“Wait, what is
tutoring?” she asked.
“You know, I’ll explain
English to you, like a teacher….” I tried to explain. She still seemed
confused. “Como
“Oh, yeah, of course!”
she replied, smiling. We went to find a classroom at CIES to use, which I had
done with Chih-Jung the previous day. I like pulling a table flush with the
whiteboard and using it while seated across from the student. It feels less
formal but still effective for them to read the words easily. Plus, I struggled
for several years with a portable whiteboard when I taught outside of Home
Depot, and I can’t get enough of teaching in a classroom.
We began to chat. Yaneli
aspires to study theater and performing arts in UDG, Universidad de
Guadalajara. There are two separate majors at FSU, she informed me, but only a
combined one at UDG. This way, she can study acting and also costume design.
She taught me the distinction that FSU makes between the two by listing the
jobs in each major. I put as headings on the board Theater and Performing Arts.
Actors were the only members of the Theater list, but we jointly determined
(Yaneli’s knowledge and descriptions combined with my labeling—“They make the
clothes”=costume designer) that Performing Arts has the behind-the-scenes
talent. Yaneli hopes to be an actress while she is young and then open an
academy of the arts, “like Juilliard.”
As with Chih-Jung, I
asked Yaneli to read for me. She chose to read from Degas’ Little Dancer, another children’s book I had brought for P.J.
She has an unmistakable Hispanic accent that makes all words beginning with
s-consonant sound like es-consonant (sculpture is esculpture), and yes
sounds like Jess. She understood
almost all of the words she read, excluding clasped
and forward. This led into a lively
explanation of forward, backward, and
sideways. “Is go forward the same as go
straight?” she wanted to know.
I drew a figure on the board as if we were
looking down on her and a starting line. “If we go straight, we can only go
here,” I said and drew a line from the figure straight out. “If we go forward,
though, we could go here, or here, or here, as long as it’s not behind us,” I
explained as I drew a series of arrows radiating out from the figure, all at
different angles but in front of the starting line. I then followed up with
backwards and sideways arrows. Which made me wonder, why forward and backward and sideways? Yaneli
wondered the same thing, catching herself from saying sideward.
Yaneli’s speech is very understandable, and
she is comfortable with colloquial forms of English like It’s, I wanna, I’m gonna. I noticed some errors with her forgetting
to add a/an and to, even though she knows the rules when I isolated the issue.
Her listening is weaker; she needs slow speech and oftentimes repetition. I’m
looking forward to learning about listening in class to help her develop those
skills!
Finally, I checked out Yaneli’s grasp of the
past and future tenses. I asked her, “What did you like to do when you were
little?” She told me, “Plays. You know the Grinch? Cindy Loo Hoo!” she said
while pointing at herself. She also said, “Take kickboxing, swimming, dancing.”
She used phrases that are typical of the past (“A couple years ago”) but no
verb tenses of the past. For the future, I asked her, “What will you do when
you leave CIES?”
She answered, “I am applying to the
university in Guadalajara .
I want to be actress,” and similar phrases. I didn’t hear her use the word will, so we have plenty to work on! I
collected a writing sample and told her I’d give it back to her next week. I’m
looking forward to building her confidence and speaking/listening ability.
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