Jackie TP7

Tutoring Sugia, my other tutee through Leon County Literacy Volunteering, is much more challenging for me than Jia at CIES. I think this is because Jia has to speak English all the time in her classes, all day long. But, Sugia only has to interact with English speakers when she has to or chooses to in public settings. And, thus, she gets a lot of small talk. Upon tutoring her for the first time, I realized that she wasn’t an extremely low level at all! She knew the grammar extremely well—and when she didn’t understand it, she picked it up very quickly with my explanation. My explanations took a little longer—but I think this is because she is much more honest and actually says when she doesn’t understand something. I realized that she needs a little help with articles, writing long sentences (though she is very efficient!) and most of all: speaking. We did some introductory activities so that I could analyze what she needed help on, so I did my writing lesson plan on her—speedwriting! She did fairly well. But, I had some varied grammatical worksheets already printed out, so I picked out what she needed help on according to her writing, and worked with her. Like Jia, she needed help on prepositions and articles. I hadn’t learned how to teach speaking yet, but plan on making some lessons for her. She is extremely intelligent, which I think makes her want to speak perfect English when she actually does speak. But, she should just speak more and practice, which I plan on doing with her. I think I will do an interview with her, and as she requested, correct her spoken sentences and have her repeat them. Then, I will ask her the questions again and see if she can form a proper sentence without my corrections. I also will have her speak to me, in full sentences, about her job in Korea and about her family, or other topics she might know a lot about. Then, we will see where she has difficulty—if it’s the grammar when speaking or the vocabulary that’s missing. Then, I can get some vocabulary lists going for her or work more on simply practicing specific grammar rules when speaking.