Timing

When involving students in conversation, especially for the first time, make sure you provide enough time for them to respond to your questions or comments.

Some topics are more involving than others. You can know what interests your student by asking questions about their hobbies, activities, and free time. When starting with a new student, it is very important to engage him/her in a conversation about something positive: what do they do for fun? what is their favourite food, movie, city? what are their hobbies? what are they dreaming of doing in the future?

When you start with light questions like that you are bringing the student in a confort zone despite all the difficulties the new language creates. They still feel frustrated about not being able to express their point of view in English. However, they are speaking about something that they feel completely confortable with and this makes them more confident to try to express it, even if their sentences are wrong. Speaking about their "fun" things in life makes them braver. In the meantime, you are also demonstrating interest in their lives and in them as personalities. They start to feel important and have the feeling of security that you are there for them and they are important to you.

Once you have established this comfort level, you can start bringing up topics that may be more complicated to express and actually start correcting and revealing their mistakes in English more often. Essential thing to remember is to try not to interrupt them all the time and give them the space and time to say what they need to say first before you start correcting them. Take notes while their speaking so you can revisit a mistake. This will also show them that you are listening carefully to what they are saying and you want to pay attention to their mistakes without missing any. Therefore, leave as much time as they need for them to respond. They will try to translate your question and their answer into their own language and then formulate it in English again before they say it out loud. If you keep pressing them by asking more questions, they will be confused and will not be able to respond properly. Give them time to respond to you. In case they take too long, maybe consider paraphrasing the question to simpler language and clarify what you mean. You may want to draw or represent your question visually. This will help them understand faster and will give them more confidence when responding.