TUTORING FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT MTC

      Welcome to all of you who are new and to those of you who are returning MTC and to the Humanities Department.  This little handbook will give you some guidance in working with our students in the Academic Success Centers. For more information, contact the Humanities Department:

Chair: Nancy Kreml 738-7707   WM 317            kremln@midlandstech.edu

Dept. Asst: Lisa Cheeks  738-7684   WM 317            cheeksl@midlandstech.edu

Spanish Instructor: Frank Perez   738-7816    WM 304C      perezf@midlandstech.edu

Syllabi and Assignment Sheets: The department will provide generic syllabi in the Academic Centers so that you may familiarize yourselves with the goals of the various levels of FL instruction.  Also, if they are not there already, you will have both the French and Spanish texts that we use currently.  We shall make available a representative schedule for those courses.  The instructors follow very similar calendar schedules (variances may be of one or two days, but the lesson and parts thereof will be the same). Also, various instructors may have special requirements or assignments, and will be sure that there is a copy in the ASC if they expect students to receive help. NOTE: Many instructors allow NO TUTOR ASSISTANCE ON COMPOSITONS. If an instructor does allow this assistance, she or he will send along some directions on what is permitted.

Software: Students are always assigned homework which is based on the exercises in the text, the workbook, and the lab manual.  The latter can be done only in conjunction with the CDs or cassettes included with the textbook.  There is also a stand-alone CD-ROM with additional activities.  A list of online sites is available for French and Spanish. You may select from these for additional exercises for working with students who need more practice on particular problems.

Tutor’s Role: Keep in mind:  You are facilitators and guides.  Neither you nor we can learn the material for the students.  However, you can help them to learn it.  They generally need help with:  pronunciation, aural comprehension, and oral production.  You may want to guide in articulation (place, manner) by having them imitate you.  You can follow exercises in the book that require oral responses (working orally only, no looking at the book).  There are dialogues that lend themselves for oral practice (repetition) as well as fro dictations (you read, they write).  For aural comprehension, follow up with short-answer questions based on the dialogue.

Helping with assignments:  Students may do exercises from the book or from the software. These exercises serve to reinforce grammatical points presented in class.  You are encouraged to explain these points in a simple, non-technical fashion.  But, always give examples in Spanish and in English if necessary.  It is very important that you give assistance only with work that the students have attempted before they go to you.  You are not expected to, nor should you, provide direct answers to what the various exercises seek.  This is particularly crucial when it is a matter of a fill-in exercise.  Make certain that they know what they are required to do in a given exercise (distinguish between ser/estar, por/para, Preterite/Imperfect, avoir/être, savoir/connaître, for example).  Not only do students need to bear in mind the point emphasized by the exercise but also the meaning of the entire sentence.  Too often, they focus on a verb form and disregard the context in which it appears.

Vocabulary:  Help students learn how to memorize vocabulary. Teach them techniques, stress words in context, call out words and have them put the word in a sentence.’

Listening: Students need to listen to the language.  Please help them with their listening comprehension exercises by modeling how to work with the tapes, that is: helping them anticipate the words they might hear and recognizing them when they hear it.

Dialogues: Some of us ask for dialogue memorization (of the material that will serve for a dictation quiz).  Only those who will “perform” the dialogue need memorize it, but, by the semesters’ end, all of the students will have performed two or three times.  In this instance, while they practice to recite form memory, you can read the other roles.  Help them to pronounce but, first, make certain that they understand what they are saying.  Do not translate for them; have them look up words, explain verb forms (person, irregular, stem-changing, etc.).  Give them sample dictations.

Compositions: An important component, at all levels, are compositions.  As a general rule, these are guided compositions, based on drawings that are in the text, or on verbs or phrases that they are given.  Sometimes, as students progress higher in the course sequence, short, free compositions are assigned.  However, at all times, they are closely related to the subject matter being taught.  NOTE: Many instructors allow NO TUTOR ASSISTANCE ON COMPOSITONS. If an instructor does allow this assistance, she or he will send along some directions on what is permitted.  However, and this is crucial to the students’ well-being, you should not write, rewrite, paraphrase or in any manner change the tenor of the  students’ compositions.  These writing exercises are intended to give our students an opportunity to develop one more of the overall goals of the FL instruction.  A guideline for you to follow is that you are not free to help in the writing of a first draft (the latter will not have the instructors’ comments, marks, or other indications).  Students turn in a first draft.  We indicate errors and identify their type (i.e.:  verb-subject agreement, wrong word usage, adjective-noun agreement, lack of conjunction, wrong expression, etc.).  Students then rewrite the first draft and receive a grade on the second one.  Some of us feel that tutors can help at this point, the revision of the first draft.  However, your job is to explain what was wrong and what our comments mean.  DO NOT offer vocabulary, verb forms, idiomatic expressions, or rearrange their original composition.  This is a learning exercise that will teach them to write a simple composition without the aid of auxiliary materials. See the guidelines below on working with editing.

Techniques for Teaching Editing

(to be used ONLY if instructor approves assistance)

Instead of just editing a student’s paper for him or her, it helps the student more if you help them to realize why their editing errors are errors.  Often you will need to spend time with a grammar exercise as a part of working with a composition. Below are some tips that may help you help the student not only correct the editing mistakes in their papers, but improve their editing skills overall.

• Don’t translate, and encourage the students  not to translate. Students will often come with passages written out in English. Explain to them why this will lead to strange sentences in the target language, and explain to them that it’s important to write in the language in order to produce realistic language. And  NEVER, EVER translate for them!
• Ask a student to explain to you why they chose a certain grammatical form.  In explaining it to you, they may realize their mistake and come up with the correct form on their own.  Even if they don’t, or if their explanation is wrong, it may help you to realize why they are having difficulty in that particular area, and give you a better idea of how to help them.
• Search for error patterns, and then focus on helping the student to understand those particular areas.  Instead of focusing on each editing mistake individually, see if you can find types of mistakes that the student makes repeatedly.  If you can help them to understand an overall concept that they are having difficulty with instead of just helping them one error at a time, they should become better at editing for that type of error in the future.
• Show student how to use the textbook.  Students may not understand how to use this book to help them with editing, but it can be a useful tool.  Help them find ways to look up the words or patterns they need to use, but don’t look them up for the students.
• Encourage students to work with the language they already have. Sometime students want to write using totally new vocabulary and grammar, which may defeat the instructor’s purpose. A new word or two may be necessary, but in general encourage them to practice using what they’ve already learned.
• Refer students to editing websites/software for grammar practice.  Lists of online grammar resources can be found for English, French, and Spanish.  Identify one or two areas in which students need the most help, and suggest that they do some practice exercises. 

Managing the Tutorial Session

Following are some charts suggesting ways of handling different possibilities of working with students, and a copy of the referral form that the instructors will use. Please let us know if any of this is not clear. 

Instructor Initiated Tutoring Flowchart

Student Initiated Tutoring Flowchart