Eye Learners/Newcomers
Student D
Student E
Student G
Student H
Student I
Ear Learners/Long-term US residents
Student A
Student B
Student C
Student F
The Importance of Dance
Pot Legal
Weird Friday
Spelling
How would your tutoring approach need to be
different for the two groups of students?
I think the first step is to take an investigative
approach and try to identify whether your tutee is an international ESL or
generation 1.5 student. An intake
interview with student background questions could help determine which of the
two groups your tutee falls under. As the tutor I have to be mindful that
international ESL students have a good grasp of English grammar and the
terminology that goes with it (e.g. parts of speech, articles, subject verb
agreement), but these same students may have difficulty communicating in the
language due to little practice speaking in English. I would try my best to
help my international ESL tutee feel comfortable in speaking with me and
exchanging ideas. I believe positive reinforcement is really important with
these novice composition writers. It will also be important to help
international students with the clarity of their ideas by having them read
sentences aloud to make sure they are comprehensible to their reader. With an
international ESL student I could draw their attention to grammar points using
metalanguage and have them self correct their errors. I will also have to help
these types of students become familiar with collocations and possible word
choice issues do to their first language interference. I think one of the most
important things when working with international ESL students is to remember
that the way we write an academic essay in English is not always the same in
other countries. Things like thesis, topic sentences and structure of an essay
may be very confusing and need to be explained to international ESL tutees.
Generation 1.5 students on the other hand have learned
English primarily through hearing the language as well as through trial and
error. It will be important to remember
that these types of students may have had gaps in their education. It would not be beneficial to use grammar
terms with my generation 1.5 tutee and if they are confused about English grammar
terms I will need to explain them. It may be helpful to provide my generation
1.5 tutee with a parts of speech chart. It will be important to show my
generation 1.5 tutee the differences between everyday spoken English and
written discourse. It will also be helpful for me to look for the students use
of idiomatic expressions and phrases that are used in spoken English, but not in
academic writing. I will also have to consider the ethnicity of my generation
1.5 tutee and look for possible errors in their writing that may be similar to
their international ESL counterparts due to possible language transfer.
Great suggestions for how to approach different learner populations. The grammar chart really stick out for me after reading your post. How would something like this look? I feel like it would be really cool if you could bring an example to class to share with me...I think I might want to borrow it for my tutees.
ReplyDeleteHi Kyle, I probably shouldn't throw the term chart out there so recklessly. I really like to use the bigger index cards when tutoring students. I have them keep track of the things we have worked on in our sessions by writing it down on index cards. They are great for helping students self correct or remember grammar points. I just facilitated one of my tutees in begining a preposition card where she writes down sentences with prepostions in them so she can see what words commonly co-occur with certain prepostitions. I think a generation 1.5 student would benefit with an index card with definitions of the different parts of speech along with example sentences with the particular part of speech underlined.
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