Catalina - TP #5

This last tutoring session has, once again, seen my admiration develop towards my students. And I call them students now because, although my original SST learners didn’t really know what going to class meant; they have grown to expect work, pay attention, bring something into each class hour and take as much out as they can. Actually now I find myself going through a second set of uncomfortableness (and if this word doesn’t exist, I just made it up). Because the first class was such a disaster, I have modified the classes to be directed and organized and it has been working very well. However, I now would like to be able to teach them faster and better, including more useful stuff for their day to day basis. And they are actually doing their homework but I wonder if I am asking too little of them precisely because I assumed that they didn’t know what studying is all about. Or if I just would like to magically teach them faster but need to take things one at a time. So this week their homework is a bit more complicated… and we’ll see what comes out of that.

The class again started with dinner. I am guessing it’s their way of ‘paying’ me for the classes; however it was also because Alberto was going to be late and that was a way of making time. Tatiana really likes me and I love her. She’s always laughing and fidgeting. I do think she has a communication problem, though. She doesn’t speak good Spanish or English but she gets her message across by giggling, pointing and being adorable. I wonder how things will be when school gets serious, though, and I worry. During dinner I hear about the story of Katia, the oldest daughter, and her trip to the US. Again, I look at these people with true admiration.

After dinner we started the class with their homework which was to write down what they were wearing every morning since the last time we met. It was really interesting to see how Tony learned from the correction of Emma’s mistakes and applied it directly to the board… Their spelling is still pretty bad, but those words that we’ve been over more than once are starting to stick. We then proceeded to work out a Q&A exercise and I am wondering how much I should explain about just plain grammar to them so they understand the construction of these questions and answers. Through repetition they are getting the gist of the structure, but don’t really understand some of the theory… basically because I don’t think they’ve ever really conceptualized language parts, so how can I say the adjective goes in front of the noun or the third person uses an ‘s’ if they have no idea what I am talking about? I try to work out examples and a communicative use, but I wonder how far this takes me. The classes are always at least one hour and a half long and I leave them hungering for more. We were going to work out some hypothetical phone conversations and this will be a challenge because I think it might be too difficult for them… but Friday will tell. The alphabet still needs some polishing so we always end up singing it. And their homework is to build an interview of at least five questions of those they’ve been practicing in the last classes, ask someone these questions and write down the answers. The spelling is going to be interesting to see. I hope none of them comes with a broken nose to class the next day for asking the wrong person!!