Emily Drew_CIES Group Tutoring_Session 1

My first group tutoring session was great. When I first arrived at our meeting spot, CIES, I recognized Andre.  At the same time, we realized that we had met at International Coffee Hour at the Globe a few weeks ago!  He is Brazilian and neighbors with one of my Colombian friends, who invited him to coffee hour.  The other group members are Amanda, who is also from Brazil, and Guilio, who is from Italy. Since the weather today was extraordinary, we decided to spend the next hour on the tree-shaded lawn by the amphitheater.  I gave them each a simple handout with a few ‘getting-to-know-you’ questions for them to fill out. I asked them about their families, if they have siblings, where they are from, what their first language is, if they speak any other languages, how long they have been in the United States, and to give a fun fact about themselves. I only noticed minor errors in their writing.  Guilio Is from Rome, speaks Italian and a little Arabic and English, has only been in the U.S. for two weeks, and has a brother who lives in London. His fun fact was that it took him ten days to get over the jetlag after coming to America.  Amanda is a bit quiet, but sweet.  She has been her for two months, speaks Portuguese, and can understand a little bit of Spanish. She said that she misses her two brothers.  I introduced the term “half-brother” to her when she was trying to explain that he is only her brother from one side of the family.  Andre’s first language is Portuguese and has also been here for two months. The sentence he wrote about his family was, “I have one brother and one girl.” When I read it aloud, he immediately laughed at himself saying, “Sister, I mean sister!  No, I do not have a girlfriend or a child.”  I’m glad that Andre is good-natured about his mistakes.  Besides, his fun fact was that he’s a very silly person and laughs all the time.

            After they asked me a few background questions about myself, I asked them what they think they need to work on the most regarding English. Andre said that he needs work on pronunciation, vocabulary, and prepositions.  All of them seemed to agree that what they need to work on the most is becoming more conversational and working on their pronunciation.  I told them that in my experience with learning a new language, once you understand grammatical structure and how the language works, the main thing that’s left is to build your vocabulary. They completely agreed.  All of them also said that it is easier for them to read, write, and listen to English and be able to understand it, but speaking it and trying to express themselves is much more difficult. I can understand that to be true from talking to them today.  For that, we should practice conversing and using new vocabulary words.  I can tell that Guilio is eager to practice speaking.  It takes him a while to think about what he wants to convey, but by observing how much he talked today, I can tell he is motivated to try his best and use the language as much as he can.  Amanda told me that she wants to practice compositions and learn how to make them more complex, which I will be glad to help her with in the upcoming weeks.

            I really like my group of tutees. They’re very nice and encouraging, which is what I try to be for them.  They told me that I speak very clearly and am easy to understand, which is good to hear. One thing that Guilio mentioned when we were talking about the United States is that Americans, in his opinion, are very tolerant of people who are learning English.  He said that when he was in the UK, people would get annoyed if someone had a harder time with English. I’m glad that everyone he’s come across in his two weeks here has been patient and friendly.  I’m looking forward to helping this trio improve their English language abilities.