English Tutoring

[Anna Van Sant]

I've been tutoring a Burmese refugee through the organization Refugee Transitions for a few months. I've tried out the method with her and I've found that she's really taken to it. I think she feels really empowered being able to speak in complete sentences that form a conversation rather than learn only key words and phrases. We have certain units we're required to recover to help them in daily life (medical, financial transactions, etc). I don't have the method down yet to be able to incorporate all the vocabulary and phrases I need to cover these units but I find that even if I don't have signs for certain words, as long as I follow one concept she already understands with one piece of new information, she gets it much easier than she would have without the method. 

For example, I was going over medicine labels with her (using a few bottles of cold, flu, and pain medication) and talking about symptoms of illnesses. I reviewed the part of the game that dealt with comparison and I was able to follow it up with, "Which medicine has acetaminophen?" With the Oxford picture dictionary and the method I was able to try out, "Do you have a cold?" and "Have you ever had chicken pox?" (though not sure if I conveyed, "Have you ever had...?" well enough). I definitely see a marked difference in how engaged she is with the lesson when I'm using signs and setups she already understands over when we're just working with the worksheets from the textbook I was given.

[Benjamin Barrett]

That's an exciting use of LH!

For "have you ever," you could present pictures of a person as an adult and as a child chicken pox. The story could be like:

This is Kim
This is Kim, too
This is Kim when she is 37
This is Kim when she was 5
Kim has had chicken pox
(Pointing at the picture of Kim as an adult) Has Kim ever had chicken pox?

Do it with other sets like a person with a dog when they were a child, etc., and the concept should come clear.

Ben Barrett
La Conner, WA

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