Logan_TP#6

J Logan Matthews
TP#6
Sep 5, 2014 (3:00PM-4:15PM)
Hecht House Rm 304

Today's session was with Winnie and a classmate I encouraged her to bring for group tutoring, Omar. There was some delay with Omar's arrival so we later proceeded from the lobby to the classroom where I began organizing some worksheets. In the prior session, Winnie mentioned wanting to learn about the topics of "Gift-Giving" and "Life Events."

So I began the lesson by demonstrating the picture vocabulary for some common life events like weddings and retirements. Then I started introducing the adverbs and prepositions: "since," "ago," and "for;" through a fill-in-the-blank worksheet of sentences in context. From there I moved on to introducing some chronologically ordered vocabulary for life events and having Winnie point out the ones she did not know so I could provide definition. By this time Omar had arrived in the classroom and I began interviewing him for a needs analysis.

Omar scores high in Speaking but low in other areas. He comes from Libya originally and is studying at CIES to prepare for the ILETS test to study engineering. I asked him about the ways he studies English outside of the class. He demonstrated the use of a dictionary with pronunciation, which ironically was queued to produce the word "racism." The three of us laughed off the awkwardness of the situation and I proceeded with the interview. Omar mentioned occasionally observing the English like CNN. I tried to encourage Omar to give me some ideas or topics for when I plan the next meetings activities. It was very hard to coax an answer from him on this subject even though him and Winnie are in the same listening level. So I decided to proceed with the dialogue activity.

I had Omar and Winnie choose roles in the dialogue on Joint Gift Giving. The purpose of this activity was to listen for their reading and pronunciation ability as well as to introduce
some vocabulary and phrases in English. The dialogue came with a vocabulary explanation so I could help elaborate on the specific nouns and colloquialisms in the dialogue. From there I attempted to improvise some elicitation on a particular line that relates to the idiom "the man/woman who has everything." I will admit that the silence was deafening; quickly realizing that I should have used more time to prepare the scaffolding to assist the response at their language learning level. So I proceeded into a definition of the idiom and it's use in the sentence.

At that point I thought of pointing out how that even though the dialogue they read was short, It still consisted of an Introduction, Thesis, and Conclusion. I thought of this elaboration from listening
to Andressa's, the Brazilian student in my Tutoring observation, mention of how writing English composition helped her improve in speaking. By this time Omar had left the room to receive a phone call so I was not able to show him how it related to improving listening and speaking in English.

After Omar had left the room Winnie communicated how she wishes to do group tutoring with another Classmate. I sensed some sort of hangup in Omar's willingness to participate that I can only speculate on the reasons for. It may be my disorganization as a rookie teacher so he expects a more formal lesson format. It may also be factors affecting his personal motivation since Libyans may be embittered with the US due to a tense political climate, which CNN covers on a daily basis. Yet I do not know. What I do know is that Omar was assigned as my initial conversation partner but I was never able to receive a reply from him.

So after he left, I began introducing a cultural discussion involving the choice of appropriate and inappropriate gifts, which I needed to provide definition for. Our time was up after the introduction and Omar had returned. I used the rest of the meeting to try to coax any other topics out of Omar and Winnie, receiving only a suggestion of music, but not a specific song or artist. Supposedly Winnie will email me some topic ideas when she thinks of them. I am unsure if Omar will be joining us next friday but I will try to prepare for that occasion.