I’m tutoring an 11-year-old girl every week at a cram school.
She is *incredibly* shy, never speaks above a whisper, and never makes eye contact with me. She does all of her homework in a slapdash manner, and obviously has no interest in learning English. When I set tasks for her, she sits and doodles or just stares into space. When I try to jazz things up with games or activities she takes so long to grasp the rules that it takes all the fun out of it.
It’s almost as if she’s half-asleep all the time.
The other day her frustrated mother came to the school and asked me to push the girl through Eiken5.
I’m trying my best, but it’s not easy! I have to admit that I’m getting really frustrated too … and frankly, I’m having trouble hiding it.
Honestly speaking, I think it would be best to fire her as a client, but that’s not possible because her older sister who attends the same school is a fantastically popular rockstar student (which may be feeding into the mother’s frustration with the younger daughter).
How can I motivate this girl? Please give me any advice you can, without judgment, because I’m at my wits’ end here!
18 comments
After teaching for a couple of years, I think I found out that you can only do so much for your students. Some students want to learn and others are there because their parents put them there. The lessons do not guarantee that students will learn; this is a joint effort between you and the student. Try a couple of strategies, talk to her parents and to the managers in your school. Your school should have your back on this.
For me in this situation, it helps that her mom has a concrete goal for her daughter to pass the eiken. Depending on the amount of time you have and flexibility in your curriculum, you could start with practice tests and then close in on where she is making mistakes. Explain to her how to improve there.
As an English speaker, you provide conversation skills. The test however focused on memorization of grammar, vocabulary and reading skills. I would keep my language very simple to try and make sure she understands what you say.
I’ve had a couple of lost cause students before. These are students who are in my class even though they are not interested in being there, and parents and management that does not help. In those situations, I switch to conversation skills and teach test taking skills in passing so at least they learn something. As long as they are not disruptive, I can empathize with them. They probably have some interesting stories, and I would much rather make a friend than be upset by the situation.
Sorry for the long post. Good luck!
Poor kid! Reminds me of an autistic student I taught in the states. (And no, I am not making any assumptions here, but the advice I’ll share is what I’ve found works with students like this.) Patience is key. If she’s not on task, your first step is to make sure she understands what she is supposed to be doing. Model things with her, step by step. Patiently and kindly.
What you’ve described in terms of behavior is a student who doesn’t know what she should be doing. You’re obviously losing patience with her and she’s picking up on that. She’s not asking you for help because she’s probably lost trust in you as a teacher. So slow down, be patient, and complete tasks at her pace.
With any luck, she’ll slowly start to gain confidence not just in you but also in her own English ability.
But seriously, be patient and kind. And don’t compare her to her sister.
Eurgh, i hate it when parents push their kids to do something they don’t like. There could be so many factors as to why she is really quiet. For example she could feel pressurized by her more popular older sister.
If she’s always doodling, maybe have an activity that involves doodling?
To be frank there is nothing that you can do! You said it yourself that you are doing your best!
She doesn’t want to learn English – understandable. Find something she DOES like and make the lessons about that, but in English. It’s not really easy and most cram schools don’t want to bother with this – making totally custom lesson plans for a single student is generally more work and time than is worth it for the pay, but if you genuinely want to help this kid that’s the way to do it.
Even then, it’s not a surefire way. I have unmotivated students who are so overscheduled I struggle to keep them awake half the time. 10 year olds who come to me at 8pm after soccer/tennis and math cram school.
You don’t have to fire her but you need to have a very frank conversation with her mother. It won’t matter how great your lessons are if the student doesn’t want to be there its going to be a waste of her time (and by extension a waste of her mothers money). Can you talk to the school about it and angle it this way?
We ran an afterschool English program in our town before and what we found was maybe 2 out of the 10 kids actually wanted to be there. The rest were shouting, throwing things or just went outside to hang out. They constantly said they were tired and just wanted to go home. So we were basically a babysitting service to keep the kids out of the house longer.
If she likes manga you could incorporate that. Have a list of sentences and then give her 60 seconds to draw a picture based on the sentence(s). Of course first model this and make sure she understands the time limit (she will likely want to keep drawing to make it perfect). Then after drawing have her repeat/read the sentence(s).
Or a bit more challenging is to take any manga (crayon shin chan could be easy), put sticky notes over the text boxes and have her make her own sentences.
Patience and praise is key. Whenever she makes any kind of progress tell her. Especially when she struggled to do something that you might think is insignificant.
It seems like the 11 year old is being forced to go because of her sister and may just have low self esteem because of it.
For all students that act this way I just focus on the other students. The odd one out usually gets the message that I’m not playing around and they need to focus
Explain the rules to the games in Japanese so that she can understand them. If you don’t speak Japanese well enough, either use online translation, e.g., DeepL, or get someone to translate them for you.
Have a frank talk with the mother. You cannot force a child to learn. The mother should not be setting the goals – the child and you should work together on that. Asking her to help you in goal-setting, even if she only has very simple goals, gets her involved in her own learning process.
These goals can be ones that help you to teach skills for Eiken. E.g., if she likes manga, read and tell the stories in manga, just like the picture storytelling in eiken.
You’ll need to be very creative here. If you need help or ideas, I hope you can to go to your manager or other senior teacher and brainstorm together.
I just hope you don’t work at one of those eikaiwa where the manager insists every student be taught the same way, no Japanese is allowed to be used, and the students are never, ever told “no”. If you do, quit. You’ll only be held back in developing real teaching skills if you stay.
[Here is a paper](https://ir.lib.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/files/public/3/35487/20141016205330930171/h-gaikokugokenkyu_17_195.pdf) about using manga in the EFL classroom. You could adapt some of the activities from there.
I had an 11 year old girl who was very much like this. Unfortunately, she didn’t change at all in 18 months, no matter what I tried. She’s probably an overworked student with too much pressure put on her.
Honestly, as a kindergarten teacher, you need to find something she is good at. Reading, speaking, listening, and just give her praise for doing it well. Often times it helps students get encouraged and feel like they can do it… Especially with a sibling that is a “rockstar”. She might feel like she’ll never be good enough. Find what she’s good at and build from that.
substract the older sister from the equation atleast get her to go to a different school than her then it will work.
I’d just chill, play some games with her and not be too worried if she chooses not to respond.
If it helps, I had a similar one. She’s now a professional (world class) ice skater. As an 11yo she kept asking for 1-on-1 classes with me and I was like ‘WHYYYYYY?!?!?’ because she never responded to me and seemed to really hate my lessons (didn’t take it personally but was quietly like ‘maybe my lessons suck and you can find a better teacher in town?) Her mum said she really liked my lessons and they were the highlight of her week though (go figure).
Over time she brought in some English scores from school and she was topping her class. I met her ALT and she apparently quoted stuff I’d taught her on a regular basis and was like ‘nah he says this… and he pronounces it this way… that’s correct’ (the teachers were having to back down because she was super diligent to the point where she was correcting them).
I was at that eikaiwa for 5 years. One day she just opened up and started speaking relatively fluent English to me. From then on, our classes were basically free-flowing discussions about her day, where she increasingly got VERY good at English. If you see her on TV these days, she’s 100% fluent.
Side note, I have an 11 year old daughter in Japan (abducted by her mum… blah blah… parental abduction/alienation, feel free to Google it). Long story short, we’re going down the same path (although I speak Japanese with her). For years she’s just said nothing. However, recently things just magically opened up.
Random examples but I dunno what pressures young, Japanese women are subjected to. However, I think they go through a lot and some need to try really hard to gain their confidence…etc (although inside they’ll be quite talented). IMO just be gentle on them, stick to it and hopefully that’s where it’s all heading. If I’m frank, nobody’s gonna keep turning up unless they’re taking stuff in. However, sometimes getting to that next level is a mountain and you’ve just gotta be patient with people.
Long list of *can’t dos*. What *can* she do? Expand on that. Confidence building. She’s not wasting her time if it benefits her somewhere down the line.
It wasn’t clear from your post if this was a private student or one of a group. Does she have to play the games? Can she be given a job to help with the running of them? Card keeper, time keeper, score keeper. All those jobs require different skills and give her chances to use her comprehension, listening or reading skills.
If she is artistic, why not have her help make some simple anchor charts?
When all else fails sometimes a change of teacher can do wonders. Some kids just click with different teachers. Less baggage and history etc..
I would try finding something she is interested in and incorporate that into your lessons with her. She is bored out of her mind and hates coming there. She is probably constantly compared badly to her older sister.
Once she responds a little and seems to try to communicate, then you could strike a bargain with her and let her do what she wants at the end of the lesson, like the last 5 or 10 minutes, she gets to decide what she wants to do.
That’s what I would do anyways.
Just do what you can. Not all kids are rockstars and this girl is living in the shadow of one. If she fails, SHE FAILS. Not you. Do your best to teach her and that’s all you can do…
What does she like? Use japanese if necessary to make it easy.
Then use her likes to create a project-based learning program. Do research on Project Based Learningif you aren’t familiar.
Have her work on a project to tell you what she likes and why.
Have her do a project that involves teaching YOU something regarding what she likes.
All in english, of course. Make it personal. Make it authentically conversational. Motivation is the key, and people are easily motivated when it comes to things they have an interest in.