What to teach for guitar lessons?

Dave!

Hey folks,

I'm toying with the idea of giving guitar lessons next year while I'm in college... I'd do it privately of course (as opposed to with a school/shop), in people's/my own house.

I'm just wondering what people consider to be the important things to teach a beginner.

I've been playing for 6-7 years, I'm not amazing or anything (not a jazz guitarist!), but then I don't really have to be if people are just interested in learning Oasis songs, as I was taught when I was starting out

In my experience, most teachers start out by just learning some basic songs with simple chords, to get people into it, strengthen fingers and calouses, get them used to the shapes, etc.

They'd have to learn the string names of course, and I think knowing the notes and where they are positioned on the fretboard is important.

It would probably take 2 or 3 weeks for the student to become competent at basic chords and being able to change between them smoothly, so I would devote alot of time to that initially, learning their own choice of songs.

I was thinking then of moving on to basic riffs and the likes, so that they get used to plucking 1 string at a time and moving their fingers around the fret board.

But when would you introduce things like theory? I suppose the practical "hands on" stuff is important for if you just want to play songs and the likes. But I'd also consider theory to be quite important and helpful for knowing how to finger chords and so on. I'm trying to think how to teach the theory stuff, cos I remember finding it quite difficult to learn and having to read about it for hours Plus alot of people will find it boring to learn scales. I suppose you could make it interesting by introducing the idea of soloing with them.

Basically just looking for tips from teachers, particularly those who teach beginners.

Cheers