Hopefully I won't need to tutor for very much longer, but for now it earns me some money, so I'm doing it. Previously I tried to find kids to tutor, but this time around I only put up signs at the university campuses. I've previously tutored IUFM students preparing for their oral exam, and hands down, those are my favorite students. I currently have a student preparing for the same oral exam (though she's not at an IUFM) and she's great. These kinds of students have the basics down, but just need conversation practice. We can listen to podcasts or watch the news and talk about it or learn idiomatic expressions.
Then there are the other students. I'm tutoring separately a brother and sister that are in or have finished a BTS in hotel management/catering. Let's just say I have my work cut out for me.
So this is where I'm looking for suggestions: I have a hard time with someone who needs to be able to speak and understand English (the case for the brother and sister), and not necessarily write it, but who has serious gaps in their understanding of basic grammar and vocabulary. I'm supposed to be doing conversation with the brother, but he can't remember what children, travel, or fill mean.
The worst part is that I can feel myself getting annoyed during the lesson when a student doesn't know basic vocabulary or grammar after years of studying it. I know it's not their fault and that that's why they've hired me, but not knowing the word children? Seriously?
I tutored a dyslexic student last year and I felt better about it because I knew we had to start at the beginning and do really basic stuff like reviewing the most common verbs (can, make, come, go, etc). But I feel like I shouldn't be doing that with a 20 year old student. Preconceived idea? Should I be doing really really basic stuff?
Since the goal is to be able to speak a bit and understand people, I try to emphasize listening to BBC language podcasts or watching American newscasts, but comprehension is pretty low (or nonexistent).
And then I start to get annoyed. This is easy, you should be getting more of this. Comon', subject verb object, it's not that hard to make a sentence! I say to myself.
My two questions:
1) How do you deal with frustration/annoyance when tutoring?
and
2) What do you work on with post Bac students who clearly haven't mastered the basics but are supposed to be preparing for an oral or written exam for vocational studies (not literary)?
Should I stick it out with the news until he starts to understand more? Skip it till later? Review basic vocabulary? Get out my grammar worksheets? Keep it all oral?
Suggestions or complaints about your own students are accepted.
4 comments:
I have a seconde student, the youngest I've ever taught, and he makes me crazy sometimes saying, within the same sentence as the correct way, he have. What I've started doing is teaching him how to really analyze what he reads, each sentence, what tense, why, subject, object, etc. So it's reading and grammar at the same time.
You can't do anything without grammar so I say do some with them, since they obviously need it. I explain to students (and Ben, lol) that it does no good to have all these words if you don't know what to do with them. If they complain, well, you're the tutor, and you're the one who knows what they need. Do you use breakingnewsenglish? They have fill in the blank stuff for each article that I like to use a lot, and the guy speaks realllly slow. So it's vocab, listening and you could put grammar in there too.
As for the frustration . . . yoga? Lol. Bubble baths with fancy bath salts paid for with tutoring money :-)
Oh frustration. Honestly, I don't deal with it well. I turn around and count to ten, or if I really need to, we take a ten minute break and I regroup. Sometimes you have to stop, take yourself out of the situation, get a glass of water, and then attack it again with a fresh outlook. What I was doing before obviously wasn't working, so when I get back from my little break, I start again from a new angle. And I guess I do this as many times as I need to until we get through the subject.
I second what Andromeda said. He should be reading like crazy, because that's the best way to get vocab and to see how the grammar is used when somebody is just starting out. As far as vocational goes, focus on giving the person the vocabulary necessary to do their job, and if other vocab gets mixed in, great, and if not, no worries. You've done your best and given them as much as you can.
I had an adult guy that did 240 hrs of lessons over a few month period, so we taught him in chunks of four hours.. ridiculously long for a beginner, and he never really caught on. We played lots and lots of hands on, simple games (he had cards with all of the subjects, and then cards with all of the conjugations, and had to match them, for example) It was a real challenge that took a lot of preparation time, but manipulating an object is what worked for him and he did end up making some progress.
I guess you've got to figure out how this kid's brain works, how he learns, and then attack it from that angle. If he needs to write or read, or if he needs to touch something or see it in front of him, or through listening, etc etc.
But books are a great start, and the Penguin Readers are pretty cheap and they usually come with a CD so you can read it, line by line, talk about vocab, ask comprehension questions, and then listen to it. Then for grammar, he can underline the different tenses that he sees in different colors, whatever. There's a lot of stuff you can do with just one book- describing characters, comparing characters, talking about what you think will happen next, reviewing what has just happened, or what happened at the beginning, etc.
I'm not as strict with grammar because the most important part of learning a language in my opinion is being able to communicate, and you can often do that without perfect grammar. I wouldn't be correcting every little thing, and I wouldn't be trying to teach every tense either. With a beginner, I focus on the past, present, and future, first. They need to be able to get complete sentences out of their mouths. Once those are ok, then it's time to move on, but in order to be able to have a basic convo with somebody, those are really all you need. I also teach them circumlocution, because I think that's a skill that you need to have in a foreign language. Rather than resorting to French to get a translation, I make them describe the vocabulary word that they want from me, and then I'll give them the word once they've sufficiently explained it. It's a challenge but it's a useful skill to have. It's something I wish i'd learned how to do in French before I got over here cause I can't tell you how many times I was stumbling, looking for a word, when it would have been really painless if I'd just tried to describe it to the guy and let him figure out what i'm talking about.
Anyway, it's never fun to work with beginners, so I wish you good luck! I hope that soon you'll be out of the tutoring world and in a place that you enjoy more!
Thanks for the comments. I looked around on the internet for tips for tutors and a university writing lab website had an interesting tidbit: when you get frustrated that a student isn't "getting it", you often revert to what works for you or how you learned the subject, which doesn't necessarily work for the student.
And I'm ashamed to admit that I never scrolled down to the bottom of the pages for breakingnewsenglish! I've printed out articles a couple of times, but I saw there were activities for multiple students, so I never scrolled down to see the other exercises. I'll definitely have to try them.
I'm considering having him buy a workbook we can work through as well. I really like The Good Grammar Book by Micheal Swan. Unfortunately he only has an hour of tutoring a week. Maybe he'll consider a half hour more when he realizes how much work he has.
definately stick to situations and vocabulary that he'll need with his job cos thats the most important for him and it will interest and motivate him more. Watching the news wont help him with angry hotel guests! there's bound to be scenes from tv shows that you could use or role plays in teaching books that deal with situations he'll need.
Reading books with him should help too. Make the grammar a tool to understanding the lesson, not the lesson itself.
Don't be hard on him for not knowing certain vocab. If he's never had to use it (or had interest in learning it) he won't know the words. My French was bad when I came to France despite my 6 years of lessons.
Tell him that if he wants to impress a hot Australian guest at his hotel he needs to sound convincing!! That's always motivated my students to improve their English!
Good luck!
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