Saturday, July 14, 2012
Jennifer_TP7
This morning I met with Youyoung, a young Korean mother I tutor at the Leon County Library. I had her take a practice TOEFL test at our last session. I noticed her two weakest areas on the test were speaking and listening, so I decided to work on those with her today. I went to the website esl-lab.com (a free website I would recommend for everyone for listening practice) and worked through some of the listening exercises with her. Before each exercise, there is a prelesson question to help her think about the listening. I used these questions as practice for speaking, and gave her time to think about the question and then answer aloud. She improved with each exercise. Youyoung is very shy and gets nervous when she speaks, so I told her to make "loud mistakes", meaning to be confident and loud so I can correct her and help her, rather than quiet and unsure to where I can't hear her and correct her. This seemed to help her a lot. I also had her brainstorm to herself before each question, and this revealed a huge improvement. I suggested to her that reading the questions before the listening exercise would help her know what to listen for. This helped her think carefully about each question in the context of the listening practice. She also wrote down key words while she was listening, and this helped her remember when it came time to answer the listening questions. I asked her if she had anyone to practice speaking and listening with at home, but she stated she wanted to only speak Korean to her children and family so their children wouldn't forget their native tongue, which makes complete sense. She seemed very motivated during the lesson and could tell she was improving. Overall I really enjoyed our lesson, and I can tell she is getting better and better!
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That's a great idea to have her take a practice TOEFL test in order to assess her weak and strong points! That also sounds like a good website to help with listening and speaking, so I'll try it out for a couple of my tutees. It sounds like you figured out some really good techniques for helping with speaking and listening, and I notice that seems to be the weakest point for a lot of foreign language speakers, especially with their confidence and how they speak quietly so they don't mess up. When I did a similar exercise with one of my tutees, the only difference I had was that I didn't let him take notes while he was listening, but at the same time, when I asked him questions at the end, he couldn't remember as well. So maybe next time I'll let him write down key words instead so he can remember the main points better.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I didn't let Youyoung take notes at first for the listening exercises. But she has taken the TOEFL test before and she said they let her take down notes for the listening exercises, so I let her do that after I knew that. It really did help her remember.Yes,
ReplyDelete"make loud mistakes", what a great approach!
ReplyDeletehaha, yeah, "loud mistakes" is kinda an expression my College of Music teachers use so they can correct a pitch error they hear in a song - looks like it works for helping students speak English as well!
ReplyDelete