Logan_TP#2

J Logan Matthews
TP#2
Aug. 29, 2014 (4:30-6:00)
Dirac Science Library, Strozier Library, and In between

Alba Montoya, my second tutee of the evening was quite a bit more challenging for me than the first. She comes from Columbia to learn English in order to pass the TOEFL test, to be conditionally admitted to FSU's Chemistry Master's program. She had been learning English for two years prior to attempting the CIES program but the courses only taught her vocabulary and grammar. Therefore, she wants to focus mainly on her Speaking and Listening skills.

Alba's reading and writing ability is quite good aside from the verb tenses which she quickly corrects. Her listening vocabulary appears to be very large as well. She told me that she has published three articles on chemistry in an international journal of chemistry which were written in English. I found this quite impressive as I have some idea of the difficulty in academic publishing as my stepfather is a Professor of Entomology. However, she is very reticent when it comes to speaking English. 

Because of her shyness in communicating verbally I mentioned that I had a basic understanding of Spanish from high school. In hindsight, I think I should not declare such items because I am nowhere near the level required to produce useful translation from Spanish. However, I think studying the major differences in syntax between the Spanish and English Language will be helpful in this case. Two theories mentioned in class come to mind when considering her situation, "Interlanguage" and the "Affective Filter." Interlanguage applies because I can remember from learning Spanish how one can become complacent because it is easy to use cognates and machine translation to rapidly build up your vocabulary to construct a sentence that may be grammatically correct in English but requires extensive rephrasing to sound correct in spoken Spanish. The Affective Filter applies because throughout most of the conversation Alba seemed to me to be too nervous to reply with more than yes or no head movements and confirming noises than risk a sentence. 

It certainly did not help that I probably planned the session too late for a Friday because both libraries at FSU close early on Fridays. We ended up trying to work in three different locations as well as enduring regular interruptions from the intercom requesting that people leave the library early. There was also some trouble with her FSU card when entering and exiting the library as well as understanding what the FSUID was. I planned our next session for earlier in the day at the Hecht house so hopefully there are fewer interruptions.

While we were walking between libraries and sitting at a outside bench I tried to think of speaking games to improvise. I tried to do an eye spy based on colors in the environment but she seemed too embarrassed by playing a children's game for me to think immediately of how to make it more advanced by constructing a conversational phrase on the environment. Because of the disorder in setting I couldn't rely on diagrams as much as I did with my first tutee but she would write out what she wanted to communicate while I sounded it out for her. She had requested that I speak as often as I can so I also would sound out the words when I wrote a phrase. 

The most difficult aspect of the situation came from her claiming to understand something I said with a nod or quiet "yes," when she would later describe how I wasn't making sense. I tried to coach her to let me know clearly by saying "I'm confused" or "I understand what you're saying," but she seemed reluctant to comply.

I came away from the experience largely perplexed because I need to find a way to elicit her to speak more but in a level she can comprehend. I remember that we made some progress talking about how the weather in Columbia compares to our own and it seemed that I was able to coax out some genuine smiles when explaining why English is a difficult language to speak rather than write. Hopefully I can find some progressive speaking drills to use that also relate to her interests in American music as well as the few topics she mentioned. She claims to know the basic conversational phrases to use when ordering food but I need to get her to demonstrate it through speaking.