Gale_TP#4

Gale Workman

TP#4

Sept. 4, 2014, noon-1 p.m.

Hecht House

It was Jianwei’s (China) second session and Wiwik’s (Indonesia) first tutoring session with me. They are classmates and are comfortable with one another.

To practice speaking and listening, I recited a brief introduction of myself, my professional background, why I was attending CIES, plus a few personal details. Jianwei and Wiwik discussed between themselves what they heard. Then each student was assigned to ask me a question to learn more about me.

Both students were great! Their questions demonstrated they had been listening actively and were able to relate what they heard to their own lives. We discussed the critical thinking process of Q&A, which (somehow) lead to a discussion of cooking vocabulary. It seemed a logical progression among three women chatting over our brown-bag lunches.

We discussed fry, sauté, dry vs. wet heat cooking, boil, steam, simmer. We used Google to read aloud and discuss definitions. I spoke example sentences and each student spoke example sentences. That lead us to an extemporaneous debate of carrots vs. spinach. I set it up using the Opinion Speech Format that Debbie Caretta’s students use.

I ended our session with WILT (What I Learned Today.) Each of us took a minute silently to review our session and create one precise sentence … Today I learned … .

My sentence was “Today I learned I need to study practice TOEFLs because Jianwei and Wiwik want to improve their scores.”