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Eris



Anmeldungsdatum: 25.08.2011
Beiträge: 73

BeitragVerfasst am: 06. Sep 2011 21:13    Titel: On Tutoring English Antworten mit Zitat

Hello everybody!

Does anyone have lots of experience in tutoring?
Well even if not, I'd like to hear all your opinions about tutoring nonetheless.

I have been tutoring English now for two years and until the last few weeks it always was -only I might say- a help for the homework. But recently I've started tutoring a new pupil and with this one it is really hard work and I just can't figure out why exactly. I mean: she's really smart and not coy at all, but every time I ask her to repeat the tenses of our last session, she just fails, not knowing what I'm talking about.
I've made her a table and had her doing that same table as a homework with all tenses she really needs: simple present, present progressive, followed by simple past and present perfect. She just keeps mixing them up.

Maybe this wouldn't get me to think so hard about it, if she also had trouble with the future tenses, but she doesn't! She recognizes and conjugates the "will-future" easily. How come?

Has anyone any suggestions on how to present the tenses? Did anyone learn them in a very plausible way? I'm just stuck here!

Regards
Eris
MI
Administrator


Anmeldungsdatum: 22.01.2005
Beiträge: 1140
Wohnort: München

BeitragVerfasst am: 07. Sep 2011 23:05    Titel: Antworten mit Zitat

Does she mix up simple present and simple past, too, or just among the past tenses and among the present tenses? If this is the case, I'd consider it indeed rather curious, if she only mixes up the tenses among the past tenses or among the present tenses but not a past and a present tense, then I'd say she has either not understood the concept of "progressive forms" vs. "simple forms", or she does not concentrate enough and doesn't practise at home.
The latter is pretty common, as most of the times the students have no real interest in the subject, the former could be dealt with.

I don't know how to present the different tenses, except by saying "Well, these are the tenses for the past, these are the ones for the present. And you see, for every simple tense, you've got a progressive one and that's for saying that something is 'ongoing'." And then I'd give a couple of examples.
Okay that doesn't cover the difference between simple past and present perfect and it doesn't cover the subtleties, but that's about as easy as I can think of.

If however, she mixes up present and past tenses among each other, I'd say the problem might be lying deeper: Has she grasped the concept in German?

Greetings
MI
Eris



Anmeldungsdatum: 25.08.2011
Beiträge: 73

BeitragVerfasst am: 08. Sep 2011 23:45    Titel: Antworten mit Zitat

Hi

How can I describe it?
If I explain to her exactly what she has to do, she can solve it without mixing it up, but I have to make sure first, she knows how to do it.
If I don't tell her first how the tense is built, she doesn't grasp the task on her own.
This is bad for tests and she will keep getting bad marks if she doesn't learn how to switch between the different tenses - and by switch I mean any combination of tenses, no matter if past, present or simple and progressive.
I've checked if she can work with tenses in German and I wasn't surprised that she ain't brilliant, but I start to think, there is more to it.
Just to give a little impression: a few lessons ago I explained the simple past tense and exercised it with her, when she suddenly answered "done" to my question, what the past form of "do" is. To be sure I asked, if she'd already learned all the participles which she affirmed. Of course I explained again the simple past and what participles are for and so on. In the last lesson then, when I wanted to refresh her memory for the present perfect and asked her, what the participle of "do" is, she said she wouldn't know. She just says that she keeps forgetting and it only inflicts fear when I say that she isn't going to pass a test when she forgets all the stuff we learn together.
I mean it's odd when she presently doesn't know, what she definitely knew in the past, right?
But thanks, MI, for your good ideas anyway. I'll make sure she keeps practising with me and maybe she won't fail at her next test as badly as in her last few - nobody can keep forgetting things.

Greetings
Eris
Jack
Ehrenmoderator


Anmeldungsdatum: 09.04.2006
Beiträge: 549

BeitragVerfasst am: 09. Sep 2011 19:33    Titel: Antworten mit Zitat

Eris hat Folgendes geschrieben:
She just says that she keeps forgetting and it only inflicts fear when I say that she isn't going to pass a test when she forgets all the stuff we learn together.
I mean it's odd when she presently doesn't know, what she definitely knew in the past, right?


Not sure about this since I don't know her at all, but _maybe_ she just has some trouble accessing what she already knows when she needs to, which could indicate some kind of learning disability. In that case, fear of failing a test would of course not help her but deteriorate her situation. Nevertheless, this is only a guess and requires further investigation to be sure. Does she have difficulty with things like spelling as well by the way?
Eris



Anmeldungsdatum: 25.08.2011
Beiträge: 73

BeitragVerfasst am: 11. Sep 2011 11:43    Titel: Antworten mit Zitat

Zitat:
Does she have difficulty with things like spelling as well by the way?


I'm not sure if her difficulty in spelling is normal, I guess it is. Lots of German people have trouble at first with the phonetics and so does my pupil. But she knows when she doesn't know a certain vowel. The letter "h" gives her a hard time.
I'll have to wait a few weeks until she has a test to see if she learned something with me. If she hasn't, I will check with her parents if she has a disability because I've had this kind of thoughts myself. But until nothing has happened in that area, I will not start any discussions. Parents tend to be a little touchy when it comes to such things. I'm going to have to be very sensible with them.
Jack
Ehrenmoderator


Anmeldungsdatum: 09.04.2006
Beiträge: 549

BeitragVerfasst am: 11. Sep 2011 14:42    Titel: Antworten mit Zitat

Yeah, talking to the parents might be helpful in that case if you're careful enough. I guess it's always a good idea to point out to them that children with a learning difficulty are usually no less intelligent than others, sometimes even highly intelligent. The only difference is that their brains work in a different way, which doesn't have to be such a big issue if the learning disability is detected correctly and treated accordingly.
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