Today was my first day volunteering as a volunteer ESL teacher. English grammar is one of my strengths, so it made sense that I would teach English to people who need to learn English as a second language. I am working with two groups of people. One is a group of two who are not advanced enough to go into a learning group. The other group is at an intermediate level.
The students in the intermediate level are at about a second grade learning level. The group of two students that I am tutoring is learning English on the Rosetta Stone program. They work for part of the morning on the computer, and then they work in their workbook. The people in this group have little to no English skills.
The Rosetta Stone language program is as good as you have heard about on TV. I spent about 40 minutes going through the lessons on the English lessons. You correlate words with pictures on this program. For instance, the word may be “Bird,” and you will see a group of pictures. You may see a picture of a car, a plane, a dog and a bird. If you choose the wrong answer, you will hear a sound that indicates the answer is wrong. You will also see a red X slashed through your choice, and the word will be vocalized again as “Bird.” You then choose another picture. Even if you cannot read yet, you will be immersed in the English language, because you keep hearing the word until you choose the right answer. You can click on the word to hear the word as many times as you want.
Rosetta Stone also lets you learn phrases. For instance, the phrase: “The man chasing the boy” has a correlating picture of a man chasing a boy. You also learn your prepositions such as above, below, in, out and so forth is also depicted in pictures. For instance, a picture of a boy sitting on the wing of a plane stands for “Boy on a plane,” and a picture of a boy under a plane stands for “Boy under a plane.”
One of the lessons we did today was a paragraph. The students listen to the teacher read the sentences one phrase at a time. The students then read along aloud. When we are finished reading, each student is asked to read a sentence by themselves. We talk about certain words in the paragraph to make sure the students comprehend what is being read. Then the students are asked to answer key questions with true or false. Another part of the exercise is asking the student to give an opinion to certain statements in the exercise to see if they can think in English. This is hard for most of the students at this point. They are so afraid they will give the wrong answer. They don’t know English well enough yet to be able to read the words and gather meaning from the words, but it will happen for them. All students are not exactly at the same level of understanding, but they are learning.
Here’s a lesson that was similar to one I gave today.
In a nutshell, Susan is on a diet, and she has lost five pounds. She still wants to lose 10 more pounds. Susan thinks she looks fat, but her friends tell her she isn’t. She is going on Vacation to Canada in a few weeks, so she bought some clothes. The clothes she bought don’t fit her.
Five true/false statements test their comprehension. Two statements ask for an opinion of yes or no. There is no right or wrong answer. It just asks for their opinion.
The statements asking for a true or false answer are similar to:
Susan lost five pounds.
Susan wants to lose five more pounds.
Susan is moving to Canada
Susan thinks she looks fat.
Susan is fat.
The statements asking for an opinion are similar to:
Susan is fat because she is on a diet.
Dieting is as important as exercise.
The student writes yes or no to these questions to state their opinions.
Then there is a writing exercise to get the students to state their reasoning about a specific question relating to the paragraph. For instance, a question such as:
Why did Susan buy clothes that didn’t fit her?
For us, who are fluent in the English language and grew up with it, this wouldn’t be a difficult question. However, for someone who doesn’t know the language, thinking about what is being said and what is being inferred in the paragraph is very difficult to express verbally.
I was truly humbled by my students today. I can’t wait to go back. I’ll be teaching every Tuesday and Thursday.
