This Swahili mentor is going through a warm up with a beginning student. Note that the mentor waits for the student to think about her response.
Language of interchange is both English and the target language. The goal of the tutorial is to answer student questions and correct student errors. Use whichever language is best for clear, concise explanations. This will vary from student to student.
Remember that you are not teaching a class. You are responding to the student’s questions and making certain that the student has understood the concepts in the lesson. You do not lecture – you respond.
The key to a successful tutorial is focusing on what the student needs to learn instead of what the mentor wants to teach. The student establishes the direction of the session and the mentor has to be ready with whatever explanation is called for. The mentor also has to be able to read between the lines and understand the roots of a student’s question whose answer may be based in grammatical concepts not covered by the actual lesson.
Preparation for the mentoring session involves complete preparation of the material the student has covered but it must go further as mentors need to consider what questions could evolve as a result of the material assigned. Unlike in the conversation session, the language of interchange can be the target language, English, or a mixture of both.
The warm up begins the session. It gives the student a chance to quickly get settled and ready to work and breaks the ice and should not take more than a minute.
Going over the homework that the student has prepared to hand in is the first stage of the tutorial. While mentors will eventually retain the homework and correct it thoroughly, a quick perusal of the student’s work for the week serves to bring any problems to the forefront immediately.
The language for correction in the tutorials can be the target language or in English depending on the situation.
Discussions are a vital part of mentoring sessions, and they are sometimes difficult to anticipate. Nonetheless, they provide a goldmine of information for the student. Here are two instances of useful discussions that came out of seemingly simple questions.
Drills involve systematic and repetitive practice of a particular form of language usage.
One of the main purposes of the mentoring session is to give the student an opportunity to ask questions. The mentor has to not only answer the question but understand the root of the question and perhaps go much further with the explanation than the student had planned. The language of the explanation varies according to the complexity of the issue and the level of the student.
Because the target culture is inextricably intertwined with the target language, questions regarding cultural practices and traditions inevitably surface. While they can be incorporated into situations played out in conversation sessions, the basis for such role plays is usually established during the tutorials. Except with advanced students who can sustain such discussions in the target language, these discussions often take place in English.
While conversation sessions should take place with books closed, tutorials can take advantage of the book for various exercises. In-text dialogues, which may be recited or acted out in a conversation session, can be used in a tutorial to make certain the student understands what s/he is reading and the cultural innuendo behind the text.
Having concentrated on their assignment all week, students should arrive at their tutorial with questions for the mentor. Therefore, no two tutorials are alike, even if each student is following the same study guide. The mentor has to be prepared to discuss questions raised by the student instead of concentrating on something the mentor thinks the student needs to know.