APLNG 493
Professor Johnson
Ellen Chuang
Post Tutoring Reflection Paper
Aslan, a young boy from Kazakhstan trying to pass the TOEFL PBT in order to
enroll in the regular class next semester, is my tutee. My tutor session with Aslan
actually extends longer than it supposed to be because I forgot that we only need to do
five sessions, so I told him that this tutor will keep on going till the end of the
semester. I didn’t mind to extend the session; it would be nice if I can help him pass
the exam, and I may also learn a lot from the extended tutor session since I’ll have
more time observing my tutee and make adjustment on the way I teach.
When we first met at HUB, besides discussing about how and what the tutor
session will focus on, we had a really good chat which was out of my expectation. In
addition to sharing the experience of both being foreign students in the United States,
we also talked about our countries and different culture backgrounds, why we choose
to study oversea and what we found interesting and fresh about this big country. Now
as I recalled, I didn’t plan to have such a long conversation (it last about one and half
hour) on the first tutoring session, but it really helps to keep the teaching process
smoothly if teachers can establish fine relationships with students. After a long
discussion, we decided to focus on improving his skills in taking the PBT TOEFL,
especially the “Structure and Written Expression” part, which he found the most
difficult.
As per we had discussed, I tried to find some practice tests for him; he would
complete one or two tests before the tutor session, and I would explain and clarify the
questions or answers that confused him. I remembered that after the first session, I
went home and started to google PBT practice tests, I also tried to answer some of the
questions in the “Structure and Written Expression” part; surprisingly, it was not as
easy as I thought, and some of them took me a while to figure out the answer. I felt a
little bit panic at that time. I was nervous about being unable to clear all his doubts
and how that might stuck myself in a very embarrassing situation, but our second
session went pretty well, which again surprised me. As I had foreseen, some questions
really struck me that I couldn’t provide answers with certainty, so I just told him that I
also had doubts in the questions, and I’ll go back and check with classmates and
teachers, or check online. He gladly accepted. It was such a relief to me.
Probably due to my personality, I was so afraid to make mistakes and feel
embarrassed for that, thus, I always got panic when I felt that something is out of my
control and I couldn’t make it perfect. Before tutoring, I thought of every possibility
that might lead me to that unbearable embarrassment, which made me even more
anxious. However, after tutoring in the past a few weeks, I realize that things are not
always that terrible, and I should really quit the habit of worrying too much. Therefore,
another important thing I learned from tutoring is, a teacher must have confidence in
himself/herself, and teach with a positive attitude. Consider the possible challenges or
obstacles one might face during teaching and think of solutions, but not to gloom over
them in advance. This might not be a big problem for many others, but it is really
important to me. I really appreciate that my tutee’s friendliness builds up my
confidence, and that the tutor session gives me an opportunity to brainstorm how to
deal with unexpected problems.
While celebrating my own development as a more confident tutor, it is more
exhilarating that my tutee made tremendous progress in identifying the correct
answers of the “Structure and Written Expression” part. At the beginning, he could
barely get any answers right, and when I asked why he picked that one, he just shook
his head and replying that he didn’t know. As a result, I decided to do the practice test
with him once or twice a week (we had three sessions a week). We answered the
questions one by one together, and I gave him an explanation instantly whether he
answered it correctly or incorrectly. It took a lot of time in doing this, but later it was
proved to be useful. Now Aslan could answer more than half of the questions
correctly, and even if he got the wrong answers, he would tell me why he chose that
answer or how the other choices confused him. Sometimes he was even able to
identify why A is the right answer, not B, C, or D before I started to clarify for him.
In order to provide instant explanation, I did many PBT practice tests myself,
and I recognized several grammatical structures or rules that often showed in the
prompts including the parallelism, singular and plural forms, infinitive, and
appositive …etc. Whenever facing prompts that contain these rules, I used the
metalanguage in my illustration. One reason for doing this is, I guess he might have
heard of these linguistic terms, but he was just unfamiliar with how they really works;
I can connect his own knowledge with the information just introduced, and this may
enhance his impression on the grammatical rules and structures. Another reason is,
with the metalanguage, he could search for more information on his own at home.
Even though I tried to make my clarification as comprehensible as possible, it is also
understandable that sometimes he couldn’t grasp the idea right away. Therefore, I
usually encourage him to also search for certain information on his own, or, I would
show him the website and talk about some important points listed on the page, and tell
him that if he had time, he could look them up by himself.
I remember Professor Johnson had talked about that it is even better to “teach on”
the students rather than “teaching for” them, and I think that encouraging my tutee to
do self research is one of the methods to teach on the student. Teachers don’t have to
teach their students everything, or, it might be more appropriate to say that it’s
impossible to teach them everything. Consequently, leaving room for students to
figure out what they really want to know is a more effective way of teaching instead
of spending a lot of time stuffing them with things they are not interested in. This is
not to say that teachers only need to teach students things they’re interested in, but to
create more flexibility for instructing. It works extremely well in my tutor session.
As mentioned at the beginning, the tutor session will continue till the end of this
semester, so I could only present the reflection based on the sessions that we went
through so far. It’s a pity that I can’t share the final result if he had successfully gotten
the score required by the department he intended to enroll in, however, I believe that
he can certainly make it. One last thing that I learned from the tutor session is, to be
positive to and have faith in the student. When they did something well, compliment
them appropriately; when they fail to achieve something, encourage them not to quit.
Even though I don’t have very specific course schedule for the tutoring, my course
objective is very clear, to help Aslan score at least 550 in the TOEFL PBT to meet the
department requirement. I believe that we can reach this goal together.