professeur particulier, je donne des cours d'anglais aux enfants et aux adultes

My usual lesson begins with ostensive definitions. I may show a student something as obvious as colors. The colored flashcards are accompanied by matching statements, "This is red, blue, green, yellow..." After the student have mastered these, an inversion is introduced: we change the order of words and intonation to make a question, "Is this yellow?" At first all questions are genuine. They perfectly match colors, "Yes, this is yellow." Later, the genuine questions become more rare. I intentionally mismatch the flashcard color and the the color in the question, introducing a longer, negative answer, "No, this is not yellow. This is blue." Next, I show the student a few simple objects; for example, pens, pencils and markers.The same game of ostensive definitions follows. At this point, I can add the previously acquired vocabulary. Only now, I use colors as adjectives, "This is a yellow pen." I advance to those confusing rhetorical questions, eventually mismatching the colors and objects, "Is this a blue marker?" "No, this is a red pencil." This is an opportunity to add more objects and allow the student to ask questions, s/he hopefully has mastered by now. Flash cards can also introduce persons, whose names are subsequently mismatched. The same happens to the way the persons relate to each other: there we can have both family and subordinate/superordinate, i.e. work relations: "No, John is not Pam's brother, John is Pam's father, etc." We add friends, co-workers, possessions, etc. (Possessive Case is not explained but extensively practiced.) The same method is used to show parts of the body, parts of the house, both exterior and interior, objects in the room and prepositions. New adjectives usually accompany new nouns. Similarly, new verbs are introduced with flash cards showing simple and more complex actions: walking, talking, playing soccer, watching TV, horse-riding, etc. Adverbs follow the verbs. The same method is useful for teaching more complex grammar, such as Conditional Mood. A dozen of iconic images assembled on a single sheet of paper show different household chores. Negotiation process follows, "Will you do the dishes, if I water the flowers?" The answer is always negative, then a new compromise is suggested, "No, but I will cook dinner, if you change the cat litter." As you can see, using this method, we can easily advance all the way to the 3rd Conditional.