Renat Berber

If you’ve ever moved from teaching groups to teaching one-to-one, you’ll know it’s not simply the same activity with fewer students. It’s more like moving from conducting an orchestra to playing in a jazz duet. In groups, you have a shared score (a coursebook), the energy of multiple learners and the comfort of collective progress. In one-to-one, the score disappears, the spotlight shines on a single learner and suddenly you’re improvising. There’s also a subtle difference in why students quit. Group learners often leave because they don’t feel they fit the group. One-to-one learners, on the other hand, usually...