1st Meeting -- Jan 26th, 2011

Journal #1

January 26, 2011

09:40am-10:40am (1 hour)

I met my tutee for the first time today. His name is Oscar (changed to protect student privacy) and he is a freshman at a local High School. For the entire meeting Oscar seemed very nervous to speak English. It is obvious that he is going to need some help building confidence in his English language skills.

I began the lesson with an activity to get Oscar talking and to get him feeling comfortable with me. I told him that I would ask him a question which he would answer in English and then he could ask me any question in return. I first asked him “what is your favorite color?” He responded to this question easily. However, when it came time for him to ask me a question he didn’t quite know what to do. I tried to encourage him further by saying “you can ask me anything. Favorite color, food, what do you want to know about me?” He smiled and shrugged. I waited for him to ask me a question and within about a minute he asked my age. I continued to ask him questions such as where are you from? How long have you been in the United States? He then asked me if I knew how to speak Spanish. His teacher had informed me not to tell him about my Spanish speaking knowledge otherwise he would want to speak to me in the language. Instead of telling Oscar a blatant lie, I told him I knew some Spanish but I was still in the very early stages of learning Spanish. I did this in case I ever find it necessary to speak to Oscar in Spanish at a later date. I want to encourage him to speak English over Spanish but if it becomes necessary to teach Oscar something I will use Spanish.

Once this activity was finished I asked him what sort of English he wanted to work on during our meetings. He once again smiled and shrugged. Luckily, I spoke to his teacher before meeting with him. She had informed me that Oscar had a quiz today in English words that end in “ed”. So, I asked him if he needed any help working on studying for his quiz. He said yes. It was at this point that I noticed our space had become a distraction to Oscar. His teacher had suggested we worked in the library because we would have more privacy. However, the library was packed. There were students constantly walking past our table and Oscar continually looked up every time someone walked by and seemed less likely to speak. I asked if he preferred to go somewhere else and he immediately said yes. We took the time to find a more private place, which was difficult to do in the busy library. I need to remember that Oscar embarrasses easily. He didn’t want anyone to see that he was working with a tutor.

Next, Oscar and I started reviewing the words that ended in “ed” and the patterns that could help him to distinguish whether or not the word endings are pronounced with a “t,” “d,” or “ed.” Once he noticed some patterns he was able to successfully pronounce the words and it helped him with his spelling. He noticed that all the words that ended in “d” and “t” had the “ed” sound at the end of the word. This helped him to listen for these letters at the end of a word. First, Oscar pronounced all the words on a list that he showed me and had some difficulty pronouncing words like “touched,” “added,” and “kissed.” We reviewed these several times. Then, I pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil and handed it to Oscar. I read a word from his list to him and had him try to spell it and then next to his spelling he had to write down how the ending was pronounced (so he had to write “t,” “d,” or “ed” next to his word). He had every ending right and did well with his spelling except for one word – touched.

At the end of the lesson he asked me about the word “coughed.” He wasn’t sure if it had a “t” or “d” ending. So, I sent Oscar on a mission. I told him to find someone in the library that he wouldn’t be afraid to ask to say the word aloud for him. He chose the librarian, wrote the word on a piece of paper and then asked the librarian to say the word for him. He came back with a clear answer. Then, our time was up and I told Oscar I would see him again next Tuesday. He smiled and shrugged. I then asked him if next week he would always have an answer to a question. Instead of smiling and shrugging he needed to say yes or no. He agreed.

Things to work on:

Confidence – The ability to speak up when spoken to. He is a good English speaker but thinks he is not, this hinders further learning of the language. The goal is to get him speaking more conversationally and fluidly, not being afraid to make a mistake.

Pronunciation- There are some sounds that he has trouble pronouncing such as the “ou” and the “a” sounds. He didn’t have much trouble with consonant sounds, mostly just with vowel sounds.

Spelling – He spells like he speaks. Therefore, if he is pronouncing a word incorrectly, he is spelling it incorrectly. If he encounters a word that has an “n” before a “t” such as enter, encounter, and tent he tends to switch the “n” and “t” in his spelling.

Next Meeting:

-We will be meeting for 2 hours on Tuesday, February 2^nd.

-Oscar has agreed to answer all questions verbally instead of with a shrug and smile

- Show Oscar that it is okay to make mistakes

Tutoring Goals:

-Get Oscar working towards confidence in speaking English (even if he doesn’t succeed full confidence during this semester).

-Encourage Oscar to talk to initiate English conversations with those around him.

-Work on any ESL assignments he may be having difficulties with.

-Increased knowledge in vowel pronunciation.