Yesterday (08/08), after our listening session, Soufiane and I went over composition homework that I had assigned to him. We had watched "Howl's Moving Castle," with Yuki and done some comprehension questions one Friday afternoon. I asked him to write a brief summary of the film over the weekend so that we could go over it together. He did so and was able to provide it promptly the following Monday afternoon. I told him that I would take a look at it and discuss it with him at a later time (we were currently in the midst of conversation with a large group).
His summary was good. It wasn't quite the way I would tell the story, but he delivered his message very well. There were very few grammatical errors and a few words were misused. I felt that the most constructive way to work with him on this assignment, since we had the vantage of one-on-one interaction, was to re-write the assignment, merely focusing on structure and grammar, while maintaining the message. We read though the summary sentence by sentence and retyped the entire summary.
One of the most notable things that I witnessed him learn was the difference between "called" and "named." In the beginning of the summary, he described the main character and said there was a girl "called" Sophie...I mentioned that you 'could' say that, but more appropriately it would be "a girl 'named' Sophie." He said that he had never heard this before. He said he always writes this way and no one had ever mentioned it. Charles, who was observing the session, mentioned that in the romantic languages they typically use "called" instead of "named." The most brilliant, and therefore 'notable' thing about this was, that as he continued to read through his paper, he was automatically changing 'called' to 'named' without me even mentioning it.
When we finished typing up the 'final draft,' I emailed it to him for later reference. I gave him the rough draft so he could compare them later if he so chose to. For most individuals this method may prove of very little to no use, but since Soufiane is so eager to learn, I believe it worked very well. He is one of the few people I would say, that actually might refer to that assignment at a later point. (If given that option, I can't say for sure that I would!
It seemed that by explaining why he was using called and by putting a little emphasis on the situation it really helped the correction stick. I was surprised too that he didn't even pause when he got back to a called vs named situation; he just said named.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I am glad you were there to observe and give your feedback. I think your input definitely helped.
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