Francis- TP 4

Friday was my second session with Kukit. I introduced the lesson by talking about my first few months in the US: what I found similar to Ecuador, what I found different, what I found difficult, etc. I then asked him to do some free writing for 20 minutes. The prompt was: How do you like Tallahassee? What is different for you? What is similar? What places do you like to visit? The writing was timed for 20 minutes. After the time elapsed, I asked him to read his essay out loud. He stumbled through a few words but overall he seemed to have mastered the pronunciation of the words he wrote. After that, we read over the essay together and made corrections. I often asked him what he thought of a sentence that I saw an error in before I did the correction myself. Also, some words that were misspelled, I asked him to attempt again without the time constraint. I was glad to find that most of the words he misspelled in the essay, like economy, he could easily spell on his own already. I think reading and correcting the essay together was really effective. We were able to discuss grammar and word meaning throughout our reading but I must attribute Kukit's great desire to improve and learn as the most important factor. He asks questions and has patience with his inexperienced tutor.

This took up our session but, as we were packing up, Kukit asked me what I thought about learning new vocabulary by writing the equivalent in his own language. I recalled what we read in Snow. That this technique is not the most advised because, in connecting the new vocabulary word with the first language, it prevents the student from thinking in English. This took a couple tries to explain but I finished by telling Kukit that it was up to him to find the best techniques for him and employing a few different techniques is good. I told him how I learn new words: the definition in the same language as the vocabulary word and drawing it.