Keira TS #15
Date/Time: July 5, 2017 - 4:05pm
Location: Starbucks
Topic/Skill: Review, Prepositions, Idioms
Today was my last meeting with Casias, although I made sure to tell him that I would still be living in Tallahassee for some time if he ever needed to meet up again, or had any further questions. As we have gotten in the practice of doing, we took a few minutes just to review a few of the things we have looked at over our previous sessions. We also looked at how certain prepositions are used in English and the reasons they are used with the nouns that they are. He has been struggling a little in learning when to use "at" and "in" in sentences like "I am at Starbucks," and "I live in Tallahassee." He also got a little mixed up when describing the location of his car, wanting to know if he should say "at the street" or "in the street" when it should really be "on the street." We talked about the rules for when "at" is usually used (e.g. small places or proper nouns) as opposed to "in" (e.g. countries or big cities). Finally, before we finished our session, we took the last few minutes to talk about some new idioms. In a previous session, Casias had asked me to teach him an idiom or phrase that meant "this is easy," so I taught him the phrase "piece of cake." He wanted to be able to tell his personal trainer that the exercises he was doing were not hard enough. He liked the phrase "piece of cake," but he wanted to know other phrases which meant the same thing, so we also went over "easy as pie," "it's a snap," and "it's not rocket science."
Feedback Provided to Tutee: In addition to our normal discussion and use of examples, I asked Casias if he listens to or reads anything in English outside of class. He told me that while he used to, he does not really do so anymore. I advised him that he may want to start again; what I think he lacks more than anything else is practice and focus. Many times when we would meet, it would seem as though he was only giving me part of his attention, in spite of his readiness to ask questions and his eagerness to have a tutor in the first place. I told him that paying attention to when other people speak and when he speaks (he sometimes catches himself speaking too quickly to understand or using the wrong word or word form) will help him develop habits that reinforce correct grammar usage.
Lesson(s) about Tutoring and/or the Tutee You Learned: Tutoring Casias was a very interesting experience in many ways. He is clearly a very smart person, and his speech rate was much faster than I would have expected of anyone still studying English. However, throughout the entire time I tutored him, he had a tendency to struggle with some grammar problems that were more basic than his level would indicate. He had trouble with article use, tenses, subject-verb agreement, and other grammar errors. When we talked, he usually provided the correct answer or version of a question or sentence. It seemed as though he knew the correct answer in most cases, he just needed to doubt himself less, or perhaps spend a few more seconds thinking about the answer. As I told him, I think he will find that practice and seeking out more things to listen to and read in English will help him a lot in overcoming these problems.
Location: Starbucks
Topic/Skill: Review, Prepositions, Idioms
Feedback Provided to Tutee: In addition to our normal discussion and use of examples, I asked Casias if he listens to or reads anything in English outside of class. He told me that while he used to, he does not really do so anymore. I advised him that he may want to start again; what I think he lacks more than anything else is practice and focus. Many times when we would meet, it would seem as though he was only giving me part of his attention, in spite of his readiness to ask questions and his eagerness to have a tutor in the first place. I told him that paying attention to when other people speak and when he speaks (he sometimes catches himself speaking too quickly to understand or using the wrong word or word form) will help him develop habits that reinforce correct grammar usage.
Lesson(s) about Tutoring and/or the Tutee You Learned: Tutoring Casias was a very interesting experience in many ways. He is clearly a very smart person, and his speech rate was much faster than I would have expected of anyone still studying English. However, throughout the entire time I tutored him, he had a tendency to struggle with some grammar problems that were more basic than his level would indicate. He had trouble with article use, tenses, subject-verb agreement, and other grammar errors. When we talked, he usually provided the correct answer or version of a question or sentence. It seemed as though he knew the correct answer in most cases, he just needed to doubt himself less, or perhaps spend a few more seconds thinking about the answer. As I told him, I think he will find that practice and seeking out more things to listen to and read in English will help him a lot in overcoming these problems.
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