TP: 7
Date: 9/24/14
Time: 5-6 pm
Location: atomic coffee (call
St.)
Yesterday
I tutored Roberta and Melissa, the two girls I always enjoy tutoring. Roberta
needed help with speaking while Melissa needed help when to use “-ing”
properly. One problem Roberta has with speaking is that she does not project
her voice loud enough for people to hear. However, even when I hear her
speaking Portuguese she has a quiet voice. For English speakers who do not know
her very well might mistake her quiet voice as a lack confidence. This is not
the case since she also has a quiet voice when she speaks her naïve language. I
am not sure if I want to address this issue since this is her natural voice. At
the same time, her communication skills with both languages might improve if
she spoke louder. I am hesitant on pushing her to speak louder because I don’t
want to make her feel uncomfortable by making her do something that is
unnatural (open to ideas and suggestions here).
Melissa had difficultly with when to use
certain articles with verbs ending in –ing. After I explained that present
participle refers to things that are still happening, and it is used by adding
–ing to the infinitive. She had a better
understanding. Other words such as love and want were a bit more difficult to
explain since the infinitive is not necessarily needed to express something
that is still happening. I did not know
the exact rule off hand to explain it (I will however next time we meet) so I
resorted to using a handful of examples. After about spending 20 minutes on the
examples she seemed to have gained a better understanding for these types of
verbs. The last 15 minutes of our session we just spent casually talking about
their hometowns. The idea of this is to lower their effective filters and make
it more comfortable for them to speak without feeling self-conscious. I would
only make corrections to repetitive mistakes. I have noticed over the weeks
certain corrections I made in the weeks prior are not made again in the
progressive weeks.
I think you should tell Roberta she's doing a great job, but she needs to be a little louder to be heard. And then when she raises her voice praise her more and tell her how great she is doing. Maybe even mention how American's tend to be louder, so she doesn't feel bad about her speaking?
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