Andrew TS #7

Date/Time: 06/24/2021 9:00 p.m.

Location: Conversation over Line

Topic/Skill: Speaking, Needs Assessment

Feedback provided to tutee: This was my and Tina's (谢渝婷) first tutoring session. Tina was one of the two people I was able to meet thanks to my Taiwanese friend Zhou. She recently graduated with her bachelors in business management and has decided to work with me because she would like to improve her test scores and language ability as she looks for jobs. We started by giving brief introductions and then moved into the needs assessment. Her speaking ability is a bit limited. She doesn't have a particularly broad vocabulary and she does have some problems with fluency; However, her pronunciation and listening ability are both quite good. After figuring out what her English is like and getting to know each other we went over a few of the TOEIC speaking questions. Even though she still had problems with fluency and vocabulary she still replied to the questions fairly well. She did a good job of explaining and expanding on ideas even when she did not have a direct translation for words or concepts.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: This was more useful practice in working with people of various skill levels. As well as another great  lesson in how much preparation can aid in a tutoring session.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Andrew TS#16

  Date/Time: 10/1/2021    9:00 p.m. Location: Conversation over Line Topic/Skill: Reading and Verb Forms  Feedback provided to tutee: While over the months I have been talking with Tina she has improved in many different ways; However, there is one area she has consistently  struggled with, verb forms. She tends do do fine at deciding which work verb would work best in a sentence but struggles to use the correct form of said verb in the sentence. To work on this for this meeting I prepared several worksheets for her to complete. The first was similar to ones I have had her complete in the past, consisting of a number of sentences with blanks and verbs next to the blanks leaving her to decide on the correct form of the verb to use in the blank. She did well enough with the earlier questions but started to struggle later with the longer or more complex sentences. I then reviewed with her what she got right and what she got wrong. After this, I had her practi...
Read more

Andrew CP #6

Date/Time: 08/03/2021 10:00 PM Location: Conversation  over Line Topic discussed: Video games, Mahjong, The Olympics Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: I was excited for our conversation  this time because  it had  been a while since me and Zhewei had a chance to chat. He recently moved and started a new job so he hasn't had to much free time to talk. He filled me in on what he had been doing and was curious how I had been spending my summer vacation. After I had told him it was mostly sleeping and playing video game our conversation moved in that direction. Zhewei told me about a lot of different games I had never heard of that were all developed in Taiwan. He also told me about which video games are most popular in Taiwan right now. However; Zhewei says that the only video game he really plays is online Mahjong. Since I have never had the chance to learn Zhewei taught me how to play. He did a very good job of explaining the r...
Read more

Andrew TS #14

Date/Time: 08/07/21 10:00 AM Location: Conversation  over Line  Topic/Skill: TOEFL Writing Prep, Free Talk Feedback provided to tutee: Since I had started talking with Yenzhou in a teaching capacity and not just as friends he has expressed a great desire  to practice his English as much as he can. To this end, I had him start keeping a daily journal in English. He has done a very good job with keeping up with it and he feels it has really helped his writing  ability. This meeting however; I wanted to put his new found writing  skills to the test, so jumped straight into an opinion essay. Yenzhou did very well, he only had minimal grammatical or spelling errors and elaborated well on his topic. After the essay we decided to chat. Since Yenzhou wants to start speaking more colloquial  English he asked me to teach him some American slang. After happily obliging  he taught me some Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Japanese slang as well. Lesson(s) about tut...
Read more