Yesterday after class I met up with Jose Neto, my CIES
tutee. We spent the first ten minutes or so getting to know each other. I asked
him questions regarding his English instruction. Before coming to CIES, he
spent a year in Brazil studying English, which consisted of a two hour lecture
every Saturday. I inquired as to why he was interested in learning English, to
which he responded that he needed to learn English for his engineering major. After
a brief introduction, I gave him a grammar proficiency test that I found after
quite some time of searching the internet. It consisted of 120 questions, with
the level of difficulty gradually increasing after a series of questions.
Afterwards, I gave him a small article to read out loud, of which also had
questions that tested his reading comprehension. As he was reading, I
underlined the words that he mispronounced so that we could go over them after
he finished, and so that I could find a pattern in his mispronunciation if it
existed. Once that exercise was finished, I closed out the tutoring session by
asking him simple questions concerning what he felt he needed to work on, what
his strengths were, and how he feels that he learns best. From his performance
in our reading activity, I believe that he is a very strong reader. His
strongest weakness appears to be speaking. Therefore, I plan on finding fun activities
for the next session that center on pronunciation and conversation.
Great job, Alice! Did he balk at that long test? I would have been a little scared :) How far did he get into it? I may have to try it, if you found it helpful. It seems like you were very thorough--good job!
ReplyDeleteThankfully, he did not balk!! I think his eagerness to work on his English suppressed the natural disdain one might have towards test taking! I have yet to grade the test, but I will let you know when I find out how far he went.
ReplyDeleteGreat job of investigating José's strengths and weaknesses in your first meeting.
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