The other day my DOS asked me, how do you teach advanced students?
I answered as honestly as I could. Then I started musing about it, and hopefully other colleagues will contribute to the topic here, too. 

First, I said to my DOS, go for pleasure, because most advanced students are passionate about English, finding real joy in their own understanding and power of communication, not to mention their feelings of gratification when they help colleagues with lesser language knowledge. They are “basking” in their success; the struggle of learning irregular verbs and infinitives and gerunds is behind them.

Naturally, advanced students come with a few gaps, some of which they stress over. Moreover, the vastness of the English language precludes their having learned every possible vocabulary word.

These two conditions misled me earlier, causing me to react with “bitty” lessons aimed at plugging the gaps in my advanced students’ knowledge, the result being a kind of cat-and-mouse lesson plan. “Do you know this word? You do? Oh, and how about this one? No? AHA!”

Time to think a lot about Joy and Pleasure. I think it is best with advanced students to bring in dense content related to some passion of theirs, whether profession-related or otherwise. It should be used as a springboard. On one hand, may be interesting idioms, expressions or terms. Likewise, a text may espouse views opposed to the students’ own. Or the student may debunk to his/her heart’s delight.  Pronunciation, especially intonation can well deserve attention at this level, since it may have been neglected earlier in the rush to master practical English .

Naturally the Internet and Web 2.0 based resources must play a role in lessons for advanced students. Likewise the majority of materials, if not all of them, will be authentic and not from course books.

Kindly don’t misunderstand; an advanced lesson must have its parts and phases. However, they should all contribute in some way to creating a pleasurable experience for the student.

Looking forward to other ideas on this topic.

I previously wrote a few musings about time management for teachers using ICT, online teaching, etc.

As Elek has pointed out, there is no ideal solution. I believe a lot of people use the style he mentioned, staying online most of the day and communicating often. It dovetails with the  comment about “striking while the iron is hot”, i.e. sending email, blog post, etc. as soon as the lesson is over.

I do also find it very effective to write about a lesson, whether to students or just in my own notes, as soon as the lesson is finished.

If one teaches onsite as I do, traveling from company to company during the day, it means there is little chance to go online between lessons. Therefore, I am experimenting with several different formats. I block out an afternoon for blogging, wiki maintenance, and email with students (the drawbacks of this have been pointed out!)  I could spend a few minutes on this every evening – the minutes of course can become hours. Or I could earmark a part of my weekend for such.

Now I have just hunted around for ideas from blogging teachers and found one person who firstly mentioned it is not necessary to check/write emails repeatedly during the day. Twice a day is plenty, says he. I think he may have a point; at least, when it comes to time management, checking email frequently is a really bad way to interrupt yourself and subvert a good plan. Secondly, this blogger mentions sorting tasks according to whether you need to be online to do them or not. If you have to write for example, you don’t necessarily have to be online to do it.

Finally, I think Nigel Marsh’s concepts of Work-Life Balance may apply here. He says we can be much happier if we don’t let our work rule us. I think that’s true here, too. Maybe I’ll approach this from the other side: which of my groups/individual students would benefit most from having their own blog/wiki, and who can I just email from time to time? I may even shut down a few superfluous things.