Erin - TP 2

On Wednesday evening, I met my first tutee. Due to the circumstances under which I know her, I will call her “Maria” for the purposes of the blog. We met for around two years, and a large portion of this time was spent speaking Spanish; as soon as she found out that I understand Spanish, she began talking around 100 miles an hour… Although the vast majority of every tutoring session should and will be in English, I accepted the extensive use of Spanish this time because, due to her situation, I thought it was very necessary for her to feel completely comfortable with me. I think the two biggest challenges I will have as her tutor are to not speak in Spanish, since that would be easier for both of us, and to not just chat because she is very gregarious and fun to talk to.
Maria’s level of English is speaking is very low in both speaking/listening and reading/writing. Also, our tutoring sessions are not a compliment to English classes, as it would for a CIES student because the amount of time that she spends working right now does not allow her to participate in steady classes; therefore, these sessions will be very crucial for her to learn English. In addition to this, she has a very concrete goal of what she would like to achieve with her English learning, which is great because it gives us a lot of direction, but at the same time, I feel like it will take a while to get there: back in Cuba, she was a physician’s assistant and would like to practice here in the States, and in order to do this she needs to pass a test, which is obviously in English.
At this first meeting, we attempted to have basic conversation in English, which showed me that she needs help with even basic vocabulary. For example, she understood the question, “What is your favorite color?” and answered with a color; however, when I asked “How old are you?” she confused it with “How are you?” So I believe that we will start at the beginning with simple vocabulary and then go to grammar; we will have to focus on more rules than simply being communicative, since she is aiming to take a test which will be intensive and which includes an essay portion. She has a few English materials, so I will gauge what she has when I meet with her this evening.