Post
by revel » Wed Jul 07, 2004 10:20 am
Hey anglosaxy!
My suggestion is to get your hands on a good pattern drill exercise book, begin with the first lesson and spend about half the class time working your way through the book together. Get her to move her mouth a lot, play games with the pattern drills, assign her five or six sentences from a particularly challenging exercise, to repeat five times over the days between your classes. As she does each exercise, have her mark the repetition in an exercise chart (three columns, one for the date, another for the exercise title, another for the marks for each repetition). As she dominates each exercise, cross it out. Then spend the rest of the class in some activity that lets her practice a bit more freely that which she has practiced in the controlled "drill" exercise.
You might outline clearly the objectives for the student and her mother. "We will, in seven hours, practice the first twenty pattern exercises, resulting in the comfortable manipulation of structures necessary for comunication. This activity will be supported by more relaxed activities (card games, role play, etc....) to maintain a pleasant learning experience."
If the mother sees the exercise chart, if she sees exercises crossed off as they are mastered, and then, if she sees that her daughter is enjoying the classes as she is learning, you might just have a long-time student on your hands, and the satisfaction knowing that you helped her to continually improve her English.
peace,
revel.
. Now I have seven lessons to convince the mother that her daughter is actually learning and improving. Apart from ensuring that the girl enjoys the lessons, which I'm very confident I can do, how can I ensure that she actually improves to a noticeable level and to a level that persuades her mother to keep me on? Do you know of/ have experience of any quick-fire exercises that I can reel off that will help me out? I have the usual bundle of games and cards, it's just getting that level up in such a short time...