Jade TS #3 - Paola

 Date/Time: Saturday, January 25th 1:00pm-2:30pm

Location: Tutee's home

Topic/Skill: Conversation practice (worked on telling stories with the past tense), talked about what she did this week, did a grammar-in-use activity for the past perfect form (tutee wanted to work on past participles in particular), pronunciation practice

Feedback provided to the tutee: Paola was very good at expressing herself in English but was hesitant to attempt to use certain grammatical forms that she wasn't comfortable with using, such as the past perfect. I encouraged her to speak freely and had her attempt to form a thought before I tried to correct or assist her. She wanted to resort to Spanish ocassionally but I would not respond until she tried saying it in English. When Paola made the same error frequently I would write it down in her notebook and go over the grammar point with her. I assigned homework on the past perfect form to review with her next week.

Lessons learned: My tutee Stephanie was unable to make it to the session today, but had a friend, Paola, visiting from Colombia that wanted to practice her English. I had met her the week prior so I already knew her level and what to prepare for our session today. Paola was a very curious student and asked many dilligent questions about each grammar point we talked about. She constantly sought out the "rules" for each point, such as when to use "many" versus "much." She found it very helpful when I wrote down a word or phrase in English with its Spanish equivalent along with an English sentence using the word, so that she could remember the context in which we discussed it. Knowing Spanish was really helpful for teaching Paola, because I was able to understand where her mistakes were stemming from, and when she didn't know a word in English, I could help her with the translation. 


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