I’ve grown up in a mostly English speaking home, alternating from English to Cantonese depending on who I was talking to (my grandmother, who is Hakka, is unable to communicate in English).
It’s so easy for me to take these things for granted – the English language, that is. I’ve had little problems reading, writing, understanding and basically just using the language. Today, at my very first tutoring session with an ESL (English as a Second Language) student, I guess I finally realized that, it really is difficult for certain students to even put together a sentence in English, much less a paragraph or an essay.
I’ve never tutored English before, till now, and my student is hardworking and really eager to learn – I’m totally lying to say that I’m not scared. I asked her to write me 2 essays the previous week and upon reading them today, (there were certain spaces in her essays which she filled with Chinese characters – she didn’t know how to translate her thoughts into written English), I realized that I had taken on a challenge bigger than I had initially given it credit for.
I conducted the entire lesson in Cantonese, mostly not wanting to pressure her into speaking in English at the moment. Her vocabulary is very limited but she could speak english - Manglish, mostly.
I am excited, to teach her, to improve, and learn along with her – but among those positive and optimistic thoughts, buried within are certain worries, fears and anxiousness that I wouldn’t be able to teach her everything I want to. I want her to be able to master the language, am I being too optimistic? Too naive?
I looked through about a dozen websites at 3am this morning, seeking advice on how to teach ESL students and some of the great websites I found are listed below: (you can look if you’re interested for any reason at all)
For more advanced ESL Students:
http://www.rong-chang.com/
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/tutor/problems/esl.shtml
For beginner ESL Students:
http://www.bnkst.edu/literacyguide/ell.html
I passed her a Sweet Valley book, a rather simple (and non-threatening) one where they’re still in middle school. I guess, to me, reading is a must if a person wants to improve their written and spoken English.
I have so many thoughts swimming in my head at the moment – I really appreciate any feedback at all on how to improve or make my one- on-one tutoring lessons more effective.
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3 comments:
I fell in love with English because of SweetValley. So you might just be on the right track.
She sounds like she needs to start from the basic. Maybe work trough the basic cores of English? Verbs, nouns, adjectives, and most importantly, sentence structure. Get primary school workbooks?
I can go shopping with you ;)
I don't mean to sound condescending but frankly, if one cannot grasp the basics, then you can never truly progress to a higher stage. You can't run until you learn how to walk, right?
Then when she gets that... let her read. A lot. Newspapers. Books. Make sure she holds a dictionary and search for every word she didn't get. Give her words. Let her look for the meaning and make sentences out of them, I always enjoyed those.
She sounds like a really bright girl from what you've told me. So she's got me rooting for her but one thing about language learning is that the peak kinda ends at around 12-13. After that, it gets tougher and tougher to pick up a language from the beginning. It's not too late for her!
Oh, and don't encourage Manglish.
It might sound evil. But for her to acquire a new skill, she'll need to get rid of old habits.
I think I'm nagging. Lol.
Maybe we can work on a proper step by step plan for her. I've learned quite a bit on developing plans. I'd like to see her make it too!
*mwahs.
All the best, Grace.
You can do it.
Oh and I had tonnes of ex-colleagues who spoke English as a second language cos they were from Brazil/Columbia/Korea. So I think I've picked up a few tips here and there that might help.
Meet up soon!
COME TO KLANG la!!!! YOU'RE ON HOLIDAY!!!
thanks Twina :)
I think that's really true - all that you've said in your comment. It's not nagging, but it's informative and exactly what I needed :).
I started off with readers' digest and i think that was a bit too much for her to take in. I hope SV would capture her interest - it made me love English as well!
I guess you're absolutely right about the basics and about expanding her vocabulary especially. Her compositions suffer due to her compulsive usage of "then" >.<.
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