Mary_TP7

David’s TOEFL exam is in less than two weeks! He seems to think our tutoring sessions are a big help, so I agreed to meet with him almost everyday here on out. I think the consistency is best thing I can do for him. He has a wandering mind, so keeping him focused outside of CIES will be a good thing for him. I found a website that has TOEFL prompts and a timer for speaking, so now we can simulate a real test-like experience. I could tell he was trying much harder this session to follow the model I told him to practice last session, but in order for him to do well, we’re going to have to really hunker down this upcoming week!

Mary_TP6

The reading materials I prepared for Ahmed for our second session finally got put to use this time! It’s actually the story I used for my reading lesson plan. Since I had some time from last session to plan it out, I wanted to see if my lesson plans had practical application. I’ve noticed a difference between my tutoring partners. David, with his Spanish background, has a much easier time figuring out the meanings of words. Ahmed however, needs context. Which is a more difficult and frustrating method of figuring out a foreign words meaning. I found a lot of this session was spent encouraging him to allow mistakes, and as a teacher I had to allow some mistakes slide to help encourage him.

Mary_TP5

In my second session with David I got a better idea of my role in his studying. Although he is immersed in English at CIES, his living situation is in the home of fellow Colombians who out of home-sickness request he speak only Spanish with them. I asked if he would like to be conversation partners, and he said he would like that but not until after his TOEFL exam. We then practiced the speaking portion of the TOEFL with prompts I had found off the internet. I gave him a strategy for most of the speaking questions. I told him to say his general answer in one sentence (ex. “My role-model is my father.”) and then explain generally why in one sentence (ex. “He is intelligent, kind, and brave”) and then give a specific example (a memory, an instance, etc.). I told him to practice explaining things in this way in his head and out loud for practice.

Mary_TP4

I didn’t anticipate how frustrating it would be have a tutee not show up for a session. This happened last week when Ahmed and I agreed to meet later in the week to study relative pronouns. It’s not easy for me to get over to campus (it’s about a 30 minute drive) and to find time between work and school to get out there. I had gone online to do research and found worksheets, and thankfully those came into use at our next session. Ahmed apologized and I said I would text him from now on to make sure we could meet up. I found that when it comes to difficult subjects, like relative pronouns, it is best taught in the simplest of terms. We checked the worksheets together and I would ask, “Is it a subject, object, or possessive?” He usually got that first part right. Then I would ask “Is it a person, thing, place, time, or explanation?” I had to describe some of those terms, but once it got the hang of it he could get most of them right and correct his own mistakes.

Mary_TP3

My second tutoring session with Ahmed was focused more on grammar than reading. He was having a lot of difficulty with relative pronouns; namely, when to use which ones. I have to admit I was a little blindsided. I had prepared reading materials for this tutoring session and researched ways to help teach reading (intensive, extensive, skimming, etc) but he was intent on getting this concept down. So, I’ll save the reading materials for another day. The problem is, I haven’t given much thought to relative pronouns myself. I had to read his notes, which were good but incomplete. I did the best I could to explain which are more commonly used for what, but I told him I’d bring material for relative pronouns next week.

Mary_TP2

My second tutoring partner was David. He has a huge personality and gregarious nature. We met in the lounge and he explained to me that he was studying to improve his scores on the TOEFL in order to TA a chemistry class this year. He said the odds were against him and he really needed my help. I don’t know much about TOEFL, specifically what it’s standards are and what it looks for in the student responses. I asked him what his biggest weakness was, and he told me it was the speaking portion. I was surprised, because conversationally he could speak very well. I asked him the standard way in which the speaking is administered and he said it is usually a response to a prompt. I ran a few prompts off the top of my head: “Explain your favorite hobby” etc. His responses were broad and repetitive. Looks like I need to do a lot of research so I can help!

Sydney_CP5

For this tutoring session with Abdullah, we wanted to get a good grasp on what the TOEFL exam was going to entail. We went over the different sections of the TOEFL, how much time he would have for each and the structure of the test. I wanted to make sure that he was very familiar with the format of the test so he would feel comfortable when he was taking the test for real. We found out that his Reading and Speaking were his weakest links, so we decided that during our sessions we would focus more heavily on those. I found a great website that has practice READING TOEFL tests.

http://www.examenglish.com/TOEFL/TOEFL_reading1.htm

First we practiced with smaller paragraphs, but fairly tough material. Very science heavy passages. I think that Abdullah really enjoyed reading about science because that is his area of study back in Saudi Arabia. We did timed readings at first, trying to retain as much of the information as possible, then trying to answer questions about the passage. After the first tutoring session that we had a definitely had a better grasp of what we needed to work on.