Catalina - TP #7

Friday lesson was a difficult one for my SST. Since we’d gone into the reading and writing material in class I thought I’d use them as guinea pigs to try some reading exercises out. I know, I know, I’m evil… I was trying to find some text that might be at their level and go over all the vocabulary they have already learned. I thought this would be a good refresher and would also make them feel accomplished. So I ended up producing a tailored generic text about a person called Maria. I thought I had only used about 10% of unknown vocabulary, making it more of an extensive reading than an intensive one but, boy was I wrong!

After dinner – and this is turning into a tradition now - the class started with the interviews they were supposed to do as homework. Emma and Tony both had done them correctly and we read them out loud looking more for the results that going through the grammar. I wanted to praise them for actually having spoken in English with someone! Alberto had forgotten his homework so he just came up with some Q&A on the spot.

Then came the reading. I knew this was going to be hard for Tony, but there was three paragraphs and they each read one. After each paragraph I asked them some comprehension questions and Emma is good! Her passive knowledge of English is a lot larger and more intuitive than the men’s one. I am impressed! After the first reading we go over vocabulary and here’s when I realize that my intended extensive reading was really a painful word by word sort of text. We read the text again, each one reading a different section this time. This time I asked them to simply give me whatever information they thought was the main idea of their passage in their own words. Again Emma proved to be very good at it whereas Alberto didn’t grasp the idea and tried to fall into straight translating. Tony is doing a lot of progress in simply believing that he can speak English, even if it’s not perfect, and getting his message through. Quoting someone at CIES last week: “you don’t have to be sure of yourself, just go for it!”

Their homework is writing some answers for the questions that I’d made for the text. We’ll see how their composing goes. And now I have to think about something lighter for the next class!