Tutoring Session 06/30/26 (Anna & Fadia)

 Date/Time: Thursday, June 30th, 4:30-5:45pm

Location: Zoom  

Topic/Skill: Grammar- Present Perfect Verb Tense

Feedback provided to the tutee:  During the tutoring session, I began with a review of the verb tenses we learned during our last grammar session (Past Verb Tenses), and asked my tutee questions requiring her to recall her knowledge of the past verb tenses giving her direct correction and explaining why if she had errors with her use of the past verb tenses, or if she had errors in any other area such as pronunciation or sentence structure. Then we re-did the past-tense verbs activity we had previously completed in a past tutoring session, and I gave my tutee a chance to directly correct the mistakes she had made last time. Next, I began with a review of the present perfect tense, asking my tutee to provide examples of sentences using it and directly correcting any errors in her usage before moving on to the activity. During the present perfect verb tense activity, I loosely guided my tutee as she completed an activity in which she was given sentence fragments that she had to rearrange and conjugate to fit the structure of a present perfect sentence. When errors were made, I first tried to subtly draw attention to them, allowing my tutee to identify and correct them herself. Then, I would highlight the error in the sentence, allowing my tutee to self-correct; if the feedback was still not received, I would refer back to the initial review, allowing my tutee to identify the root cause of the error.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: During this tutoring lesson, I learned that if an ESL student asks a question for which you are unsure of the answer, it is best to be honest about your uncertainty. My tutee asked a great question about the grammatical difference between lose, lost & lost. I was not confident in, and likely unable to, correctly articulate the answer, so I was trying to dance around her question. Eventually, I admitted I was unsure, so we looked up an infographic together to get more clarity, which was very helpful. I also ended up telling her that this would now give us a great topic to focus on for our next session. Overall, I believe a more effective approach to answering a difficult question posed by a student would be to: (1) applaud the student for asking such a thoughtful question, (2) own up to my uncertainty in a subtle way, and (3) reassure students that we will focus on that topic next. This maintains students' respect for the teacher while allowing the teacher time to ensure they convey the most accurate, well-thought-out answer & explanation.