4C: Students Unprepared for Sessions

Common Question: What if the student is not prepared? 
 

This can happen sometimes. Perhaps the student didn’t understand an assignment or had a lot of difficulty with it when doing the work on his/her own. Either way, the session must go on. A student is responsible for the material s/he is meant to cover in order to prepare for the conversation session with the conversation partner. Therefore, you still will need to use what you prepared for that conversation session. You may be able to make the activities slightly more simple so the student can still participate. It may also be a good idea to have in mind one or two activities that review what was done in last week’s conversation session. 
 

If you have more than one person in your group, you may encounter a situation in which one student has prepared and the other has not. If this is the case you need to make sure that you are still covering the speaking activities you have prepared for the current week. Complete the activities you have prepared. It may be that the student who has not prepared may not be able to participate as fully; however, it will then be that student’s responsibility to review the material not completed and to be prepared for conversation practice in the next session. 
 

It is important that you make note of a student's level preparedness in your weekly reports. If a student is chronically unprepared, program staff will follow up with the student to see how the problem can be remedied. Reporting that a student is unprepared will never hurt the student's grade. Rather it gives the program staff a chance to work with the student so that the student has the best chance of having a succesful semester.