Alycia TS #1

Date/Time:              2018/5/8           6:30AM - 7:30AM
 
Location: Skype
 
Topic/Skill: Introduction/Skill Assessment
 
Summary and Feedback:
 
The student and I went over cursory introductions. I wanted to know what he believed his skill level is, how long he has been studying English, why he is studying, and what he wishes to accomplish with our tutoring sessions. The student stated that he wanted to particularly work on his listening and speaking skills, but would also be interested in expanding his vocabulary and learning new grammar topics. I treated the remainder of the session as a bit of a meet-and-great, allowing us to get to know one another. Through this friendly conversation I was able to gauge his English speaking ability as well as learn about his interests that I can tie into our future sessions, fostering his intrinsic interest in the subject.
 
Although the student performed advanced language skills (he was able to maintain an engaging conversation over the course of an hour that crossed over several topics with little to no errors), he expressed a dissatisfaction with his current performance and an insecurity about speaking to others for fear of making an error. I reminded him that even native speakers often make mistakes and that they are just ways to continue to expand his English knowledge. As part of our work on developing his speaking skills, I am going to try to grow his confidence in his own abilities.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Michelle TS #7 Mohammad

Mohammad received his essay back from the instructor about the different modes of transportation he had worked on previously. Although he did not get the highest score possible, he still did well. However, the instructor made a few of the same comments throughout his paper - basically that he was not fully supporting his statements with appropriate background information. We discussed the importance of creating an outline so that it’s easier to organize ideas and then easier to write the assignment. I’m not sure that he will employ the use of outlines every time, but we did discuss the different types of outlines he can use, and then created one for the paper he had worked on. It seems his instructors also incorporate outlines for writing assignments, but he is not doing this for himself when working on homework.
Read more

Michelle TS #10 Dojun

Dojun and I had been using news articles for  many of our sessions, so I decided to change it up a bit and show a 5 minute clip of the show Friends. The clip is about a discussion between Phoebe, Joey and Rachel (titled “Joey doesn’t share food”). The speech was a bit fast, but Dojun mentioned that the subtitles helped, although we did have to pause the video often to ensure he was understanding the video. Each time I paused, I asked him to summarize what the scene showed and then asked if he had questions about vocabulary used. It was difficult to explain what clams are until I realized I could google a picture and send it to him.
Read more