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As we all know, there are a great number of differences between teaching English to a small group of students or teaching it to a large group, but teaching English one to one is a unique category in itself. Although individual activities have their own purposes when teaching a group of students (regardless of number), there's also the more common option of performing activities and games in pairs or groups. In one to one teaching all these additional options disappear so there is no choice but to expand the amount and originality of the activities for the student to perform on his own. This limitation may seem to indicate that one to one teaching may be more limited but we should take a look at all the other advanges and disadvantages it also presents before jumping to conclusions. Most of the problems of having multiple students in the course disappear if there is only one of them. Notable examples of these problems are students possibly having different levels of English or learning at notably different rates, and shyer or less participatory students falling behing in vocal activities. A teacher, of course, always has ways to get them to participate, but it is one less problem to worry about if the shy student is the only student. Additionally, multiple students having either the same first language or a different one can lead to different problems, as students in the former category will be tempted to use their first language in class and students in the latter will have very different difficulties and problems with English grammar and vocabulary. Some other examples of advantages of one to one teaching include the teacher constantly monitoring his student's progress and always being able to work on the student's weak points without harming the progress of any other students, as well as having it easier to encourage and motivate him; partly because the topics chosen for the lessons can always be the ones that interest his student, and partly because he will more constantly praise him for his efforts. That being said, the greatest benefit of this kind of education would be how well its content and rhythm can be adapted to suit the needs and wants of the student. However, being constantly monitored by the teacher is double-edged weapon and can become mentally exhausting for the student. Said exhaustion would also be lighter if the student had peers with whom to share the teacher's attention and with whom to compete or help each other. Another double-edged weapon is that while a single student also tends to focus more and complete the activities in less time that it would take him in a group class, consuming more content in a shorter time can result in more fatigue and also add to his exhaustion. It is also worth mentioning as a particularity of one to one education that class cancellations are extremely common, since one student being unable to come means the whole class should be rescheduled, but the teacher and his student tend to share phone numbers to anticipate any such occurrence. Sharing numbers also goes to show how good the rapport between teacher and student is in one to one education, as they go one step beyond and become something closer to partners. All in all, both one to one education and group education can be beneficial to the student and certainly none of them should be detrimental to teaching or learning English.
