Logan_TP#4

J Logan Matthews
TP#3
Sep 3, 2014 (3:30-4:30)
Hecht House Rm. 304

For my second session with Alba, I was able to invite Juan to join us in a group tutoring session. Juan is also from Columbia and is seeking similar goals. It appears now that both Alba and Juan are attempting to enter PHD programs. Alba's is in Chemistry here at FSU and Juan's is in Environmental Management in Costa Rica. As an ELL (English language learner), Juan is a more advanced student than Alba. Specifically, he places high in speaking and reading but is still low in listening and composition.  

Attempting to tutor two students at different levels proves somewhat difficult with Juan providing most of the feedback and explanation. However since they both speak Spanish it is helpful that he can translate concepts for Alba. When I later asked her, Alba stated that she would like to continue working as a group.

With this information I will try to tailor the activities that I bring to both of my tutee's skill levels. Since they both placed low in listening and composition I will try to find activities in those categories. I have not observed a composition class at CIES yet but I assume that it involves constructing sentences and later, paragraphs in English. Some ideas for this are constructing dialogue for a scene from a random pool of clauses. Or possibly performing an inverse madlib with the parts of speech like the nouns, adjectives, and adverbs provided; but the connecting elements like conjugates and auxiliary verbs requiring elicitation.

As for the lesson itself, I started off with some dialogue which they finished with little trouble since they both scored high in reading. When I tried to move on to the next part, which was reconstructing the dialogue, there was a problem. The problem was that the sequence of the phrases already followed the sequence of the scene. So that activity was scrapped for trying lyric analysis but I thought that might be better for another time in a solo session. What we ended up spending most of the hour was dealing cards for a 52 questions free play where I asked for responses to open ended questions in English. I only asked for two sentences each from the tutees but because of Juan's higher level in speaking he dominated most of the activity. Juan was aware of this problem but ultimately I think it can work as modeling to help Alba form conversation as well as provide motivation by seeing how one like herself can develop in language learning. 

Next time, I may try to highlight the techniques Juan uses in circumlocution to demonstrate them to Alba when phrasing spoken English.