Logan_TP#7

J Logan Matthews
TP#7
Sep 10, 2014 (3:30PM-5:00PM)
Hecht House Rm 304

Today was the second session with Juan and Alba. The previous day I had observed Wallace's level 1 listening class where each of my adult tutees were placed, so I was familiar with their current challenges with listening for the L, Y, and R sounding words. Also when I mentioned the advantages of having two tutees that speak the same language for translations, Wallace objected to the idea. I think now I might consider some of the problems.

When the time for our session was approaching I had heard some mention of the ELL students congregating downstairs in the lounge. Since I was trying to draw Alba and Juan away to begin our tutoring session one of the other students I did not know thought to make a joke of my arrival with croook, the onomatopoeia for sapo or toad. In the context of Colombian slang it means someone who is nosy. For the next fifteen minutes, Juan was solely focused on finding out the proper translation for this term. By his explanation, I thought it might mean buzz-kill or uninvited guest but I later found that it seems to be related to spying more than party-crashing, so he went around the building asking others.

So when we had passed with that distraction and settled down in a classroom I talked about their studies as I observed them and we shared a few grievances. After this I decided to continue with the 52 question playing card activity because it seemed to get both of my tutees engaged. I had modified the premise this time by writing down their oral responses and reforming them into two succinct and grammatically correct sentences as a future reply when I review the questions in a different order. My rationale for this, which I explained, was that the oral Q&A helped to build oral fluency (which Alba needs) and the matching review helped to demonstrate sentence structure for accuracy (which Juan needs.)

The other day Wallace also suggested that I go digital with my materials as much as possible when I mentioned using whiteout on the fly to create an active listening activity. I think this still applied to today's situation because we did not get through nearly as many question cards as I had hoped. My original Idea was to record their response in my sketchbook and reformed sentence on a half of an index card which I would give them for the later matching activity. After the session I realized that it would be much faster to bring my laptop or smartphone OTG keyboard linkup so I could type out their responses for printing in tables later on.

We digressed into mainly vocabulary and syntax examples like afloat, riptide, shovel, and the usage of or/ee suffixed words like tutor/tutee and benefactor/benefactee(beneficiary.) We also went over the formal and informal forms of expressing opinions (It is my opinion/In my opinion/I think/For me.) Next time I would like to alternate into other activities with Mad Libs or clausal word banks for constructing dialogues. I also have a basic picture dice story game which may be adapted to different ages and levels of expository writing and speech.