My second tutoring session with adults was a bit disappointing attendance-wise. We changed the time by 30 minutes for one student, who ended up not coming. A second student had to leave after 30 minutes, leaving only one who stayed for the hour. I found out later that the no-show had to help a friend at the police station after a car accident. We will go back to our original time, because it is more convenient for 3 of the 4 of us.
On the positive side, I am excited about what we are doing in the sessions. Using the assessment from week one, I have developed a good outline and have located corresponding resources to help with the needs revealed in the assessment.
Each week we will follow a three subject approach to our sessions:
1. Pronunciation
2. Grammar
3. American Culture or How to Self-Study English
In using the internet to look up resources that address their needs, I found some great sites. One very user-friendly, colorful, and multi-media using site I found is ElementaryEnglish.com. At the beginning of class, I took the time to explain to the students that how I planned the lesson, using easy to find, very useful resources, is what they would need to practice doing since they would not always have CIES or a tutor. I reminded them that life circumstances will change and that they won't always be able to afford the time or money to go to a language school. Then I showed them how I typed in the search window, "Pronunciation of verbs ending with the sounds t, d, or id." The results showed many sites. I showed them my selection and, voila, our video resource. They got very interested and wrote down the site address.
For this week, I used an illustrated video from this site to help with the pronunciation of verb endings that have the sounds t, d, or id. Last week I helped a CP with this using a worksheet, but this video was more helpful and stimulating. My Korean and Brazilian students both need help with this. The video is full of explanations and practice, and it is easy to pause in order to listen to them individually.
With my one remaining student, we transitioned to grammar. I had originally planned to study prepositions using this same site - this time making use of activities I had created to practice the use of prepositions as explained and illustrated on the site. However, this is a big need for the Brazilian, who had just left. I decided to hold what I had prepared for next week. I then asked the Korean if her work at school this week has caused any new problems to surface. She immediately thought of her need to know more transition words for her writing class.
I took the time again to show my student how we were going to find help for her need on the internet. I typed in "transition words." The first result I chose was gold. It categorized tons of transition words by types of transitions. We practiced this orally, finding variations for "for example, first, second, next," and so forth. I gave a thesis sentence about her and her brother, and we walked through a paragraph we created, using transition words for each new supporting detail. I said, "People say my brother and I are very much alike, but I disagree. (Then we searched for a transition word to replace "First of all.") That's how we worked through the paragraph. The result: she was connected to a great wealth of transition words to begin using, and she learned how she could have found them on her own.
No comments:
Post a Comment