Journal 3

My tutor student is fourth grade in elementary school. For a beginning –level learner, the major teaching strategy I take is Audiolingual Method, which focuses on oral activities instead of grammar translation. The instruction I use is theme-based teaching. At first, I use reactive way – repeat the sentences after me. Because she is a beginner in English, the rate of delivery must be slower in case that she does not understand. Besides, I incorporate the context with a change of intonation, sometimes even more exaggerated. By this way it can appeal to her interest to get more motivated to learn. After she understands the conversation of this lesson, we begin the role play game. I give her priority to choose which role she would like to be. In psychological way, students like to be given right to choose, which make them feel recognized. After she gets more familiar with the conversation, I change to use responsive way, eliciting her to make immediate response with the textbook closed. By this way she can apply what she learns to reality.
In the rest of the class time, we learn some words like wig, pig, king, pink, etc. After she repeats after me every word, I ask her to read herself. In the process, I know which words she is still not familiar with and then I can focus more on these. Then I use chunking strategy to link between words, for example, “a pig is pink” or “the king wears wig,” which enables her memorize easily. I also use the related picture to impress her. After that, we start to do some bottom-up exercise. The exercise includes word recognition: I say “king”, and she has to match a word that she hears with its picture, and listening for normal sentence word order: I say “I go to school every day.” The words “go to school” are missing, so she has to fill in. If she forgets how to spell, I will allow her to review for a while and then continue to write. We also do some top-down exercise. The exercise includes getting the gist of a sentence: I say “I eat breakfast at seven o’clock.” Then she has to select the correct picture that I describe.
For a young child, whose memory us limited, the content can’t be overwhelming for her. Therefore, I repeat and repeat the context by using four skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing in two hours. By this way, it can not only achieve the effect but also be interesting.