Lots of great advice in the above posts, I'll "me too" pretty much all of it.

One thing I do when instructing is "fly" the plane with the master TX even while I have the trainer switch held over, and the student is flying. I do this for several reasons.

- It keeps me from getting lulled or complaicent with an advanced student. I've seen guys fly for 8min with no trouble, then suddenly loose it, and have the instructor struggle to figure out what is going on and then make the save.
- I can talk the student through what he should be doing to correct by talking about what my own fingers are doing.
- For just flying around, I set my throttle about 1/2, but when I'm teaching landings and take-off, I'm working the throttle as well as the other flight controls while holding the trainer switch, so I can make a quick save if necessary.

Other advice:
Do not allow the student to get "solo-itis", a burning desire to learn to take off and land too quickly. If you fly at a busy field, those are the most dangerious moments, and the student really needs to be able to fly a striaght line that is roughly on a desired heading before they can do either of these things.

I totally agree that going up with an experienced pilot on the buddy box so you can practice saves is a really good idea. Also pratice talking them out of the problem at the same time. Silly but it helps. (I've done this kind of thing with guys here who want to become instructors).

Using an experienced pilot on the buddy box, learn how to talk someone in to trim changes, or how to reach over and mess with trims.

Part of trimming, always make totally sure the student's box is trimmed hands-off. You can quickly build some bad habbits in your student if the plane is a little out of trim.

New students often think they have to be have an iron-fist control over the plane. I often do the "look, no hands" trick with the student's plane. I trim the plane with a little up elevator, roll in to a gentil bank, make sure the plane is turning in a stable hands-off (trim in some rudder if the plane rolls out too much). Then I wave my hands around. I then get the student to get the plane straight and level and let go of the box so they can watch the airplane fly for a while with out any control imputs. This often hels relax the student when they realize that "doing nothing" is often the right thing to do and is not going to cause an immedate crash.

Like Minn said, some students respond to differnet approaches, so don't be afraid to try differnt things with different people. That's not just the "reversed controls problem", but in the way you talk to the student as well. I've had students that needed an almost "Drill Sargent" approach, while others needed a very smooth, soothing voice or they'd get flustered and lock up.

With new students, keep the flights short, esp at the beginning. Most people don't realize it, but most student's brains will "overload" at about the 10min point. It does vary person to person, I've had guys that flew fine for 25min, and others that were toast at 7min. You can see this when they start to get flustered or frustrated or start to make mistakes they weren't making a moment before. It takes a while to recognize this effect in yourself (some guys are better about this than others), so you need to watch for it with the student. In the same way, too many flights in a day can "bake" someone and leave them frustrated because the 8th flight of the day went badly when the first 6 were near perfect.

I always tell students the magic words are "I've got it". Unless you hear the magic words, keep flying until the last peice stops moving, no matter what. I don't care if you think I just took it, until you hear the words, keep flying. Of course, you have to realize that taking control with out saying the magic words is rather odd feeling to the student, so make sure you say when you take it. Don't take it with out saying something.

Don't be indecisive. I've had this problem myself. I'll start to say "I got it" then I realize the student acutally pulled it out, so I want to let them keep it, so I try to halt the phrase. The first time I did this, the student thought I had it, and I thought I'd stopped taking over. No harm, since the student's save was good enough that I had a second to clarify that they still had it. Now, once I make the decision to take over, I always follow through, even if I realize that the student could have finished the save. I don't want anyone to ever have to wonder who has control.

I also tell students what "right", "left", "up", "down", "in" and "out" mean. Sounds silly, but before I started to explain that "right" always meant airplane-right, I had a student who turned left when I said "right turn" because he went towards the right side of the field. Also, "up" and "down" can be confusing if you say "give it a little up elevator" or "up trim". So I clarify it (and I try to say "back stick or pull back etc if the student shows any problems with up vs down).

Lots of rambling here, hope it helps.