TP#4 -- Stephanie

Linx Si was the only tutee to show up today.  Her friend had an appointment and Hamad failed to show for the second time.  (He was rather embarrassed about it the very next day however.)

Linx Si and I practiced "small talk" for a few minutes, then moved straight to playing Taboo with the tiny deck of 30 cards that I had already preselected based on vocabulary level.  We divided these cards into two decks with the goal to cover as many as possible based on our time allowance. 

Her talking was a bit choppy at first, but quickly progressed as she focused on playing the game (winning) and not speaking English. 

Of all the words that she played, "wife" was the one word that gave her the most difficulty.  I was eventually able to guess it, but not in the 1 minute time allowance.  We discussed that this was indeed a difficult word since both 'marriage' and 'husband' were taboo words--meaning you could not use these words to describe 'wife'.  Linx Si wanted to know how she could have given a better description, so we discussed some problem solving techniques and ways to get someone to guess 'wife' without the taboo words. This is why I love Taboo so much because it teaches you to talk around a vocabulary problem, which is exactly the problem second language students --and their limited vocabularies-- encounter every day.  (I've had several admit they don't like speaking the second language because they don't know what to say when they can't translate a needed word into English. So they focus instead on finding ways to avoid speaking English at all.)

She asked me to explain to her how I would have described 'wife' with out using 'husband' or 'marriage', so I had to think about it for a few seconds since I would have to give my answer in language that would be assessable to her.  I answered "You have a man and a woman who are together permanently.  The word to be guessed is not for the man, but for the woman.  She is his __________."  Linx Si was easily able to guess wife. :)

After this example, she gave several more equally good descriptions for words in her card deck.  She admitted she still found it hard, but she wasn't really stumped anymore and it was slowly getting easier.

We played Taboo for about 30 minutes, then we did some more work on timed speaking.  We reviewed basic organization patterns such as the introduction, the thesis statement, 2 reasons with 2 details each, and the conclusion.  I have her the topic "why I love or why I hate playing Taboo" and about 5 minutes to take notes and really think on it so she could focus on developing her organization skills.  Her answer was much more fluid and her pronunciation was also much better, perhaps because she wasn't having to think from scratch while she was talking.  I mentioned the errors that I had written down as she spoke, but they were only minor errors.

We ended with a pep talk about why language learning mistakes are so good and I reminded her that infants must learn to crawl, stand up and fall down, before they can attempt to really walk anywhere.  In short, just remember that this is a process and it will not happen overnight.