Sharon TS #2

Date/Time: January 13th, 2022 from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM

Location: Zoom

Topic/Skill: Introductory

Feedback provided to tutee: Speaking with the tutee was difficult. He was shy about speaking out loud, and slow to respond to written messages in the chat regardless of whether they were in English or his native language. There was an attempt to encourage the tutee to speak in English, letting them know that it is okay to make mistakes because I was there to help and not admonish him. This met with very little success. He spoke very minimally and mumbled into his microphone, making him unintelligible not because his English was poor but because hearing quality was poor. When the session ended, it was with the promise to try to practice teaching and vocabulary again the following week.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Getting such a shy student was a shock. I know some people are embarrassed about their language ability. I certainly was in foreign language classes in the past. But I was unsure of how to handle the situation as a teacher. I think the biggest lesson I learned here was that not every question should be saved for the first meeting and that sometimes, it is better to gather more information about language skill prior to the first meeting. If I had done that, I could have perhaps been more prepared. This particular tutoring session felt a bit like a failure on my part for those reasons.

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