Hi, thanks for visiting my website!
This site is a free resource for English teachers who teach intermediate and advanced students, particularly in private classes. While there is an abundance of material to teach beginners (most likely by following a coursebook), it can be difficult to find enough material to teach more advanced students.
Beginners tend to need more grammar and vocabulary, which can be taught simultaneously to multiple students in a group setting. As the students progress, the focus switches to other skills, especially speaking. For this reason, it is common for students at an intermediate level to request private classes as their speaking time in group classes is severely limited. Unfortunately, most material available to teachers is either focused on group classes or requires a monthly subscription fee.
Coursebooks are certainly useful, but they are primarily designed for group classes and for the most part contain activities that can be done by multiple students at the same time such as vocabulary, grammar, listening, and reading activities. Students who pay for a private teacher expect to spend the time in the class improving their speaking fluency (that’s not to say the other skills are not important, but most of those activities can be done for homework).
After many a night burning the midnight oil frantically trying to put together material for my students to have an interesting and engaging lesson, I finally decided on the structure my classes would take. I wanted the time in the class to be focused on conversation practice, but I also wanted to create activities to boost other skills as well (and let’s not fall into the trap of thinking teaching grammar isn’t important as well).
After finally amassing dozens of lesson plans, I thought why not upload them to my website so other teachers, especially those new to the job, won’t also have to stay up past midnight looking for material for their own students. So here they are at your disposal.
You can use the lesson plans however they suit your needs. Maybe you need material to flesh out a coursebook, or maybe you want to use them to curate your own course supplemented with your own grammar programme.
My advice is to let your students choose the topics – this keeps their classes interesting and helps to avoid topics that they may find sensitive, although be aware that some of the topics may be a bit tough for B1 students so you should use your own judgement on that (B2+ students should be able to talk about any of the topics).
Anyway, I hope you find these lesson plans useful, and hopefully they save you a little time!
