Greg – TP Adults - #1

Sangyi, Jessica, and Saif met with me in a classroom Wednesday afternoon for our first tutoring session.  They are from South Korea, Brazil, and Kuwait, in that order.  As they arrived, we had light-hearted conversation for a few minutes.  We even got humorous, as Saif is a very “fun-lov’n kinda guy.”  I let the ice-breaking go for 10 minutes, first setting a climate of freedom to throw up their hands and stop the conversation at any time if they were lost.  I checked several times in our initial talking to see if they understood me.  As I said, we often laughed (I like to make people laugh), so as a kicker, when Saif wanted to show off a magic trick with cards, I made sure his eyes were closed as I chose my card.  The girls watched as I hid my card under may leg, pretending to put it back in the stack.  When he couldn’t find it, I said, “Great trick.  You made my card disappear!”  Everyone laughed (so they understood) and Saif called me on stealing his card.  With this, we became a safe group for learning.

Inspired by one of our classmate’s blogs, I had them get some paper, explaining they were going to help me know how to help them.  I told them they needed to listen closely to every instruction, and that what and where they wrote would help me know how their listening comprehension was.  I not only told them what to write, but added special instructions, such as  “Beside that put…”, “Under that, write…”, “Skip 2 lines and write…”, and “In the middle of the page, write…”  The content included name, age, their local address as it would be found on an envelope, and a 3 to 4 sentence answer to “How do you like to relax, and where do you like to go to relax?”  It also included answering, in writing, what they believed they needed help with during our sessions.

I explained that they would use the information to introduce themselves later.  I shared that following instructions would help me measure their listening skills, their written answers would help me to measure their grammar and spelling, and their introduction would help me to measure their speaking and pronunciation. 

The papers they filled out show me that they have several needs, not only with grammar, but with form (when to capitalize, how to write an address, even writing on the lines of the paper instead of in the “air” between them).   The answers about relaxing show we need to work on spelling, prepositions, verb usage, and problems with awkward wording.  Their self-assessments expressed needs for improving production and pronunciation.  I will continue to examine these papers and to think about how to prepare for our sessions based on them and what I heard.

My challenge is “Where do I begin?”  I am thinking about reading their sentences without corrections – having each one write them on the board as I dictate them.  Then we will look at them together, one by one, and see if we can underline the problems.  Then we will face them one by one.  All corrections will be made on the board by the author as we all work on improving the sentence. Finally, the correct version will be read by all three times, and then written by all on paper without looking (backs to the board).  Then they will turn around and see their improvement.  Any other ideas?