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Teaching Diverse Learners: Tutoring Reflection

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Teaching Diverse Learners: Tutoring Reflection For my tutoring requirement for Teaching Diverse Learners, I had the opportunity to spend time with the visiting teacher from Thai. Staying for three months, Lek, the Thai woman, stayed at Lee to learn about America and expand her English language skills. Since Lek is in her mid 50’s, we had a very different relationship than that of one tutoring a young child. In Thai culture, it is considered rude to teach someone that is older than you; therefore, most of my time with Lek was spent with her teaching me Thai. Still, throughout my ten hours with Lek, I could see huge improvements in her conversational English ability. Through simple walks about campus and conversations with the assistance of …show more content…

During those times, Lek and I would walk around campus, exploring places she had not been to before and taking pictures with her ipad along the way. As we walked around in the blistering cold, I would point to things and say them in English, where she would then say the name of the object in Thai. Clumsily, I would attempt to repeat the same sounds that came out of her mouth. Through this simple task, we both increased our vocabulary in the foreign languages. After a few tutoring sessions, I learned that Thai is a complex tonal language, consisting of five different tones for each letter sound. For example, the sound “kowee” can mean news, rice, and white when said in different tones. I’m blown away that anyone in Thailand ever knows what someone is trying to say! Being incredibly consistent with drilling me on my Thai vocabulary, I pushed myself to practice Thai outside of our tutoring sessions. In doing so, I saw my ability to recall vocabulary words, such as the numbers and simple greetings, much easier. Over the two months that Lek and I met for our bi weekly tutoring sessions, I noticed that we both became capable with communicating in the other’s

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