My tutor student is ninth grade in junior high school. I have tutored her for almost a year. She studied in a bilingual kindergarten so her speaking and listening abilities are not bad. Therefore, she is not afraid to speak when in class.
It is vital to have high spirits in class. When she is in high spirits, she absorbs the knowledge and grammars that I teach efficiently and fast. Therefore, we will be ahead of the schedule progress on that day. On the other head, when she has a PE class at school or she does not take a snap before the class begins, she will be in low spirits and feel sleepy. It is in vain to teach her anything under this situation for she feels so dizzy that it will influence her effect of learning. Therefore, I usually suggest her to have a cup of tea or have a stretch to help her revive.
My teaching methods mostly focus on Grammar Translation Method. It is because nowadays the examination emphasizes on grammar and structure of sentences. Therefore, under the pressure of student’s grades at school, my teaching method should work on this objective. However, I still use part of the Direct Method in teaching. First, I will let her read the lesson by herself and then I will instruct the word that she has no idea and also correct her pronunciation. Then we analyze the structure and the grammar sentence by sentence. Since her kindergarten uses Series Method to teach English, which focuses on memorizing series of sentences without translation and grammar rules, she does not put much emphasis on grammar. Therefore, she does not familiar with grammar and structure. Then I try to analyze step by step. For instance, when I talk about the position of frequency adverbs, I will first tell her the correct position, before normal verbs and after be verbs; then I will write down several sentences to make her determine where frequency adverbs should place. Although she may make mistakes in the process, she can learn from them and get the whole grammar’s idea.
