Tonight I met with Maria, and I noticed this time more than ever before how true Snow's analogy is about a teacher being more of a coach than a sage. There is only so much I can do to teach her, and since I only see her for about 4 hours a week, truly learning English will be up to her. Because the computer-based program that she has is fairly thorough so far (we have gotten through two disks), basing our lesson on this gives her focus, since in our first few sessions, she had a lot of trouble focusing. Along this same line, we now go into the room to study, and she locks everyone out, especially so that the kids don't bother us.
When I got there, I commented on something that she had changed in the house, and was surprised when she tried to explain in English why she had changed it. Since it was a few disjointed words, it took me a minute to understand her explanation, but suddenly it dawned on me, and I was impressed by what she had said. I also realized how difficult English is, especially pronunciations and spelling, as we progressed through different vocabulary lessons. It took me several minutes to clarify the difference between "shirt" and "shorts", "pin" and "pen", as well as "chicken" and "kitchen". There were also concepts I had to explain; for example, in Spanish, a boat is "barco", and ship is also "barco"...so when a picture of a boat came up, she said barco..boat, and I said "yes"; however, when a picture of a large ship came up, and she said "boat", I had to explain why it was not the same word. There were also many times when she would say the correct word for something and then doubt herself, or she would say the word under her breath because she thought she was wrong and didn't want to say it out loud, even though she was right. At these times, I felt a bit like a cheerleader because she already knew the knowledge, so there was nothing to teach her in that moment, but she was lacking confidence about what she knew, so I was encouraging as possible.
As we go on, I consistently discover that she knows more English, at least vocabulary, than I originally thought she did, and so as I help her learn, I am working to increase her confidence as well. Although this will be my last tutoring blog, I will be working with Maria throughout the fall, and possibly the school year, so I am really looking forward to watching her progress even further, as well as getting to know her better.
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