TUTORING PARTNER 6 – Goenae, Meeting 2
Today I worked with Goenae on pronouns, possessive pronouns, and sentences with direct objects. In order to help her practice the use of particular transitive verbs as well as pronouns, I had prepared a document with cutout clip-art pieces for a word-game. The game involved objects she could move around from one character to another so that she could practice using pronouns, and ways in which she could show possession, for example: “She gave the cat to them”; “The crayons are hers.” After the lesson, I sent her an email with several youtube links, explaining the difference between demonstratives and other basic parts of speech.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Alexandra TP 7
TUTORING PARTNER 7 – Geonae, Meeting 4
Geonae has made good progress in her studies and was able to briefly explain pictorial scenarios to me today, still with minimal proficiency, but nevertheless, showing some improvement. Today we mostly worked on sentence structures. I would really like to have Goenae begin speaking in complete sentences, even if extremely short, just to break her out of her shell. I am fully confident she can do at least this, even if with some errors, but I know she is just shy. I went into the media room of the library and pulled simple, level 2 children’s books in order to explain to Geonae how to decipher the subjects, verb(s), adjectives and other parts of speech in sentences.
I picked from three separate books to present different sentence styles to her. I also had her read several passages, which she did quite well. It was enlightening to hear her speak English even if for a moment, being that she communicates with me mostly non-verbally. I have also introduced various different kinds of parts of speech to her. Though I have not yet explained it to her in this way, I am trying to introduce her to transitive verbs. We still have much difficulty communicating, because since she seems reluctant to engage in any kind of talking, I can’t tell to what degree she has or has not understood me. Still, I find her progress and diligence encouraging.
Geonae has made good progress in her studies and was able to briefly explain pictorial scenarios to me today, still with minimal proficiency, but nevertheless, showing some improvement. Today we mostly worked on sentence structures. I would really like to have Goenae begin speaking in complete sentences, even if extremely short, just to break her out of her shell. I am fully confident she can do at least this, even if with some errors, but I know she is just shy. I went into the media room of the library and pulled simple, level 2 children’s books in order to explain to Geonae how to decipher the subjects, verb(s), adjectives and other parts of speech in sentences.
I picked from three separate books to present different sentence styles to her. I also had her read several passages, which she did quite well. It was enlightening to hear her speak English even if for a moment, being that she communicates with me mostly non-verbally. I have also introduced various different kinds of parts of speech to her. Though I have not yet explained it to her in this way, I am trying to introduce her to transitive verbs. We still have much difficulty communicating, because since she seems reluctant to engage in any kind of talking, I can’t tell to what degree she has or has not understood me. Still, I find her progress and diligence encouraging.
Alexandra TP 8
TUTORING PARTNER 8 – Geonae, Meeting 4
Having now met with Geonae four times now, I can see that the underlying problem behind our difficulty in communication is still her nervousness about speaking. Still, Geonae is very compliant and motivated, as exemplified by the fact that today she came in with more than triple the amount of homework I had asked her to prepare, all done with meticulous care. We went over her assignment which was to copy down sentences from a children’s book. She can now very quickly identify parts of speech, and today’s exercise proved to me that Geonae knows, at least in written form, far more English than is evident. I worry about boring her by belaboring things she may already know, but I’m taking the approach of “better safe than sorry”.
Sensing her perhaps masked comprehension of some English, I had her read aloud the sentences which she had deconstructed for homework, and although she could sign or insinuate the definitions of most of the words and place them in the correct category (noun, verb, adjective, preposition, article, conjunction, etc.), and though her understanding of sentence structures is improving, when I asked her to read aloud, I found that her pronunciation was far more choppy and awkward than I had initially noticed. I now understand why she would feel so shy about speaking.
Previously she had read a short passage for me and did rather well. Now, however, it seems obvious that she is not used to certain phonetic constructs. It required a longer reading than I had ever asked her for previously in order to diagnose this issue. I told her that it was my hope that we could continue to make her more comfortable with sentence varieties, so that we could slowly transfer her away from the page to vocally producing small sentences.
For this purpose I gave her a “mad-libs” like set of sentence structures so that she could have a template for generating new sentences with her new vocabulary lists. After checking her homework next week, I will introduce her to pronunciation exercises to ease this half of her anxiety, hopefully slowly making her feel more confident, especially with the new vocabulary she’s accrued and currently studying.
Having now met with Geonae four times now, I can see that the underlying problem behind our difficulty in communication is still her nervousness about speaking. Still, Geonae is very compliant and motivated, as exemplified by the fact that today she came in with more than triple the amount of homework I had asked her to prepare, all done with meticulous care. We went over her assignment which was to copy down sentences from a children’s book. She can now very quickly identify parts of speech, and today’s exercise proved to me that Geonae knows, at least in written form, far more English than is evident. I worry about boring her by belaboring things she may already know, but I’m taking the approach of “better safe than sorry”.
Sensing her perhaps masked comprehension of some English, I had her read aloud the sentences which she had deconstructed for homework, and although she could sign or insinuate the definitions of most of the words and place them in the correct category (noun, verb, adjective, preposition, article, conjunction, etc.), and though her understanding of sentence structures is improving, when I asked her to read aloud, I found that her pronunciation was far more choppy and awkward than I had initially noticed. I now understand why she would feel so shy about speaking.
Previously she had read a short passage for me and did rather well. Now, however, it seems obvious that she is not used to certain phonetic constructs. It required a longer reading than I had ever asked her for previously in order to diagnose this issue. I told her that it was my hope that we could continue to make her more comfortable with sentence varieties, so that we could slowly transfer her away from the page to vocally producing small sentences.
For this purpose I gave her a “mad-libs” like set of sentence structures so that she could have a template for generating new sentences with her new vocabulary lists. After checking her homework next week, I will introduce her to pronunciation exercises to ease this half of her anxiety, hopefully slowly making her feel more confident, especially with the new vocabulary she’s accrued and currently studying.
Alexandra TP 9
TUTORING PARTNER 9 – Ahmed, Meeting 1
Although I’ve already had a few conversations with Ahmed, a young man from Egypt, today was the first day that I tutored him formally. He had requested my help with his reading skills earlier today, claiming that he had a gotten a low score on the practice exam. I was surprised by this given his relative ease with conversational English. Since the meeting was rather spontaneous, I didn’t have materials already in hand, so we used national Geographic website as a source. I asked Ahmed to do a cold read of a travel blog for me for diagnostic purposes, and after a few paragraphs and questioning him. He seems to understand the general concept well, but upon cold reading, does not get the finer details. Given a few minutes, he understands nearly 80% of fairly complex material. The most important giveaway to me was the choppiness with which he was enunciating, which presumably is hindering the aural recreation of a sentence in his head. I then showed him techniques designed to help him slow down and break the text down by reading sentences with an emphasis on slow evenness, syllable by syllable, and then rereading it. This enhances his audiation of the sentences, and he reported being able to understand the sentences with greater ease. I think the strategy from here will be to work on phonetics independent of the meaning of words and slowly increasing vocabulary.
Although I’ve already had a few conversations with Ahmed, a young man from Egypt, today was the first day that I tutored him formally. He had requested my help with his reading skills earlier today, claiming that he had a gotten a low score on the practice exam. I was surprised by this given his relative ease with conversational English. Since the meeting was rather spontaneous, I didn’t have materials already in hand, so we used national Geographic website as a source. I asked Ahmed to do a cold read of a travel blog for me for diagnostic purposes, and after a few paragraphs and questioning him. He seems to understand the general concept well, but upon cold reading, does not get the finer details. Given a few minutes, he understands nearly 80% of fairly complex material. The most important giveaway to me was the choppiness with which he was enunciating, which presumably is hindering the aural recreation of a sentence in his head. I then showed him techniques designed to help him slow down and break the text down by reading sentences with an emphasis on slow evenness, syllable by syllable, and then rereading it. This enhances his audiation of the sentences, and he reported being able to understand the sentences with greater ease. I think the strategy from here will be to work on phonetics independent of the meaning of words and slowly increasing vocabulary.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Jessica TP7
Since we were making up for missed weeks, and since Jesus was still in to continuing on with the lesson we decided to go to the second activity about subject pronouns. This was another explaination page/introduction with examples and then a fill in the blank activity and one where you had to write your own sentances. One of the big differences between Spanish and English is of course the lack of gender for inanimate objects, just as it took some review, extra examples, and getting used to in Spanish I knew it would be a point to focus on when teaching English to Jesus.
I started of by giving him some examples of sentances using names or actual objects, then repeated the same sentances with subject pronouns. He got the drift of the grammar rule really quickly so we moved to the worksheet. As usual the questions there were a jumping point for a bunch of other related questions. We practiced using subject pronouns with examples of the things on the table/around us. (ex. Can you pass the cup to me...Can you pass it to me.) It's great when you can take a break from staring at a worksheet to bring the rest of the environment into the lesson. I'm sure this also makes the grammar points more memorable. I worked some more vocabulary into this worksheet so we took the time to review that during/afterwards. I also thought it would be a good idea to put in some common English names to get him used to pronouncing new words, this worked pretty well except for one example when he automatically read the name 'Peter' as 'Pedro' haha. So the plan is to review the new vocab and for us to meet up again next week...Si Dios nos da licencia. :-)
I started of by giving him some examples of sentances using names or actual objects, then repeated the same sentances with subject pronouns. He got the drift of the grammar rule really quickly so we moved to the worksheet. As usual the questions there were a jumping point for a bunch of other related questions. We practiced using subject pronouns with examples of the things on the table/around us. (ex. Can you pass the cup to me...Can you pass it to me.) It's great when you can take a break from staring at a worksheet to bring the rest of the environment into the lesson. I'm sure this also makes the grammar points more memorable. I worked some more vocabulary into this worksheet so we took the time to review that during/afterwards. I also thought it would be a good idea to put in some common English names to get him used to pronouncing new words, this worked pretty well except for one example when he automatically read the name 'Peter' as 'Pedro' haha. So the plan is to review the new vocab and for us to meet up again next week...Si Dios nos da licencia. :-)
Jessica TP6
So the whole arranging lessons with 4 or 5 people from work has been a bit of a rocky process at best. Despite having plans for lessons for the last three weekends I've only been able to sit down once, with one person. It's a difficult thing to have schedules line up, and I totally understand last minute plan changes, so I think in moving forward I'll try to just set up things individually, or with maybe two people. Even though a group is fun for activities, it's a lot easier to focus on each student with one or two at a time. So, Jesus and I met up to go over some basic grammar points. We started with a review of the alphabet and vocabulary, some from the previous session and some that we'd use in the activity. I had a worksheet about the present tense verbs 'To Be' 'To Like' 'To Need'. Unlike the previous class I made an effort to use mainly English for this one, I made sure to speak clearly and to repeat things multiple times. I also got him to start asking basic questions in English, there's a lot of vocabulary to be learned just in the words necessary to have a class, so working only in Spanish would definitely cut out that opportunity.
The lesson went really well, and when we were going over the worksheet he had learned the conjugations well enough by the latter half of the page that he didn't have to look back to the example/ verb chart he had to fill in the blanks. We also spent a lot of time on pronunciation. I'd have him read a question, figure out the answer, and then re-read it. Unknowingly I put a lot of double 'e' words in this activity which turned out to be useful because he had difficulty pronouncing them at first, but by the end would recognize similar words and correct himself if he mispronounced something. After about an hour of that we took a quick break...
The lesson went really well, and when we were going over the worksheet he had learned the conjugations well enough by the latter half of the page that he didn't have to look back to the example/ verb chart he had to fill in the blanks. We also spent a lot of time on pronunciation. I'd have him read a question, figure out the answer, and then re-read it. Unknowingly I put a lot of double 'e' words in this activity which turned out to be useful because he had difficulty pronouncing them at first, but by the end would recognize similar words and correct himself if he mispronounced something. After about an hour of that we took a quick break...
Jessica CP5
I'm sure you guys all get the questions on what a good typical example of american food is, and I've used a variety of answers...hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie...but I think we're actually better at having a great variety of food and influences all mixed together in this country so it's difficult to pick just one thing. It varies by region, season, the part of town your in, etc. Having said that, my favorite place in town is Sahara, the Lebanese restaurant behing New Leaf. It's *delicious* and the owner is always there answering questions and enlightening guests on his traditional cooking practices. So when my conversation partner Cloris asked about it I told her we had to go!
We went there for dinner last week and and once again Sahara didn't fail to impress. We chatted about classes and how crazy Florida weather can be. While we were hanging out she was keeping a list of new vocabulary words, which is great! I told her I do the same in Spanish and it really helps, that way you have a new word and a good story/context to remember it by. The word of the night was 'frizzy' inspired by an afternoon shower and the following humidity that engulfed the town, haha.
She mentioned that she and her sister, friend, and cousin Alonso were headed to New Orleans for her birthday the following weekend and invited me along. I would have loved to have gone, but my weekend was already pretty busy so I couldn't make it. I did tell her that she was going to looove the city, to be careful when drinking the super potent 'Handgrenades' (She's turning 21!) and that she absolutely must see the Garden District. I'm sure they had a blast, hopefully we'll meet up this week so I can hear all about it.
We went there for dinner last week and and once again Sahara didn't fail to impress. We chatted about classes and how crazy Florida weather can be. While we were hanging out she was keeping a list of new vocabulary words, which is great! I told her I do the same in Spanish and it really helps, that way you have a new word and a good story/context to remember it by. The word of the night was 'frizzy' inspired by an afternoon shower and the following humidity that engulfed the town, haha.
She mentioned that she and her sister, friend, and cousin Alonso were headed to New Orleans for her birthday the following weekend and invited me along. I would have loved to have gone, but my weekend was already pretty busy so I couldn't make it. I did tell her that she was going to looove the city, to be careful when drinking the super potent 'Handgrenades' (She's turning 21!) and that she absolutely must see the Garden District. I'm sure they had a blast, hopefully we'll meet up this week so I can hear all about it.
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