Abdul's receptive skill is considerably better than his productive skill. An example of his productive capacity can be seen in his sentence 'Today, the man I rent for you came clean yard'. It was understandable in context, although obviously lacking in certain respects.
The most difficult material for Abdul to study, and therefore what he wants to focus on are listening and speaking. He had been studying listening lessons at www.esl-lab.com when I arrived, so we decided to continue with that effort. There are easy, medium, and difficult lessons, and he had been working on a difficult lesson. This is a reflection of his ambition, although his skill level is at the easy level. We continued with the difficult lesson, listening to the story and answering questions.
There was no written text, which therefore provided a truer test of his listening skills. Although there was a lot of vocabulary that he could learn from and which we covered, real understanding was difficult to arrive at, since the material was so far over his head. Largely, we had to repeat the material that contained an answer to a question at least three times, I would have to answer each question, and then I would describe how the material answered the question. He did manage to answer one question correctly on his own, although I believe that he guessed more than understood. However, he did catch some keywords.
Although I recommended that he study first at the easy level, then work his way through medium and difficult material, I do have hope for him even if he studies way beyond i+1. He was a teacher of Arabic in Saudi Arabia, so probably has some understanding of what is required to truly master material. He has been working on his English-language studies for a long time, so knows what kind of effort he is willing to invest, and what level he prefers to study.
Our last speaking activity was for him to describe what he was going to do with his family after we finished our session. We eventually arrived at the following disorganized story after much clean-up conversation:
My sons will go to Chucky Cheese after 10 minutes (in 10 minutes). I have a problem when I go out with my family, because they don't choose one place. Abdul Mujid wants to go to Chucky Cheese because he likes to play video games. Turki wants to go to Fun Station because he likes to ride the go carts outside; Abdul doesn't like to drive the go carts. My wife wants to go shopping. I don't like to go out, because I want to study English.
Your student is so ambitious, Tom! I wish you could convince him to work at an easier level, as you wrote. Maybe he and you could work through one together another time to build his confidence. Confidence building is important at all levels, I'd gather, but especially with beginners I learned recently from Dr. Kennell.
ReplyDeleteStill, good effort! It sounds like you put your all into the tutoring session. :)