, I asked him what movie I like, or what play I saw recently, or what I like to watch on TV, or by message, or whatever. Frank said, he just wants grammar. And that's what he got off. From that afternoon for the next five days, he got grammar. He got exercises. He got exam papers. You name it, he got it. Writing, listening, everything. Quite a tough day. But in terms of planning, not that bad. I didn't have to worry about establishing a relationship with him. If you establish a relationship with your one-to-one, it makes it easy. It makes it so much easier. But it's unnatural. And it's difficult. But one extreme to the other, it's handable. With this guy, it was back to the self of age. Remember that? We planned three minutes on this, two minutes on that. Everything was organized down to the two. It wasn't easy. It wasn't flowing. But I survived it somehow. The difficulty is with the ones in between, people in between, where you have them for a certain amount of time, and it's not that you're not getting along with them, but like any conversation you would have with someone, you don't know very well. There are purple patches and there are patches when it gets a little bit dull. So the main thing I found is just to find out as much as you can about them. So you've got something to talk about. Obviously a large part of the class will be dedicated to improving what they need to improve. And that's fine. That's just like an ordinary lesson. But it's the bits in between. You're there for a long time. You can't have a gap. And Peter talked about silence being important. It is important, but with just the one person in a room, it's very difficult unless they're doing something specific. So rather than when you're trying to find out about them, rather than trying to get it all in the one go, that's the temptation I felt ready to. I'd meet them for the first time, and they're like, what do you like, all of that. People don't like it after a while. They don't like to be quizzed so much. What they may regard as personal stuff. There's a cultural element to that as well. So I would do a little for that day. So that if we're gone for a coffee or in between classes, I have something that I know they're interested in. But I'm not being exhausted about it. Little bits. What I tend to do as well is write all the time. I made that mistake at the beginning of just when something occurred to me, I would make, I would write it down. And it's sort of distracting. I didn't realize how distracting it is for another person. In a class you don't know just, but it was just you and somebody else. They feel that they made a mistake. And in fact, we had a girl here, a young learner, I talked about it a few hours later, if anyone had done. I started to do this and she said, she's really good speaker, she says, I feel really uncomfortable when you're writing down my mistakes. Now, if I started doing it from the top, just in nonchalantly doing, writing things down, things I might need to check, or maybe it's a mistake that they made. On that note as well, when do you correct them? When do you correct them? It depends. It really depends. If they're making a huge error to begin with, I'd nail that. But if they're trying to, if they're not terribly comfortable speaking, and they're trying to explain some news items or something like that, and they make a few mistakes, I leave it. Leave it till after, maybe even till the end of the day, but you have to keep note. And then they like that, that kind of trust thing that you've been listening to me, that's, you've corrected me, that's fine. I'm teaching at Darwa, so you can get a doctor here, for our IELTS, for our lower, really broad girl. But she kept saying, besides of this, it was her favorite expression. I think she has a donor, a pillow or something like that. I'm saved. So I have to keep saying, no, you can't say that. Why not? Because it doesn't mean anything. That's what you can say. Where was she from? She's Chinese, but from Malaysia. But, yeah, there could be something obvious. Her partner, who was also a doctor, his issue was pronunciation. And then he had to do the IELTS, so I have to kind of keep making him repeat the thing, which is a bit dull, but you just have to do it sometimes. As long as they know why you're doing it, and that you're listening. Now that's the other thing. What happens when you make a mistake, when you make plenty of mistakes? Or if they ask you a difficult question, you know you've got a horrible question, when should I use the future perfect attendance? There's nowhere to hide. In a class, you can say something else you've got to write. I developed the technique. I think I just panicked one bit. It might have been, I don't remember who it was, but someone asked me a difficult question. I knew the answer, but it wasn't on the top of my head. So it happened to be at the door, and the question was just right. And I said, hi Anna, I think that's Frank. Just give me a second. I was actually pretending to talk. Yeah, no problem. Okay. I have to go back to class. Oh, what's the question? Yes, yes. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Have a great day, Have a great day. Always have the internet on your phone. Don't rely on the wifi if that's the way visto by the building. Have your own supply. The other thing is, and this sentence is very obvious, that's what I heard one day, I just drifted away at the ferry. working on a dinner or anything like that and I realized this person had asked me a question and I'd absolutely no idea and I think I said something like we're doing that tomorrow okay, no problem but it can be quite difficult in terms of helping you do that, in Dublin it was easy because I could take people out if they didn't want to go out, I'd talk to them about anything we're going to go to the museum, we're going to go to this town and the other walking around the room, just keeping yourself alert, the laptop is great helming for time bedrooms that are lost right? okay, resources, YouTube and my favorite BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is fantastic, the amount of surprise looks like everyone said you can type in anything on the iPlayer, it's more for TV, it works on the radio but any topic in the world, you can set it for homework it's something that they're interested in, if it's their business or their hobby listen to that, now you have to listen to it as well, listen to the thing and you come in the next day and it's set up just to finish on this example, the writer rolled down, he wrote in his garden but before he finished he would have the item for the next day his next idea, so he came in and I found that quite useful as well in the morning we're doing this and then do it and then anything you have to check, make sure that you've checked and so on about the trustee okay, thank you