One- on- One Tutoring

This tutoring experience has changed my philosophy about teaching and learning vocabulary in the target language. This served as a great platform for future teaching opportunities. I had an opportunity to teach students from Kiribati, Mexico, Samoa, and Hong Kong. This gave me the chance to be exposed to different nationality and see how they learn vocabulary. This experience has led me to level up my tutoring in order to address the concerns of my tutees and to teach them effectively and productively. First is your appearance. As tutors, we need to look professional because before your tutees become excited to your lesson, your appearance can be a reflection of what you will teach them. If you dress appropriately, it shows that you are prepared for the tutoring session and what you will teach is important.

Second, is the importance of organizing your schedules; set a specific time in order to avoid confusion and make sure that everything is in order. Create a group page, this will help your students keep updated and reminded of your schedule and important announcements. Third, choose a pleasant and supportive environment. In my experience, the language center is very quiet every Monday night because most students are preparing to go to family home evening so I decided to do it at 8to 8:30 pm. They have chairs and tables that are very comfortable. Fourth, Use the resources provided by this institution. At the language center, they have white boards, markers, computers, and dictionary. These resources made my life easy as a teacher because they are available anytime and my tutees enjoy them so much. Fifth, is the power of preparation, in my preparation I have learned to use textbook, AWL lists, videos, and include the announcements in it. I realized that when your lesson is carefully plan everything will fall into the right places. It reminded me what to focus on and it serves as a guide in my tutoring session. Sixth, are the aspects of a word that learners need to know, most of the time when we think of vocabulary we focus on language translation. We need to teach other aspects of a word that our students need to know such as meaning, pronunciation, word families, grammar, and collocations. We can focus each one of them in our tutoring. We can prepare task that will help our learners learn and practice them. Seventh, are the principles of learning vocabulary; first is frequency principle. It is very important to teach students the importance of knowing which are high frequency and low frequency so they know which words they need to focus to. Second is the repletion principle. It is the key part of learning. As teachers, we need to spot opportunities for repetition of the target

language. We can recycle the text either by speaking and writing. We can use 4/3/2 fluency activity. And the third part is principle of spaced retrieval. We have to help learners recall the meaning or form of a word from their memory. The leaners have to think deeply to find meaning of words and it strengthens learners knowledge of words. The more often words are retrieved the stronger the association or learning the word becomes. I made sure that we always have follow up activity in order for them to process it in their mind. Eighth, Direct and Indirect learning strategies, we know that we cannot teach everything especially if there is a time limit per session. I used direct strategies; flash cards and key word technique. I realized that they spent too much time in making their flash cards and because they made it, they are in control. They know it because they personalize it. They write the meaning at the back. And with key word technique, I myself did it in the past so I can relate to it and I can testify to the effectiveness of it. For indirect teaching, I advertise the reading/writing center in order to inform that this institution provide materials and resources so we can improve our vocabulary. I also teach them the context clues strategy that can help them improve their reading skills and increase their vocabulary in the target language. Ninth, create variations in teaching, most of the time our students expect for something new. In order to do this, I made sure that I have regular and different task weekly. For our regulars, we have flash cards AWL quiz, and we have paraphrasing, spell-it-out-loud activity, videos, and USE it activity. This also helped them to use the target words in different ways. Tenth, is keeping and evaluating record each tutoring session. Every week, I make sure that everything is recorded; attendance, strategies, activities, and quizzes. It was so easy for me to make my tutor log because everything is recorded. This is also a great opportunity for me to

evaluate my teachings, to see what I did better and to see what I needed to improve on. I also use this to plan for the next tutoring and to see what I can do best. This tutoring experience made me a different tutor. This has changed me for good and made me realize that we can do something to meet the needs of our learners regardless of their nationality. I decided that I will keep my tutor log for future employment. This experience has taught me that the best way we can motivate our students is through our teaching. We should make it appealing and exciting to our students. Also, there are many factors that we need to know and consider to become more effective and productive. I have also learned how to deal with my tutee that has an attitude problem. I found out that he is using these bad attitude to divert others attention to it because he is really weak in the target language. It was very challenging for me but I tried to present him task that will help him improve his vocabulary in the target language. I also make sure that I am in control of everything. I think I made a difference in his life and his classmates lives. I will be forever grateful for this opportunity. I learned a lot and it boost my confidence. I am ready for the next chapter of my tutoring session next semester.