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Lesson planning is an essential part of teaching, providing a stable learning path while granting workable flexibility throughout each single lesson. Teaching foreign languages presents peculiar characteristics that make the planning a tool for achieving contextual aims, depending on the kind of class (individual or group) you deal with. I argue that individual lessons provide a particularly interesting field of analysis, as of their inherent one-to-one challenge (limiting the varieties that group activities allow), while also providing a special realm of learning where both student and teacher have space to grow. The coherent planning of each lesson is a pre-requisite for both language schools and independent individuals, because it provides a “teaching seriousness” that prospective students look for. On top of that, I argue that having a lesson planned always offers a scheme of possibilities balancing language skills, granting a time-structured frame able to be molded in case of need with both student and teacher’s inputs. The mix between aims, procedures and timing of preparing a lesson represents both a faster way to anticipate problems that may arise in all kinds of classes, while it builds a strong organization making the lesson smooth and enjoyable from both parts. When compared to other subjects, the teaching of languages is shown to be sensible to the many variables composing a class: contextual culture; mono or multi-lingual structure; language abilities; personalities; resources and – most of all, I maintain – the size. It is the difference intervening in-between a full class and a single individual learner that completely changes the dynamics of learning, both in terms of limits and perks. If surely the feedback of a class offers a widely open supply of inputs rendering the teacher-student exchange dynamic, I found from personal experience that the individual rapport blossoming from a one-to-one language learning process has specific peculiarities that make it uniquely positive and productive. One-to-one lessons may be scary, for many reasons. They in fact require both a sensitive and up-to- speed approach often putting the teacher on a tightrope: the danger of falling in the void causes the student to seek some other teacher! Furthermore, if not tightly built around student’s needs, individual lessons might result in the student never improving, and the process of learning being repetitive and pointless. The main limit of these kind of lesson is the “lack” of material, or surely lacking when compared to the many group activities that resource books offer. The fun warmers, role plays and all kinds of game that groups can use in both study and activate phases are de facto limited of more stiffly confined to the – already complex – student-teacher relationship. Nevertheless, if handled carefully and with due differences, one-to-one individual lessons can provide a spectacular show of learning and improvements of both student…and teacher. When I started individual lessons, I actually had no idea on how to plan a lesson, and what came naturally to mind was negotiation with the student, especially at the beginning. Once defined the aims and goals the student intends for her/himself, the language points to be decided were a consequential part of “knowing” the person in front of me. The kind of professional relation that is built through individual lesson profits from a spectrum of interests: on the one hand there is me – the teacher – wanting to provide the best “service” while helping the person with every mean to make the journey easier. On the hand there is a learner who, once overcome the hierarchical fear of confrontation typical of group classes, studies/understands/improves/fails/achieves in front of a “collaborator”, with whom enjoying the ride. In conclusion, the learning I got from this online course has strongly put in my head both the desire of experimenting the “group class dynamics”, while it also gave light to the magical bond that I have been establishing with my students over the last year. Thanks to this course, I have understood the challenges more clearly and appreciated the perks of working and planning one-to-one lessons.
