Maria TS #5

Date/Time: September 12th, 4:00 pm

Location: CIES Lounge Area

Topic/Skill: Vocab Learning and Memorization

Feedback provided to tutee: 

We did a reading exercise where he read a text (intensive reading) and underlined words he did not understand. For every word I told him to take a guess at the meaning. Sometimes he was able to guess it, other times we had to look up the word. We then wrote down flash cards and practiced this vocab.

I found it challenging to provide actual feedback when it was vocab training. Other than praising him for correct pronunciation it was more just training and repeating words. He told me he found it very helpful though. 

I did make sure to provide positive feedback on the way he wrote his flash cards. I liked how he was able to find synonyms to the new words so that he could understand it in his own way. For example for the word "sharp" he would write "you can cut yourself on it". 

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: 

I really learned how challenging it is for some students (perhaps mostly Arabic speakers) to spell English. He struggled a lot with telling i, e, ea, oa, and similar sounds apart.

Therefore, I want to practice this with him the next time we meet since I also learned a lot from our TEFL class when we talked about the vowel sounds and guardian consonants.