Jackie TP3

Jia and I went ahead and met tonight, as we would normally meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays after TEFL, and she needed some homework help. I have to say that this double session, as it was close to three hours long, was one of the most exciting things I have done that involve TEFL, or teaching, or helping another person in general! Jia absorbed so much of what I was teaching her, received much help with what she needed to accomplish, mostly on her own with my assistance, and learned advanced skills she could incorporate into her English vocabulary and knowledge. We focused mainly on writing this session—with many side talks about grammar and such. We started with her homework help—which was writing an introduction and a conclusion for an essay, and talking about Solar Energy/Electricity in English. We went through her introduction, and first I pointed out where some errors were, then I just said a sentence was not correct, which she would then fix, then I would let her read aloud and see if she could simply find it and tell her yes or no.

Then, as she requested help with prepositions, I went ahead and did the lesson I wrote on my grammar log! It was exciting, because I explained what prepositions were in a simpler way for her to understand, and then gave her a large example. It was a paragraph with highlighted prepositions that she then would circle if she didn’t know what they meant. I explained them, with some issues of “on and upon” (ah!). Then, my lesson plan was to do a scavenger hunt with objects in the room, but since we were at All Saints, I asked her questions about objects around us. I told her to tell me as many ways as possible about where a pen was. It was between two cups, it was on a table, it was next to me, it was beside me, and more. So, she eventually used many, many prepositions in the process of describing our surroundings.

I found out she needs a lot of help with “at” versus “in,” which I recall having trouble with when learning Italian as well. I knew the in+city/country tule, but many of the other sentences, for me, simply seemed awkward, but I promised her that I would find examples and a lesson for her to determine which one to use.

We then did my speedwriting lesson plan! It was so exciting, because I did as I did when giving it to the class, but made it for a higher level of student, as she is. So, I made her do lists of food words she knew for one minute, then drinks she knew for one minute, then gave her five minutes to write sentences with the food and drink words that use prepositions, as she needed help with them earlier. It really helped her use vocabulary and something we had just covered, and expanded her mind on how to use prepositions. I then found out she needed help with articles, so we reviewed what articles were, explained special circumstances, and did some examples and practice of articles. Then, we took a much needed coffee break!