On
Saturday, November 17, 2012, I met my friend Edgar at the library. I recently informed my Venezuelan buddy from
the library that Karen, the organizer, said that I should work with Edgar while
I do my tutoring hours at the library. I
feel like I am very lucky to have Edgar as a tutor partner because I enjoy his
company, I learn so much in exchange about his culture, and I have a student
who is relentlessly obsessed about learning English as quickly as
possible. He is the type of student who
would assign himself homework if need be.
He wants to speak “so well” that a person couldn’t hear his accent. While I definitely feel that accents are a
beautiful thing, I also believe that any recommendation that I make will be
considered as he continues his English practice. For example, he told me that he has watched
numerous TED talks after I mentioned to him that it would drastically help his
listening skills.
I had
drinks with Edgar and his friends previously so I did know quite a bit about
him, but I decided that I could use the first tutoring session to start
explaining graphic organizers. We
started talking about how a web outline works and we used it to outline his
hobbies, interests, and expectations in English. When Edgar tried to insist that that’s all
that he could come up with, I challenged him to think of a few more. I even filled in a few bubbles with
information that I learned through our conversations. I realize that Edgar is very committed to
certain hobbies and interests. He is
inspired to play his best when he listens to the classical pianists: Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, and
Rachmaninov. He enjoys Ancient art, but
also Renaissance sculpture works. Edgar
is quite an intelligent and intriguing person.
He is passionate about number’s theory, differential geometry,
mathematics, theoretical physics, chemistry, statistics, physics, and
astronomy.
According
to Edgar, his needs are to improve his writing skills by focusing on sentence
structures, pronunciation rules, and grammar skills. A known weakness of his is the proper use of
articles, prepositions, and context clues.
Edgar wants to be more direct, gain confidence, increase his vocabulary,
and retain more listening comprehension.
Following the web outline, Edgar took an English comfort questionnaire
which helped me judge his current level.
He ranked in the very comfortable range of the spectrum, though I would
judge that he is probably at the high intermediate to advanced level.
After using the outline and
questionnaire, I asked Edgar to pick out an article that was interesting to
him. I helped him find a good one that
gained his approval. We settled for
“Curiosity’s first days on Mars” from the Astronomy
magazine. We talked about how
reading magazine articles was a great way to find interesting and motivating
content that discusses real-life issues, connects readers to the community, and
offers practical information. I assigned
Edgar homework to read the article and underline the words he didn’t know. He was supposed to read it a second time and
then write down the main idea of the article and the most important facts. I modeled a fact that I found, but made the
mistake of not writing it down for Edgar.
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