CIES Tutoring Session 1
On Friday I met with one of my CIES group tutees. Since
Isabella and Osamah canceled just before the tutoring session, it was just
Byron and me. Byron is an Ecuadorian chef-in-the-making, working on his English
skills before pursuing a bachelors degree to make his parents happy, and
pursuing an AA-degree at Kaiser college for culinary arts to fulfill his passion for making food. After
meeting with foundations level CPs who only wanted to do well on their IELTS or
TEFLs, it was such a rewarding experience to spend an hour working with Byron,
who had clear intrinsic motivation to speak English. He told me the languages
of food are French and English, and he wants to learn them both. Love his
passion.
The first ten minutes, we just sat together in our Strozier study room and talked. It was great. Just from conversing, I could diagnose a few issues in his use of the more complex past tense phrases. I wanted to know what he needed help with it, so he showed me a few things that had just been confusing him lately. He was confused about the sentence “I am retired.” He saw am retired as a unique past-tense construction, the meaning of which he couldn’t understand. I gave a lot of examples of those types of adjectives (tired, wasted, potted (plant) etc.) and how they come from past tense verbs, but are adjectives when used this way. I came up with the ‘Potted’ example last, as it is used both ways (potted plant=adjective, the plant is potted=present adjective//passive verb) I didn’t quite know how to explain that those are almost the same thing but different, but I’ll have the answer in our next session. I mean it's basically just that past-tense verbs have been used as adjectives...a lot. Admittedly, they've become adverbs too. Complex. We also looked at some determiner use for 'some/a couple/few'.
At the end of the session, I asked if he wanted to work on a listening drill. I had prepared two stories from the WBEZ Chicago radio program This American Life. I choose a few stories from the show “20 Act in 60 Minutes”. I had already retrieved and simplified for reading the transcripts for Act 8, “The Greatest Dog Name in the World," and Act 13, “More Lies.” Those can be heard here http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/241/20-acts-in-60-minutes and you super should listen to at least ACT 13, ‘cause that story kills me it’s so funny. Anyways, for the first story (Act 8) we read the transcripts first, and I answered his questions about vocab/grammar/meaning. It was revealing showing how poorly produced even native speakers' grammar is when we speak English. I think he appreciated seeing the freedom we have when speaking to make a lot of mistakes, but we briefly discussed some of the rules that don't get broken in speech, namely things like tense and agreement. The next story (Act 13), we listened to first before reading over the transcript, checking comprehension one part at a time, and then read the transcript for full comprehension checking. It was a great little exercise, and he got a laugh out of the stories, especially after we worked through and clarified exactly what was happening and what people meant.
Can’t wait to tutor him again, it was a great session.
The first ten minutes, we just sat together in our Strozier study room and talked. It was great. Just from conversing, I could diagnose a few issues in his use of the more complex past tense phrases. I wanted to know what he needed help with it, so he showed me a few things that had just been confusing him lately. He was confused about the sentence “I am retired.” He saw am retired as a unique past-tense construction, the meaning of which he couldn’t understand. I gave a lot of examples of those types of adjectives (tired, wasted, potted (plant) etc.) and how they come from past tense verbs, but are adjectives when used this way. I came up with the ‘Potted’ example last, as it is used both ways (potted plant=adjective, the plant is potted=present adjective//passive verb) I didn’t quite know how to explain that those are almost the same thing but different, but I’ll have the answer in our next session. I mean it's basically just that past-tense verbs have been used as adjectives...a lot. Admittedly, they've become adverbs too. Complex. We also looked at some determiner use for 'some/a couple/few'.
At the end of the session, I asked if he wanted to work on a listening drill. I had prepared two stories from the WBEZ Chicago radio program This American Life. I choose a few stories from the show “20 Act in 60 Minutes”. I had already retrieved and simplified for reading the transcripts for Act 8, “The Greatest Dog Name in the World," and Act 13, “More Lies.” Those can be heard here http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/241/20-acts-in-60-minutes and you super should listen to at least ACT 13, ‘cause that story kills me it’s so funny. Anyways, for the first story (Act 8) we read the transcripts first, and I answered his questions about vocab/grammar/meaning. It was revealing showing how poorly produced even native speakers' grammar is when we speak English. I think he appreciated seeing the freedom we have when speaking to make a lot of mistakes, but we briefly discussed some of the rules that don't get broken in speech, namely things like tense and agreement. The next story (Act 13), we listened to first before reading over the transcript, checking comprehension one part at a time, and then read the transcript for full comprehension checking. It was a great little exercise, and he got a laugh out of the stories, especially after we worked through and clarified exactly what was happening and what people meant.
Can’t wait to tutor him again, it was a great session.
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