TP #2 - Diagostics - Stephanie

All three tutees were present for our second meeting.  Because my little group gets along together so well, Hamad and I had to start things off with poking some fun at the two girls for being absent.  (This was made all the more amusing by the fact that it's usually Linxi poking fun at the other two.)
I had had the two girls fill out the Needs Analysis during their speaking class with Alex, while she was setting up for class.  Like Hamad, they had only been in the country since August.  They also had really high Listening and Reading scores, but low Speaking scores, though Binshan had somehow already passed the TOEFL test for her communications major. 

I pulled out the Diagnostics that Ramin required and I preceded to explain to them why they had to fill it out and what the purpose of it was.  We then went over each of the 3 sections.  The first section was comprised the questions that I should have asked in the Needs Analysis, but forgot.  Questions such as 'What Activities do you like to do?  Using complete sentences, please list 5 activities.'  I also asked them 'What are you interested in?' and I asked them to finish the following sentence: I am learning English because _______________________.  I explained that their answers to these questions would help me pick activity topics that they hopefully found interesting.

Section two was a simple, basic grammar cloze exercise with questions pulled from www.insideout.net/new/resources/placement-tests.  This was honestly a hidden attempt to see how the two Chinese girls answered the 3 different word-order questions.  Martin, a graduate level Chinese student I'd befriended, had already predicted which answers the girls would likely choose based on how Chinese students translated the spoken Chinese in their heads to the spoken or written English they attempted to use to communicate with everyone else.  (Martin is getting a Master's in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.)

From there, we moved to the final section, the speaking diagnostic part.  This was adapted from a speaking diagnostic test I found while surfing the internet: http://www.thedawnjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/3-Rajesh-Jaya.pdf . In particular, I liked how the study used a rubric that purported to identify specific weaknesses in students, however I found this didn't work out for me as planned.  I just don't have enough experience identifying a "4" answer from a "3" answer and I wound up confusing myself.  I resorted to simply recording obvious individual errors and whole-group errors, much like I'd seen Victoria and Vicky do in class.  This actually worked out very well, because many times the students were so unaware of their own errors that they laughed at their mistakes.  "I said that?!" was a common response, followed by much laughing.  Linxi admitted that she could never remember anything she said when "put on the spot".  This is why I told them this speaking diagnostic was so perfect since we were recording the speaking passages and later transcribing them.  This would give them a chance to "see" what they were really saying. 

This speaking diagnostic consisted of 4 passages.  In the first one they were shown a picture and asked to describe what they saw or what they thought was going on in the picture.  (Vocabulary knowledge test.) Both the student and I recorded the answers on our phones.  The second one involved a passage from a story.  The student was asked to read the passage with proper intonation, stress and pronunciation.  (I'm honestly not sure exactly what this was supposed to test, but even with a copy of the passage in front of me, I still couldn't understand what they were saying.)  The third part was an opinion question, (What is your opinion of violence on television?) just liked timed TOEFL speaking, except I didn't limit their response time.  This was recorded by both the student and I.  For the fourth and final part, I simply had them speak about a topic they were familiar with, such as describing a best friend or family member.   I wrote down obvious spoken errors on this one and we discussed them once everyone had spoken.  This speaking about a known topic was much more fluid and relaxed.

Finally, I told everyone that their homework was to transcribe on paper their recorded responses and that these would be compared to my transcriptions the following Tuesday.  I also provided rationale as to why this was important, why timed speaking was important, and how important good eye contact and body language is in a second language.  People will be more willing to help you if they think you are serious (good eye contact) that if you are hiding behind your friend or a support column in store or otherwise hiding.  Most Americans would probably interpret this behavior as a joke or a prank of some kind.  This thought had never occurred to them, but I could tell from their reactions that they'd all experienced a native speaker not taking them seriously because  of very poor/confusing eye contact and body language.  I ended with telling them about my love for Taboo and how I hoped it would help them, especially where eye contact/"hiding" was concerned.